MC Gee

CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY
DEFENCE COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY ANALYSIS
MSC THESIS
Academic Year 2005- 2006
Anthony McGee
CORPORATE SECURITY’S PROFESSIONAL PROJECT:

AN EXAMINATION OF THE MODERN CONDITION OF
CORPORATE SECURITY MANAGEMENT, AND THE
POTENTIAL FOR FURTHER PROFESSIONALISATION OF
THE OCCUPATION.
Supervisor: Dr. Helen Peck
October 2006
Master of Science (by research).
© Cranfield University, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder.
‘Corporate Security’s Professional Project:
An examination of the modern condition of corporate security management and,
the potential for further professionalisation of the occupation.’
Anthony McGee
Cranfield University
2006
Abstract.
There is a common perception among corporate security managers that their occupation is
afforded less status and is rewarded less well than the other management functions within
business. In response to similar conceptions of the need to raise the value and status of their
work, other occupations have historically embarked on so-called ‘professional projects’
whereby they collectively attempt to harness their specialist skills and knowledge as a
commodity, the value of which they seek to raise and maintain.
This small- scale qualitative study is intended to provide an insight into the analysis of
corporate security managers and directors as to the health of their occupation and its standing
in the modern corporate world. The study then examines the methods which other
occupations have used to successfully improve the status of their practitioners and the value
of their work. Finally, based on the analysis of the security managers and directors and the
experience of other occupations, a broad strategy for corporate security’s own professional
project is proposed.
This study suggests that corporate security is currently enjoying divergent fortunes. The most
successful security managers and directors enjoy parity of status with their peers from other
functions and have taken on responsibilities far in excess of the traditional security
department’s remit. However, at the other end of the spectrum there are many security
managers who are afforded an inferior status to that of managers from other functions. As a
result, they struggle to attract significant responsibility or resources within their organisations.
The research suggests that other management functions have historically faced similar
problems in their development. These other functions have used strategies of occupational
negotiation, boundary work, closure and monopolisation to overcome their problems.
Together these measures have constituted professional projects. Based on the appetite for
professionalisation among our security managers, and the success of professional projects in
comparable occupations, this study concludes that security management should embark on a
professional project of its own.
ii
Acknowledgements.
I have spent a fascinating year working on this research which, more than anything, has given
me a valuable insight into the human dynamics of corporate organisations and the way things
‘get done’. I must first express my gratitude to those who have organised this joint project
between Cranfield the RSMF, TSI and ASIS, in particular, Ivar Hellberg, Mike Hoare and
John Smith. Without their fundraising efforts, and subsequent support in terms of time and
resources, I would not have had this opportunity.
Thanks to my supervisor Dr. Helen Peck who has given me valuable steer in research
principles and shown great confidence in me throughout. Since I first arrived at DMSA Steve
Gibson’s knowledge of corporate security has been an invaluable resource. So too has the
library. Mandy Smith in particular has cheerfully dealt with my constant stream of inter-
library loan requests and failure to return anything on time. My thanks also must go to Bruce
George for suggesting that I apply for the project and for his continued guidance.
I am grateful to the many people connected with corporate security who have taken time out
of their busy schedules to offer me help and advice, or take part in one of the research
interviews.
Thanks finally to my parents who have patiently tolerated me in recent months as I have
written up my research.
iii
Table of Contents.
Page
Table of Contents iv- vii

List of Appendices vii
List of Tables viii
List of Figures viii
CHAPTER 1: Introduction, Literature Study and Review. 1

1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Literature Search 2
1.3 Literature Review 6
1.3.1 Is Security Management a Profession? 6
1.3.2 Sociological Perspective 9
1.3.3 The Status of Corporate Security 10
1.3.4 Summary of Literature Conclusions. 11
1.4 Research Questions and Aims 12
1.4.1 Research Questions 12
1.4.2 Aims 12
CHAPTER 2: Research Design. 14

2.1 Research Strategy 14
2.1.1 The Deductive Approach 14
2.1.2 The Inductive Approach 14
2.2 Ontological and Epistemological Considerations 16
2.3 Theoretical Perspectives 17
2.4 Methodology 18
2.4.1 Interviews 19
2.4.2 Single-Case Study 26
2.5 Summary of Research Design 27
iv
Page
CHAPTER 3: Corporate Security: It’s Development and its
Modern Condition. 28
3.1 Introduction 28
3.2 Corporate Security’s Historical Roots 28
3.3 Contemporary Drivers for Corporate Security 30
3.4 Limits to the Success of Corporate Security 32
3.5 The Positioning of Security within an Organisation. 33
3.6 The Attitude of the Board 36
3.7 The Status of our Security Managers, and that of
their Peers. 40
3.7.1 Company Specific Crises and Credibility 41
3.8. The Challenge of Achieving Parity 42
3.9 Summary of Conclusions 46
Chapter 4: The Background of a Security Manager: The Value

of a Security Background. 47
4.1 Introduction 47
4.2 The ‘Peacekeepers’. 47
4.3 The Value of a Security Background? 49
4.4 Distinguishing between the Peacekeeping Careers. 53
4.5 The Corporate Security Managers of the future? 54
4.5.1 Change. 54
4.5.2 Continuity 55
4.5.3 Diversification 56
4.6 Advantages of Police and Military Backgrounds 56
4.6.1 Contacts and Networks 57
4.6.2 Demonstrable Pedigree 58
4.6.3 The Importance of Judgement and Experience 59
v
Page
CHAPTER 5: The Professional Project of Human Resource
Management in the UK. 62
5.1 Introduction. 62
5.2 Origins of Personnel Management 62
5.3 The Challenge from Human Resource Management 65
5.4 Personnel Management as a Business Function 66
5.5 Personnel Management as a Profession 67
5.6 Professional Project 68
5.6.1 Historical Project 69
5.6.2 Modern, Reinvigorated Professional Project 71
5.7 Broader Activities 76
5.8 Current State of the HRM Profession 82
CHAPTER 6: Professions, Professionalism and Corporate Security. 86

6.1 Introduction 86
6.2 The Study of Professions 86
6.3 Varying Conceptions of Being ‘Professional’. 89
6.4 Professionalism: the ideal type. 92
6.4.1 Specialised work grounded in a body of theoretically
Based Discretionary Knowledge and Skill. 93
6.4.2 Exclusive Jurisdiction in a Particular Division of Labour
Created and Controlled by Occupational Negotiation. 95
6.4.3 Shelter from Labour Markets based on a Qualification. 98

6.5 Summary of Conclusions. 99
vi
Page.
CHAPTER 7: A Proposed Professional Project for Corporate

Security. 101
7.1 Introduction 101
7.2 Corporate Security’s Professional Project 101
7.3 A Conversation about Corporate Security’s Professional
Project 102
7.4 Occupational Negotiation 105
7.5 Boundary Work 110
7.6 Occupational Closure 112
7.7 Monopolisation 117
CHAPTER 8: Conclusions. 122

8.1 What is the Current state of Corporate Security? 122
8.2 How Have Other Disciplines Previously Sought to I
I Improve their Levels of Professionalism and Status? 124
8.3 What Steps can Corporate Security take to Consolidate
or Improve its Status? 124
8.4 A Future Corporate Security Profession? 126
APPENDICES:
Appendix A: Interview Invitation Letter 127

Appendix B: Setting the Scene 128
Appendix C: Interview Schedule 129
BIBLIOGRAPHY: 132
vii
List of Tables:
1.1 Search Terms, Rational and Limitations 4
1.2 Database Search Results 5
1.3 ISI/ Index to Thesis Search Results 6
5.1 Membership Grades of the CIPD 72
5.2 Routes to Chartered Membership 75
List of Figures:
7.1 An Occupation in its Unreformed State 108
7.2 A Successful Professional Project 110
viii
1. Introduction, Literature Search and Review.
1.1 Introduction
“Key conclusion should be whether or not education and qualifications at

this level will integrate security management into the business process at
the same levels as other functional managers with comparable standards.”
(Hoare 2005: 2)
The terms of reference for this project as set out above are borne from a body of
thinking which takes for granted that corporate security in the UK significantly lags
behind the other mainstream business functions in term of how well its practitioners
are regarded by executives of the business and how closely its practitioners are
integrated into the general activity of the business.
However, as discussed in the literature review, this body of thinking has never been
substantiated by any academic research. The research conducted by Nalla and Moresh
(2002) into the state of corporate security in the US contradicted much of the
anecdotal pessimism and reported that corporate security as a business function was in
fact well regarded and influentially located in most corporations. The work of Nalla
and Moresh serves as an example of the dangers of ‘perceived wisdom’ being taken
for granted in the field of corporate security and with this in mind the first objective of
this research will be to try and add depth to the understanding of the current state of
corporate security by carrying out the first qualitative, academic study of the status of
the corporate security occupation ever undertaken in the UK.
Other discussions of ‘professionalism’ in the context of corporate security have, at

best, drawn upon simplistic dictionary definitions of what it means to be a
professional, a profession or to professionalise. In fact an extensive sociological body
of work exists in relation to the study of professions and professional privilege: why it
is sought and how it is obtained. It is the intention of this thesis to draw upon that
body of work in order to establish where corporate security currently stands in terms
of its aspiration to be regarded as a profession and what it must do in order to advance
its claim to ‘proper’ professional status
1
While the original terms of reference for the project allude only to professionalisation
in terms of a qualification, even the most cursory of looks at other occupations, be
they long established or still developing, reveal that they have not sought to address
the task of raising their standards and the esteem in which they are held through
qualifications alone. Larson (1977) was the first to describe the phenomena of
‘professional projects’ whereby occupations undertook a range of activities in an
effort to achieve shelter from the general labour market and monopolise their field of
work, obtaining privilege for themselves as practitioners, and lifting the status of their
work above that of other occupations in the process. In an effort to offer some
guidance for the launch or reinvigoration of corporate security’s own ‘professional
project’, the second phase of the research will entail conducting a detailed case study
of a similar occupation, which is widely recognised as having successfully
professionalised. The aim of this case study will be to analysis what strategies need to
be pursued and what criteria need to be filled for a modern management function to
achieve professional recognition.
In order to maintain the focus and manageability of this project it will concentrate on
‘corporate security management’ as opposed to security management more broadly.
Wilson and Slater put forward a classical definition of corporate security as: “The
safeguarding of assets, personnel and even profitability of the organisation against
theft, fire, fraud, criminal damage and terrorist acts” (Wilson & Slater 1990), more
recently Hill and Smith have defined it as: “ A corporation’s management of risk to
their people, property, information and liability” (Hill and Smith, 1995)
1.2 Literature Search.

At the outset of the literature search I looked first to the Security Journal (Perpetuity
Press) as the only peer-reviewed journal touching on the field of Security
Management in any corporate or commercially-orientated sense. Similarly obvious
sources of literature were the internationally recognized Security Management
magazine and Security Management Today magazine (SMT); the most widely
distributed publication aimed at UK security managers.
2
In addition to these sources the author found work originating from Cranfield
University, such as the Diogenes Papers (Cranfield University 2000), were readily
available. Examination of these sources returned a relatively small number of relevant
articles and also suggested that there was a general dearth of work elsewhere
“Security, as an academic discipline, is still in its infancy and literature is scarce.”
(Manunta 2000: 6).
In an effort to ensure that no literature relevant to the review was missed a systematic
trawl through likely sources of information was organized. The search was organized
around keywords and phrases. Deciding on the key words and phrases was somewhat
problematic. As a relatively fledgling academic subject security has no single
vocabulary (Garcia, 2000) and many of the terms deemed relevant to the search had
other applications and the potential to generate large numbers of erroneous search
returns.
Based on the terminology used in the existing literature and discussions with
individuals knowledgeable in the field it was decided that the search would be based
on four key phrases intended to capture material that may have been written or stored
using a variety of headings. As table 1 demonstrates the different phrases and
keywords were used in an effort to trap relevant material that may have approached
the subject from a variety of perspectives. However, this approach had the inadvertent
consequence of often generating lots of results irrelevant to the specific topic and
frequently results entirely unconnected to the field of security. Thus, the ratio of
results trapped to results actually deemed useful was fairly low.
It was decided to use these keywords and phrases to search the titles and abstracts of
journal articles and book reviews contained within two large online social science
databases, ‘Swetswise E-journals’ and ‘EBSCO Host’. The decision to use these
databases was based on their size and the availability of access to them.
The search of the two databases was configured to include an examination of article
titles and article abstracts. In the case of book reviews the title of the book would be
included within the article abstract. To maintain the manageability of the search
process it was decided that searches which returned more than 300 results would be
3
Table 1.1: ‘Search Terms. Rationale and Limitations’.
Search Term Rationale Limitations
“Private Security” A broad term which theoretically Its use in literature is generally in
takes in all security provided relation to the security industry and
privately i.e. ‘trends in the security contractors; the provision
provision of private security.’ of manned guards ect.
“Security Relates directly to the practice Tends to generate large numbers of

Management” which is at the core of the results containing technical
research i.e. ‘Assessing the information on the day-to-day work
development of Security of security management.
Management.’
“Business” and Takes in literature that considersTraps a large number of results from
“Security” the topic from a business economic literature on business
perspective i.e. ‘what can securities. Searching with the AND
security contribute to your operator generates extra erroneous
business?’ results where words appear together
but are unconnected within an
abstract.
“Corporate Relates most specifically to the None.
Security” security field this research is
interested in i.e. ‘the continued
growth in spending on Corporate
Security’
excluded. Where searches returned less than 300 results the results were checked
individually to see if they had relevance to the issue of corporate security and
distinguished it from the security industry more broadly. Where these criteria were
met articles were checked more closely to assess if they contained material relevant to
the theme of development and professionalisation within corporate security and
security management. The results of this search are detailed in table 1.2 below.
Given the limited number of relevant articles returned from the databases the search
for material was extended to less obvious resources. The ISI Web of knowledge
contains a Social Sciences Citation Index, expanded with cited references and allows
the user to search journal titles and also citations within journal pieces for relevant
material. The Index to Theses is a comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts
accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since
1716.
4
Table 1.2: ‘Database Search Results.’
Search Term Results Included
Swetswise
“Private Security” 151 0
“Security Management” 61 3
“Business” and “Security” 27 0
“Corporate Security” 1 1
EBSCO Host
“Private Security” 1,323 N/A
“Business” and “Security” 2,200 N/A
These sources were searched using the same keywords and phrases used
previously and the results were subject to the same criteria. The results of this
second search are presented in table 1.3 below.
This further search effort unearthed 4 additional literature pieces judged to be of

relevance to the project. These four pieces when added to the 14 found in the initial
search and the material already in the author’s possession formed the basis of the
literature review. The literature took a variety of forms. A minority of it was in the
form of peer-reviewed research articles and academic, theoretical pieces. Some came
in the form of what one may call practitioner/ thinker literature written by senior
practitioners in the field. This literature demonstrated understanding and depth of
thought about the subject but was also clearly based on subjective notions of what was
happening and what should be happening. The remainder of the material found came
from magazines such as Security Management and Security Manager Today.
While these journalistic pieces were frequently based on assertion and opinion they
nevertheless provided a valuable insight into what the current issues and debates
within the security profession were.
5
Within the literature two key themes emerged. The first of these was a continued
debate as to whether security management had yet filled the criteria necessary to be a
‘profession’.
Table 1.3. ‘ISI/ Index to Theses Search Results.’

Search Term Results Included
ISI Web of Knowledge

“Business” and “Security” 413 NA
Index to Theses
“Business” and “Security” 20 0
Secondly, and closely linked, was the question of what was required to achieve
‘professional’ status if it had not been achieved and what could be done to raise the
levels of professionalism further if it had.
1.3 Literature Review.
1.3.1 Is Security Management a Profession?

While some writers in the field have taken the professional status of security
managers for granted for the last 15 years (Hearnden 1989), for other contemporary
writers the issue has been much less clear-cut. Manunta (1996) distinguishes between
the ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘pragmatic’ interpretations of the term professional. In
bureaucratic terms the title professional presupposes academic qualifications and
demands enrolment in an institution that will have official recognition and govern its
members in terms of ethics, standards and discipline. For Manunta, the pragmatic
interpretation while grounded in the dictionary definition (i.e. ‘paid occupation, esp.
one that requires advanced education and training…’) requires less stringency about
institutional membership and formal restrictions placing greater emphasis instead on
6
the perception of “…intellectual and manual activity at its highest level…” (Manunta
1996: 8).
Manunta argues that the professional status of security managers can in the first
instance be assessed through a comparison of its characteristics in terms of pay,
education and training with those of other recognised professions such as architects
and doctors. Writing almost 10 years ago he notes that security managers seriously lag
behind on all fronts:
“Those employed in the private sector tend to be mature, retired people

with military or police background who are unlikely to have had
education at university level. Most of them have little or no career
prospects, and some on their own admission are in search of a ‘warm,
comfortable retreat’”.
(Manunta 1996: 235)
In his defence of the security management profession Simonsen, writing at the same
time as Manunta, set out 5 elements which compose a profession:
• Specific standards and a code of ethics governing members.

• A body of knowledge, professional journals and historical perspective to act as
guidance.
• A recognised association as a forum for discussion.
• A certification programme ensuring that members are competent.
• An educational discipline that prepares students in the specific functions and
philosophies of the profession.
(Simonsen 1996).
Despite these challenging criteria to be met by professionals Simonsen was optimistic

about the progress security management had made. Citing the proliferation of books,
journals and magazines as evidence of a body of knowledge and the existence of the
American Society for Industry Security (now simply ASIS) and The International
Association of Hospital Security Supervisors as proof of recognised associations.
In summary, Simonsen concedes that as of 1996 the professionalisation of the field
was not yet fait accompli but argued that the “pieces were in place…” and “…security
should already be rightly regarded as a profession.”(Simonsen 1996: 232)
7
In more recent literature the debate about security’s professional status is one its
doubters have been more willing to sustain. While the term ‘professional’ is used
frequently (see Wyllie 2000; Garcia 2000; and Kovacich & Halibozek 2005) explicit
defences of the term professional are less common. It appears that some writers on
the topic of security management have grown weary of the debate feeling that its
continued discussion only serves to undermine the would-be professionals cause.
“Other professions do not behave the way security professionals do- we

don’t see doctors, lawyers, engineers, criminologists or financial
managers arguing about whether or not they are professionals. They
know, and more importantly, the general public knows, that they are.”
(Garcia 2000: 81)
As well as expressing frustration Garcia also indirectly subscribes to Manunta’s

pragmatic interpretation of the term professional.
“Is security a profession? The mere fact that the question is still frequently
debated in security journals may be proof that we have yet to arrive… The
real question, then, is how can we achieve that objective?”
(Axt 2002: 142)
Axt’s point is instructive as to the general nature of the debate. Nothing is written
with the obvious aim of undermining or detracting from security management. Those
who express doubt about the readiness for professional status do not seek to detract
from security but rather they write with hope of creating or maintaining momentum
for progress in the right direction. According to Axt, it will not be for security
practitioners themselves to deem when professionalisation has been accomplished:
“…it is the beneficiaries and consumers of security services who will decide when
security has become a profession.” (Axt 2002: 142)
For some writers the status ‘professional’ is something of a destination and arriving
there will be evidence that security management has achieved a level of sophistication
currently associated with other more established professions. For others the term
professional is simply a checkpoint that has been passed and an indication that
security management is progressing but by no means an indication that security as a
discipline may yet be considered the equal of, for instance, law or medicine.
8
When considered like this the question of whether security managers are considered
as professionals is of less significance. On closer examination, the debate actually
becomes one of when the term ‘professional’ is appropriate rather than the level of
sophistication that security as a discipline has achieved. In terms of how far security
management as a discipline has come, and perhaps more crucially, what is yet to be
done, there is a significant degree of consensus within the literature.
1.3.2 Sociological Perspective

Interestingly, none of the literature pertaining to corporate security’s ‘professional
question’ draws on the substantial body of sociological literature surrounding the
professions. As groups of individuals who have obtained significant privilege and
autonomy in their work, professions have attracted much attention from sociologists
since the beginning of the 20th century. Early work in the field tended to produce
‘trait’ models of professions which essentially comprised a list of attributes common
to professions. Works such as that by Millerson (1964) are exemplary of this
approach. Following a systematic study of a range of professions Millerson lists
twenty-three ‘essential elements’ of a true profession. As an example of the lack of
consensus which surrounded these early efforts to define a profession, no single item
on Millerson’s list was accepted by all of his contemporaries in the field. (Johnson
1972). However, those most frequently re-iterated included:
• Skills based on theoretical knowledge

• The provision of training and education
• Testing the competence of members
• Organisation
• Adherence to a professional code of conduct
• Altruistic service.
As the study of professions progressed these early ‘trait’ models of professions were
criticised for various failings, not least their tendency to accept the professions own
definitions of themselves. Gradually the creation of these trait models was replaced by
the functionalist approach to the study of professionalisation. This shift was
characterised by Everett Hughes who noted that in his studies he: “…passed from the
9
false question ‘Is this occupation a profession?’ to the more fundamental one: ‘…what
are the circumstances in which people in an occupation attempt to turn it into a
profession and themselves into professional people?’”. (Hughes 1971: 66)
The functionalist answer to this question has generally placed great emphasis on the
selfless aspects of professional life. Parsons (1951) argued that professions were
driven by altruistic motives of service and maintenance of standards. Subsequently in
the functionalist vein Anderson has argued that:
“…what makes a profession a profession is the sort of person who

practices it… professional ‘training’ should be regarded not as knowledge
inculcation but as the formation of a certain sort of person.”
(Anderson, 1988: 9)
However, since the 1960s, this functionalist perspective of the professions has been
challenged by the interactionist school of thought. Interactionists interpret the rise of
new professions as expressions of institutional self-interest. Rather than altruistic
groups of citizens serving society, professions, in the worst case, are portrayed as
greedy and cynical groups craving economic advantage and prestige through social
stratification as part of a ruthless Darwinian social struggle. The tools employed in
this struggle include the ‘professional project’ (Larson 1977) through which those
possessing specialist and high value knowledge are accused of perpetuating and
abusing a monopoly of that knowledge to accrue wealth and social standing.
While Larson’s cynical interpretation of the motivations behind the desire to

professionalise has since been tempered by other writers her underlying analysis that
professional projects are about exchanging one order of scarce resources, knowledge
and skills, for another, economic wealth and status, remains central to the
contemporary understanding of professions.
1.3.3 The Status of Corporate Security.

While authors in the US note the scarcity of academic literature and research on the
corporate security function (Nalla 2001), corporate security in America has in fact
been the subject of much more observation than that in the UK. Notable among the
US body of work is that by Nalla and Morash (2002). By surveying the corporate
10
security directors of Fortune 1000 companies in the US they examined the scope of
the corporate security remit and its relationship with other business functions within
the organisation. Interestingly, they found that corporate security was generally
positioned very high in the organizational hierarchy and that it was generally closely
integrated within businesses working frequently on a co-operative cross function
basis. The study further revealed that corporate executives generally worked very
closely with, and were very supportive of, the corporate security function.
By the authors own admission their findings of the healthy state of corporate security
in the US defied much of the conceived wisdom on the subject. To date no similar
study has been undertaken in the UK and the extent to which the findings can be
transferred to the UK corporate environment is unclear. However, the results do
emphasise the need to compliment the journalistic, opinion-pieces, which currently
dominate the UK literature with some more academic work based on hard data.
One of the very few studies which exist in relation to corporate security specifically in
the UK is the business security survey commissioned by the CBI (CBI, 2004). In the
course of a more general study into the attitudes of business and their ratings of
various threats the CBI study revealed a general consciousness of security at board
level. 80percent of the businesses questioned had discussed security at board level,
two in three had appointed a chief security officer (CSO) and one in five of these
CSO’s was a board member. This snapshot into the current status attached to security
within business appears, similarly to the work of Nalla & Mahesh, to contradict some
popular thinking on the subject and highlights an interesting area for further
investigation.
1.3.4 Summary of Literature Conclusions.

On examining the literature it is apparent that there is a great deal of scope for further
research into security management in the broadest sense and that corporate security
more specifically, particularly in the UK, has been the subject of a minimal amount of
research. Accordingly, gaps in the body of knowledge relating to the subject are
numerous. Some of the areas in need of most urgent attention appear to revolve
around the following aspects of the literature:
11
• While the CBI survey reveals that security presents concerns for UK
business, no work exists which assesses how useful the corporate security
function is considered as a means of addressing these concerns.
• While writers such as Wyllie (2000) argue that corporate security as a

function is potentially of equal importance to a business as other functions
such as human resources or finance, no work exists which examines the
function’s current standing in relation to these other disciplines.
• Despite the general appetite for further professionalisation in the field, no

examination of what lessons can be learned for security from the
professionalisation experiences of other functions has been carried out, and
no review of the extensive sociological body of literature on the subject has
ever been undertaken.
1.4 Research Questions and Aims.

1.4.1 Research Questions.
Based on the findings of the literature review the following research questions have
been generated to guide the research.
• What is the current status of corporate security as a business function within

the UK’s largest businesses?
• How have other business disciplines previously sought to improve their levels
of professionalism and status within business?
• Based on the opinions of security managers themselves and the experiences of
other business functions what steps can corporate security take as a discipline
to consolidate or improve its status?
1.4.2 Aims.
To date the opinion that corporate security management must undergo
professionalisation to maintain or improve its status within business, although widely
held and much rehearsed, has been based largely on the individual experiences of
concerned practitioners and the observations of interested third parties. The first aim
12
of this research will be to add depth, through academic study, to the notion that
corporate security as a function of business is considered poorly in relation to the
other business functions. This will involve an investigation into whether a lag
between corporate security and other business functions actually exists, why it exists,
and what the practical ramifications of such a gap are.
Through an analysis of the development of established professions a further aim of

this research is to determine how other disciplines have gone about the process of
raising their standards. It is intended to examine what the drivers for
professionalisation were, what devices have been used in the course of achieving it
and how problems were overcome along the way. Through such examination this
thesis will seek to derive lessons for the development of corporate security
management.
13
2. Research Design.
2.1 Research Strategy

2.1.1 The Deductive Approach.
The deductive research strategy begins with a problem or idea which needs to be
understood or explained. Rather than beginning with observations deductivists
produce a possible answer to the question or an explanation for a problem:
“The conjectured hypothesis are then criticized and tested. Some will be
quickly eliminated. Others might prove more successful. These must then
be subject to even more stringent criticism and testing. When a hypothesis
that has successfully withstood a wide range of rigorous tests is eventually
falsified, a new problem, hopefully far removed from the original solved
problem, will have emerged and require new hypothesis of its own.”
(Chalmers 1982: 45)
According to Chalmers this is a process which continues indefinitely and as such a

theory can never be said to be true. Rather, deductivists strive to prove that a current
theory is superior to those it has followed in that it survived tests which they could
not. Gray notes that the deductive approach lends itself much more easily to
quantitative types of research. Prior to a hypothesis being tested its constituent
concepts must be operationalised (made measurable) in such a way that they can be
observed. This facilitates confirmation if they have occurred. (Gray 1994)
“Through the creation of operational indicators, there is a tendency to

measure and collect data only on what can actually be observed; hence,
subjective and intangible evidence is usually ruled out.”
(Gray 1994: 6).
2.1.2 The inductive approach.

Through the inductive approach, plans are made for data collection, after which data
are analyzed to see if any patterns emerge which suggest relationships between the
variables. “From these observations it may be possible to construct generalizations,
relationships and even theories.” (Gray 1994: 8)
Induction has not been without its critics. Much of this criticism has centred on
positivists who take an inductive approach claiming that they can set aside all
14
prejudice, prior assumptions and notions of common sense. This positivist approach
raises the problem of when to stop observing?
“No finite amount of observational evidence (and this is all we ever have)
can finally establish the truth of a law which is held to apply to all times
and places, and whose instances are therefore potentially infinite in
number.”
(Keat & Urry 1975: 15)
Gray notes that in modern practice a pure inductive approach of the type criticized
above is rarely employed and that it is quite acceptable to pursue an inductive strategy
while acknowledging that the researchers own instincts will play a part in the work
“…the very fact that an issue has been selected for research implies
judgments about what is an important subject for research, and these
choices are dependant on values and concepts.”
(Gray 1994: 8)
According to this thinking the duty of the researcher is not remove all bias and
prejudice from the process but to accept that their own assumptions will inevitably
play a part and to take precautions to ensure that they do not unduly bias the research.
“To ensure a degree of reliability, the researcher often takes multiple cases
or instances through, for example, multiplying observations rather than
basing conclusions on just one case.”
(Gray 1994: 9)
Given the fact that that this will be an exploratory piece of work, that few theories
exist on which it would be appropriate to base a hypothesis and the limitations of
adopting a deductive approach in a qualitative study this research will progress with
an inductive strategy. While taking the precautions outlined by Gray above, it will set
about collecting data through interviews and case studies from which it is hoped it
will be possible to extract attitudes to professionalisation in corporate security and
approaches to professionalisation in other relevant disciplines.
15
2.2 Ontological and Epistemological Considerations: Two Conceptions of Social
Reality.
Ontology is the study of being, that is the nature of existence. While

ontology embodies understanding what is, epistemology tries to
understand what it means to know. Epistemology provides a philosophical
background for deciding what kinds of knowledge are legitimate and
adequate.
(Gray, 2004:16)
In 1989 Cohen and Manion wrote of the two competing views of the social sciences-
the established, traditional view and the more recently emerging radical view. (Cohen
and Manion 1989). The former view held that the social sciences were essentially the
same as the natural sciences and therefore should be concerned with discovering
universal laws determining human behaviour. The then radical and emerging view
shared the traditional desire to explain and describe human behaviour but doubted the
ability of traditional methods to accommodate the often irrational actions of people.
The differences of these competing views essentially stemmed from two different
conceptions of social reality. Burrell and Morgan (1988) approach these two
competing views by examining the implicit and explicit assumptions which underpin
them:
Burrill and Morgan identify two ontological assumptions posing the question is social
reality external to the individual- existing in a fashion which is objective and singular-
or is it the product of the individual consciousness, subjective and multiple?
The second set of assumptions they identify are of an epistemological kind and
concern knowledge. The two extreme epistemological positions variously contend
that knowledge is something that can be acquired on one hand, or is something that
must be personally experienced on the other. Cohen and Manion note that “How one
aligns oneself in this particular debate profoundly affects how one will go about
uncovering knowledge of social behaviour. (1989: 7) The view that knowledge is hard
and singular will require the researcher to take on the role of an observer remaining
separate from that which is being studied. Conversely, seeing knowledge as personal
and subjective will lead the researcher to take on some involvement with that being
studied which will render the traditional methodologies of natural science useless to
16
him. To subscribe to the former of these approaches is to be a positivist. A number of
schools of thought have emerged which entail the thinking in the latter approach but
as they have all emerged in response to positivism Cohen and Manion use the
umbrella term anti-positivist.
2.3 Theoretical Perspectives.

Positivism.
Various writers outline a number of theoretical perspectives open to the researcher
based on their philosophical inclinations. Of these positivism was first considered. For
the positivist, science is an attempt to gain predictive and explanatory knowledge of
the external world and statements only attain the rating of knowledge if they can be
put to the test of empirical experience.
Any attempt to go beyond this representation plunges science into the

unverifiable claims of metaphysics and religion, which are at best
unscientific, and at worst meaningless.
(Keat & Urry, 1975 pp4).
Various aspects of positivism have been subject to “devastating criticism” (Blaikie

1993: 101). Of these criticisms contradiction of the positivists claim that a single
objective reality can be perceived by human senses is particularly acute. Accepting
that a single, unique, physical world exists the process of observing it surely involves
conscious and sub-conscious interpretation. As expressed by Hanson “…there is more
to seeing than meets the eye.” (Hanson, 1958) Thus, positivism was rejected as a
possible theoretical approach.
Interpretivism.
Gray (1994) suggests that of the various reactions to positivism interpretivism has
been among the most influential. According to intrepretivist’s human experience
centres around interpretation of experiences rather than a physical, sensory
apprehension of them “…social reality is not some ‘thing’ that may be interpreted in
different ways; it is those interpretations.” (Blaikie 1993: 96) This assertion of pure
interpretivists that interpretation can account for everything and that nothing concrete
is somewhat unconvincing. While interpretive processes surely have a significant role
17
to play in understanding what is happening around us Outwaite (1987) argues that it
does not follow that they can account for all that exists or all that is known to exist.
Realism.
In seeking for a compromise between these two polar extremes the author was drawn
to realism. Realism begins from the position that the picture science paints of the
world is a true and accurate one. Thus, for the realist researcher objects of research
such as culture, the organization and corporate planning all exist and act quite
independently of the observer. From the realist standpoint knowledge is advanced
through the process of theory building in which discoveries add to what is already
known. However, although reality comprises entities, structures and events, realism
concedes that observable facts may merely be illusions. Equally, realism accepts that
there will be some phenomena which cannot be observed but which exist nonetheless
(Chia, 2002). The realist acceptance that what is observed de facto may not tell the
‘whole story’ alongside its acknowledgment that the ‘whole story’ may entail things
which cannot be observed fits which the worldview of the researcher and is deemed to
be highly appropriate to the research in hand and thus will be the theoretical
perspective from which the work will proceed.
2.4 Methodology.
The combination of different interpretations of the term methodology and the range of
different methodologies presented by a range of writers under the different
interpretations presents the researcher with a quite bewildering array of methodology
options. Gray lists the most commonly employed methodologies as experimental and
quasi experimental research; action Research; analytical Surveys; phenomenological
research and heuristic inquiry. Each of Gray’s outlines was examined in turn and all
apart from phenomenology and action research were quickly eliminated as potential
methodologies. Further examination of action research made clear that the researcher
would not have a sufficiently close relationship with the phenomena under study nor
adequate ability to implement change to legitimately adopt such an approach. Given
the researchers choice of topic, ontological assumptions and aims for the research a
phenomenological methodology as outlined by Gray and Denscombe was deemed the
only appropriate methodology.
18
“… a phenomenological approach has proved useful for researchers in
areas such as health, education and business who want to understanding
the thinking of patients, pupils and employees… phenomenology is
associated with humanistic research using qualitative methods-
approaches that place emphasis on the individuals view and experience.”
(Gray 1994: 8)
To the researchers mind this fitted entirely with the aims of the research. The
researcher, while holding a limited working knowledge of corporate security, does not
have the experience or qualifications to attempt to generate solutions to the problem.
Rather this research offers the opportunity to make use of the resources, time and
importantly the access to practitioners available to generate thick, textual accounts of
how they view the current state of the discipline and how they feel things can be
progressed. Denscombe’s summation of phenomenological research confirmed its
appropriateness for the researcher:
• Emphasizes inductive logic

• Seeks the opinions and subjective accounts and interpretations of
participants
• Relies on qualitative analysis of data
• Is not so much concerned with generalizations to larger populations,
but with contextual descriptive analysis.
(Denscombe 2003:)
2.4.1 Interviews.
Context.
This study was undertaken in an effort to add depth to the understanding of the
current state of corporate security as a discipline and to examine if further
professionalisation was required and if so how it should be pursued. As was
highlighted at the end of the literature review existing literature reveals certain
contradictions surrounding the security profession. Not least was the fact that while
security as a topic is prominent in the boardrooms of the country’s biggest businesses
those responsible for security within industry are, if numerous articles and opinion
pieces on the subject are to be believed, frustrated by business’s unwillingness to
19
recognise their contribution or to incorporate them in a fashion which would allow
them to contribute more fully.
A significant contributing factor to this apparent confusion appeared to be the way in

which data on the subject had been gathered. As mentioned the article and opinion
pieces which had appeared from practitioners were precisely that, opinion pieces or
journalistic in nature and as such had not involved any real data collection. On the
other hand the work commissioned by the CBI and carried out by MORI had been
quantitative in nature relying on tick box surveys. While these had produced some
interesting statistics- 80 percent of boardrooms have discussed security in the last
year- such statistics often raised as many new questions as they had answered. Was
this the first time they had discussed security? What did the discussion entail? Do they
envisage security being discussed again in the near future? While the existing
literature on the subject had its own merits it was clear that there was a need for a
qualitative study which, while remaining academic and rigorous in nature, would be
able to offer a richer more descriptive insight into corporate security.
The security managers and directors participating in the research have been divided
into four categories of Communications, Finance, Services and Retail based on the
sector in which they are employed. Ideas, opinions and quotes originating from the
participants of research interviewed will be attributed by the individual’s seniority and
sector eg. (Security Manager, Services). This system has the dual advantage of
offering some context for the quote while preserving the anonymity of contributors.
Interviews vs. Questionnaires.

The first research question concerning the current state of corporate security as a
discipline required the researcher to elicit the views of a number of corporate security
practitioners. This presented a choice between the use of questionnaires or face to face
interviews. After some thought the interview approach was selected on the grounds
that it would offer a number of advantages. While questionnaires would have allowed
the researcher to potentially get responses from a greater number of security managers
it was unclear what the quality of these responses would be.
20
Preliminary Interviews.
On this point the 6 preliminary interviews which were conducted between October
and December 2005 offered an important steer. The interviews were conducted on a
fairly unstructured basis with senior security managers who had a direct interest in the
project or who had been recommended as being authoritative on the subject. Given
the lack of previous experience on the subject the interviews offered some useful
indicators as to the key issues in corporate security and where I could access other
useful information. The security managers involved were, on the whole, obviously
very busy people being occasionally interrupted during our meetings and having to
leave promptly for their next meeting once ours had finished. I suspected that, had
they received a questionnaire requiring written answers from me, it may well have
received only cursory attention (if any at all) and would certainly not have given me
the opportunity to engage them more deeply on new issues or press them on
inconsistencies which may occur in their answers.
The importance of a good rapport in the interview process became very apparent in
these preliminary interviews. As the interviews wore on and the interviewer could
demonstrate a genuine interest in the work of the security managers they became
visibly more relaxed and invariably began to drift into small informal asides i.e. ‘if
your interested in that another good guy for you to speak to would be…’. The security
managers obviously appreciated the interest taken in their work and their views. The
effort to arrive at their workplace for a one to one meeting with them rather than
sending a more anonymous questionnaire by post or email was presumably a factor in
this. Keen not to lose any of this informal detail in the interviews proper, the decision
was made to proceed with semi-structured interviews. This begged the next question,
who should be interviewed?
In the early consultative phase of the research between October and December 2005 I
had had a significant amount of contact with members of the Risk and Security
Management Forum (RSMF) the lead sponsors of the research. The RSMF is a non-
partisan, non- profit making organisation established in 1990. Operating under
Chatham House rules the stated aim of the forum is to advance the effective
management of risk as it relates to all areas of security. Outside the original terms of
reference for the project, which they had played a key role in defining, RSMF
21
members at no time attempted to dictate how the research should be carried out but
were extremely generous in their offers of help in terms of access and resources. I
discussed the possibility of a number of dyadic interviews with security managers and
the board member or senior manager who they reported to. The rational for this
approach was that it would allow triangulation the security manager’s assessment of
where they stood in the business with a senior figure in the business who had a much
less security centric outlook.
Access.
Such an approach would have required access to board members of some of the UK’s
largest firms for perhaps an hour or more to conduct a meaningful interview.
Impressively and generously a number of RSMF members offered to arrange such
access. However, the RSMF is select group of approximately 60 senior security
figures which operates on a membership by invitation only basis. It is fair to say that
RSMF members are, by definition, among the most successful corporate security
figures in the country and it soon became clear that outside RSMF circles it would be
much more difficult to arrange such high level access. As a security manager of a
large food group frankly put it to me: ‘Our reporting structure means I report directly
to the CEO and to be honest I struggle to get 15 minutes with him once a month so
you can imagine what chance I have of getting you in there.’
The dyadic approach was abandoned and it was decide instead to set about
interviewing a larger sample of security managers from large organisations. While
this approach lacked the intra-organisational triangulation of dyadic interviews it was
decided that it was certainly valid to investigate where security managers themselves
felt the discipline stood as a base on which further research may choose to build.
As this was a qualitative study carried out by a single researcher, the number of
respondents who could be interviewed had to be limited to suit the time and resources
available. It was decided that a sample of between 25-30 security managers would be
appropriate. Once again the RSMF was extremely generous with its help and if all the
offers of help were accepted it could potentially have accounted for all the interviews.
While, with such a small sample, the results of this work could never claim to be fully
representative a key objective was to elicit as broad a range of opinions and
22
circumstances as possible. As such an offer of help was accepted from the regional
vice-president of ASIS International to put out an open letter on ASIS-net an internet
resource used by ASIS members (the letter was a slightly amended version of that
which appears in appendix A). With 33,000 members worldwide ASIS is the largest
international organisation in the field of security. ASIS consists of members from all
walks of the security industry and membership is not restricted by invitation and it
was deemed acceptable that the majority of interviews should be conducted with
respondents to this open letter.
Aware that of the estimated five to ten thousand security managers in the country
bodies such as ASIS and RSMF accounted for less than two thousand a process of
cold calling was also undertaken in an effort to reach managers who, for various
reasons, did not naturally gravitate towards membership organisations. A time
consuming and relatively unproductive process cold calling was conducted across all
the companies in the FTSE 100 and 250 whose security managers were not accounted
for in the previous categories (more will be said about cold calling and what it
revealed in chapter three).
The interviews took place over the period of approximately one month from early
February 2006 into the first week of March 2006. The interviews all took place at the
interviewee’s place of work and, while the greatest number took place in London, the
geographical spread took in Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Brighton, Bristol,
Reading, Newbury and Sandwich.
Before each interview the aim of the research and the specific aims of the interview
were relayed to the interviewee via a set script (appendix B).A digital recorder was
used with the permission of the security managers and under the proviso that that it
could be turned off at any time should they wish. One security manager asked for the
recorder to be switched off on two occasions while discussing topics he felt to be
sensitive. For the most part the managers interviewed appeared to become oblivious
to the recorder once the interview had begun. The interviews were conducted along
the lines of the question schedule in appendix C although some flexibility was
employed, for instance, if the interviewee sufficiently covered a question as part of an
early answer then the question was omitted. Equally, if one of the interviewees’
23
responses naturally led on to a question further in the schedule then the order was
changed appropriately. These interventions were undertaken mainly with the aim of
conducting a ‘conversation with a purpose’ as recommended by various authors.
(Burton 2000, Denscombe 2003).
The interviews generally lasted for a little over an hour although there was variation.
Some went on longer -the longest lasting for almost two hours- and one lasted for
only 25minutes. When asked at the end if they had any other comments on the topics
covered or the conduct of the interview a number commented that they had enjoyed
the experience:
“Yes it was very good, quite relaxing really.”
“It is nice to talk about the work.”
While a few seemed a little bemused that anybody would take an interest in the
subject:
“I’m glad to help. Although, I don’t see what bloody good it’ll do you.”
One security manager commented that he felt the process had been a little ‘stuffy’
“ …to be honest you’ll get a lot more out of me if we had both just put our
feet up on the desk and put the worlds to right over a cup of tea.”
While this comment was taken on board and future behaviour modified slightly
overall the response of those interviewed was positive and so the interview routine
remained largely unchanged throughout.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Interviews as a Research Technique.

The interviewing and analysis process is clearly quite fraught. The answers recorded
in the interview only provide a snapshot of the security manager’s opinions at a
particular time and clearly these views are liable to change and evolution. As Reiner
notes:
24
“The problem is that interviews (even in a longitudinal study) cannot trace
the process of social interaction in which ideas develop… all that can be
done is to reconstruct a plausible account of how present ideas and their
relationship to other ideas could have developed… Thus no account can
ever be considered final.”
(Reiner 1978: 17)
Even with this ‘brief snapshot’ there is ample opportunity for confusion. The answers
offered will be affected by the respondents own interpretation of the question and
those answers are further at the mercy of the researchers subjective translation of each
meaning (Cain 1973).
If, as a quantitative researcher must, a researcher rejects the positivist ontology they
acknowledge that their work will inevitably be affected by the fact that those involved
cannot assume a common understanding of what is being asked:
“Although we share one language and share in many ways one culture, we
cannot assume that we understand precisely what another person means
by a particular word.”
(Brown, 1982: 120)
Added to this problem of understanding is the problem that respondents may

deliberately withhold information about their true feelings (Jupp 1989: 149). When
being asked questions about the success of corporate security within their respective
firms’ security managers and directors were, to a degree, being asked how good a job
they themselves had done. It is hoped that the establishment of a good rapport early in
the interview will mitigate such issues however, while some managers were
remarkably frank about the problems they faced, it is difficult to judge to what degree
others may have neglected to mention problems and frustrations though feelings of
professional pride.
After some cancellations, always a risk given the nature of the security manager’s
work, the number of interviewees which will be included in the study was 26. Two
other interviews took place with managers who responded to the ASIS letter but
turned out to be fraud investigators and revenue protection specialists respectively.
While these interviews were interesting in their own right it was decided to exclude
them for reasons on continuity.
25
With such a small number of interviews generalizations about the profession as a
whole are dangerous and any percentages used in the study will relate only to the
small sample examined. The phenomenological approach which this study adopts
places much less emphasis on generalisability of results to larger populations than on
contextual description and analysis (Gray 1994: 28). As such, the key strength of the
interview phase of this research should be that it has facilitated the gathering of
qualitative material which was more flexible, rich and spontaneous than has been
acquired by previous more rigid forms of data collection.
2.4.2 Single-Case Study.

The second of the research questions detailed in chapter one articulated the desire that
this research should examine ‘how other occupations had set about the task of
professionalising and lifting the status of their work.’ It was decided to this end that a
single-case study would be employed. Yin (2003) notes that case studies are the
preferred strategy when ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions are being posed, when the
investigator has little control over events and when the focus is on a contemporary
phenomenon. Given that the research question met all of these stipulations the
decision that some sort of case study should be employed was a straight forward one.
Of the different types of case studies outlined by Yin it was decided to proceed with a
single-case study.
Yin (ibid) notes that there are several different rationales for using the single-case
study. He cites the third of these ‘representative or typical case’ rationale. Here the
single-case study is deemed appropriate when the objective of the work is to capture
the circumstances and conditions of an everyday or commonplace situation:
“The case study may represent a typical ‘project’ among many different
projects, a manufacturing firm believed to be typical of many other
manufacturing firms in the same industry, a typical urban neighbourhood,
or a representative school as examples.”
(Yin 2003: 41)
In such circumstances the lessons learned from the single case are assumed to be
informative about the experiences of the average person or institution. The single-case
examined in chapter five is that of the professionalisation efforts of the Human
26
Resource Management (HRM) and the role the occupation’s professional association,
the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), at the heart of these efforts.
As an occupation which has, in recent years, strived to lift the status of its work and
the rewards for its practitioners HRM is typical of any number of other occupations
and management activities which have embarked on so-called ‘professional projects’
(Larson 1977). As such, it was felt that HRM closely fitted Yin’s ‘representative or
typical’ single- case criteria and that a case study focused explicitly on its experience
of professionalisation, corroborated with examples from other occupations in later
chapters, would be a reasonable way to proceed.
2.5 Summary of Research Design.

Given the facts that that this will be an exploratory piece of work, that few theories
exist on which it would be appropriate to base a hypothesis and the limitations of
adopting a deductive approach in a qualitative study, this research will progress with
an inductive strategy. The researcher’s ontological and epistemological beliefs dictate
that the research will be grounded in a realist theoretical perspective. The
methodology will be phenomenological in nature using qualitative methods and
placing emphasis on individual’s views and experience. Semi-structured interviews
and a single-case study will be the tools employed in the research in keeping with the
phenomenological approach.
27
3. Corporate Security: its development and its modern condition.
3.1 Introduction.
This chapter is intended to first briefly chart the background of the corporate security
function before examining its modern condition and the status which its practitioners
are afforded within their organisations. Corporate security’s modern condition will be
analysed through as examination of related contemporary literature and by looking to
the experiences the security managers interviewed for this study. It is hoped that this
will reveal some current trends in terms of how corporate executives think about
security, where security is located within organisations and what status security
managers feel they are afforded relative to their management peers from other
functions of the business.
3.2 Corporate Security’s Historical Roots.

Dalton (2003) traces the roots of contemporary corporate security back to the role of
the night watchman prior to the 1960s. In this guise the job of security personnel
within businesses entailed little more than acting as a lookout with a primary role of
early warning in case of incidents such as fire. Throughout the 1960s and into the
latter half of the 20th century this limited early role began to expand and fire watches
began to take on more classical security duties including controlling access and egress
from properties, patrolling and maintaining perimeter fences and general guarding
duties. Dalton terms this the ‘Green Shack Era’ as activities were typically based out
of such shacks located by the main gate. (ibid)
While security management progressed at varying speeds within industries different

and between individual organisations a growing role for security departments within
the corporate world was apparent. For the most part it moved out of the so-called
green shacks and into offices embarking on what Dalton describes as the ‘Physical
Security Era’ (ibid). With the arrival of the physical security era corporate security
continued to perform duties such as security patrols but in addition took on
responsibilities for responding to medical emergencies, controlling traffic, monitoring
equipment, escorting employees and staffing front desks. (ibid)
28
Kovacich and Halibozek argue that the growth of responsibilities and emphasis on
security in the corporate sense was in part driven by geo-political factors, not least the
Cold War. Personal security clearances were an example of the spread of security
measures into the corporate world. Industrial work in sensitive areas or on classified
projects frequently demanded large but trustworthy workforces. To meet these
demands businesses adopted personnel security clearance processes. This
investigative capability often fell to corporate security departments and enhanced their
sophistication:
“As cold war weapons systems and other governmental needs became
more sophisticated, so did the required levels of asset protection. For
information considered most critical to the national defence, more
stringent levels of control were created. Security controls were specified
in contracts awarded to the numerous corporations that had been awarded
government contracts.”
(Kovacich & Halibozek 2003:51).
Post & Kingsbury’s description of corporate or, as they termed it, proprietary security
is perhaps typical of attitudes towards the discipline through the physical security era:
“While the majority of employees are honest and try to do a good job,
some cheat or steal and allow others to do the same. Consequently,
protection of assets has become an important fact of everyday life. As a
result there are security officers, managers, and directors of security for a
large portion of major corporations.”
(Post & Kingsbury 1991:56)
The authors note that the limited nature of the security manager’s role meant that they
often moved to non-security positions or to larger organisations for greater challenges
(Post & Kingsbury 1991). This picture of a security function with fairly limited
responsibilities is reinforced by Hearnden whose 1989 survey of security managers in
the UK found that administration and housekeeping generally ranked highly in the list
of pressures on the security manager’s time (Hearnden 1989). Post & Kingsbury’s
1991 rationale for the corporate security department was essentially a defensive or
protective one whereby companies require security departments and security
managers because some employees “cheat or steal and allow others to do the same”
(Post & Kingsbury 1991:33) They argued that organisations needed the capacity to
protect themselves from such activity or catch those responsible thus deterring others.
29
This entirly defensive approach to corporate security could be considered the
trademark of the physical security era and to an extent it remains the ethos behind
security departments in many large businesses today.
One of the effects of globalization has been a proliferation in the number of threats
which face large organisations with exposure to operational risks all over the world.
This in turn has made the job of protecting businesses much more complicated and
means the number of skills required to do so effectively are more numerous. Despite
these changes in the size and complexity of the security mangers work in most
contemporary businesses the rationale behind it, while it may now be couched in
slightly more sophisticated terms, remains the defensive, protective one observed by
Kingsbury & Post. When asked why security existed in their organisations the
majority of security managers interviewed for this study responded with similarly
defensive statements “…our main function is to protect company assets, our people,
our property, our brand and our customers.” (Security Director, Retail)
3.3 Contemporary Drivers for Corporate Security.

The fact that this defensive mindset has continued to dominate among corporate
security managers does not mean that the function has stood still. Since the study of
corporate security conducted by Hearnden (1989) the most successful security
managers have made their departments integral parts of their respective businesses
attracting a wider more challenging range of roles entailing greater responsibility and
resulting in improved visibility with their peers and the senior management tiers of
the business. The interviews with our security managers revealed that their work
involved a whole raft of tasks which it would previously have been impossible to
imagine being delegated to the security manager depicted by Post & Kingsbury.
Contemporary roles include: the protection of intellectual property; auditing
responsibilities; responsibility for ethical policies; export control compliance;
oversight of the divestiture of businesses; and due diligence. Within the businesses
where security has taken on these expanded roles there has often been a parallel
process whereby the more mundane aspects of the work traditionally associated with
security, the so-called ‘guards and gates’ work, have become the responsibility of
other functions such as facilities or health and safety.
30
In addition to the proliferation of threats to organisations associated with dependence
on the internet and doing business in global markets, the success of security
departments, where it has occurred, has also been driven by new, contemporary geo-
political factors. The emergence of global terrorism; the propensity of terrorists to
attack civilian targets and symbols of western influence; and the realisation that
damage to economic infrastructure can potentially be just as devastating as damage to
physical infrastructure has made large commercial organisations legitimate and
attractive targets in the eyes of terrorists. In the UK specifically, the threat to security
has been heightened further by the rise in direct action and the threat that groups such
as animal rights extremists now pose to organisations and employees with even the
most tenuous links to the targeted industries or activities.
The growth of regulatory influences on the conduct of organisations has also worked
to the advantage of some security departments in their quest for responsibility,
authority and visibility within their organisations. Briggs & Edwards (2006) have
observed the benefits which some security managers and directors have felt as a result
of the growing awareness of the need for effective corporate governance and the
plethora of associated regulation “The past decade has witnessed a flurry of activity
which is bringing corporate security to the heart of corporate decision making…”
(Briggs & Edwards 2006: 32).
Partly driven by these factors, security considerations feature to an unprecedented

extent in the decision making of contemporary business leaders. A poll conducted by
MORI, on behalf of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), in 2004 revealed that
97 percent of the business leaders questioned felt that security was ‘of concern’ to
them with just over half reporting that it was ‘of great concern’ (CBI 2004).
80 percent had discussed security at board level, 82 percent were spending more on
security than they had five years previously and 57 percent expected that they would
be spending yet more in five years time (ibid).
3.4 Limits to the Success of Corporate Security.

While the security function has apparently gone from strength to strength where it has
been most successfully applied, the outlook for the discipline as a whole appears to be
31
more mixed. The first qualification to be placed on all the apparently positive
indicators above is that, despite the proliferation of threats to business and global
instability which has proven conducive to the development of corporate security in
some organisations, a single dedicated security function with specialist security
managers appears to remain the exception rather than the norm among the UK’s
largest businesses.
While no dedicated work has been done on the topic private estimates by
commentators in the field suggest that certainly less than 50 percent of businesses in
the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 employ a dedicated security function with a specialist
security management team. Some (admittedly not entirely scientific) support for these
estimates comes from the experience of data gathering for this research. Of the 200
organisations from the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 contacted less than 30 percent could
guide the researcher to a dedicated security department or security manager within the
business. In most cases the organisations concerned directed the security enquiries to
a manager in the facilities or estates department who dealt with security as part of a
broader remit. While there is the possibility that other factors- such as ignorance of
the existence of the department or manager- may account for some of the
organisations, it is reasonable to assume that this experience is indicative of the reality
in many of the UK’s largest businesses. Despite apparently thinking a great deal about
security and envisaging increased spending on security, the majority of businesses in
the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 do not see the need for specialist, full-time security
management within their organisations.
Added to the fact that security is relatively rarely employed as a business function it
must be further noted that, where businesses have opted for specialist security
management, it has not always proven a success. The point has already been made
that there has been a chronic lack of research on the topic of security management
generally and into corporate security management in particular. Important works such
as that by Briggs and Edwards (2006) are beginning to fill the void however, thus far,
work which is appearing on the topic focuses almost exclusively on cutting edge of
the discipline, the sexy end of the occupation. Briggs’ & Edward’s resilience agenda
for the future of security rests upon the argument that “The business of security has
shifted from protecting companies from risks, to being the new source of competitive
32
advantage” (Briggs & Edwards 2006). While this may be the case in the UK’s leading
security departments, the situation which many more security departments find
themselves in is much better characterised by the question “should security
management continue to remain as a separate discipline?” which was the title of a
debate run by Security Management Today (SMT) magazine (SMT, 2004). In many
regards the debate summed up the mixed fortunes which corporate security as a
discipline is experiencing. Those in favour of the motion noted that, despite the
apparently conducive conditions, in fact corporate security managers were being
squeezed out of many organisations due to budgetary pressures:
“Inevitably, what has happened is that some key services have been
contracted out to facilities management service providers. Ultimately,
we’ve seen the security manager begin to lose some status.”
(SMT, 2004)
Notions of divergent fortunes among those practising security management were

reinforced during the interviews with our security managers. In terms of their
reporting lines, their contribution to planning and decision making, the board’s
attitude toward the function and the status they felt they were afforded in relation to
peers from other business functions it was clear that security mangers could be
divided into categories of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have- nots’.
3.5 Positioning of Security within the Organisation.

The vertical positioning of security managers within their organisations was a
reoccurring theme of the interviews. Whether they already held a senior position
within the organisation or aspired to hold such a position, the managers generally felt
that their place within the hierarchy of their business and their reporting lines both
contributed to, and were reflective of, their status within their respective businesses.
“I firmly believe that the head of security in any major corporate should
only be reporting to one person and that’s the top guy. You have to have a
senior position; you have to have parity with other people…”
(Security Director, Retail)

.
33
None of our security managers occupied positions on the board but approximately
half of the managers occupied a position one step from main board level. These
managers reported directly to a member of the board who in turn made
representations to the board on behalf of the security department. A small number of
these managers reported directly to their organisations CEO on a regular basis.
Slightly more common was a dotted line to the CEO which could be used in extremis.
These security managers were, on the whole, very satisfied with their positioning and
in fact in one case it was the seniority of the security function which had attracted the
manager across from another function:
“The first thing that struck me about it was that it was very much at the
centre of the organisation, and, at a very high level within the
organisation… The second thing that attracted me was the access and
exposure. At my stage of a career its quite astonishing really the access
that I get.”
(Security Director, Communications)
The remainder of the security managers operated at less proximity to the board with
the majority operating two steps away. Some were content with this positioning but
more common was a sense of frustration that security’s message was being lost or
drowned out as it made its way from their department to board level:
“We need to have a voice on the top table. The furthest it should be [from
the board] is one position. I have reported to guys who, by their own
admission, know nothing about security. How could they advocate for me
on the board? You speak to the director of audit, they speak to the director
of legal and the director of legal is speaking to the board. My message has
to compete with their own agendas and, by the time it gets there, it’s been
watered down.”
(Security Manager, Services)
“No, we need to sit more prominently. We should be sitting along side the
other corporate functions like HR.”
(Security Manager, Retail)
Security managers have been accused by some commentators of being too concerned
about their relationships with CEOs and board members (Briggs & Edwards 2006).
Our security managers clearly felt that these factors had a great bearing upon their
status within their organisations. Their reporting lines were important not only
because they were a means of sending the security message up through the
34
organisation but also because of the authority they conferred, or did not confer, upon
the security manager:
“If I’m about to deal with somebody new in the business I’ll go straight to
the [organisational] charts and look at who they are reporting to. I
guarantee that they are doing the same thing with me… it’s a good
indication of how senior they are and obviously that’s going to affect the
way you deal with them.”
The security managers generally wanted to avoid the classical model of security
where it was effectively something that was done to the other members of the
organisation. However, even pursuing a model of security in which it had the buy-in
and ownership of an organisations employees the real politic of business life meant
that the time and assistance which would be afforded to our security managers by
other senior managers, and the level of compliance which the rest of the organisation
would maintain with their directives, ultimately depended, at least in part, on the
authority which the security manager wielded.
The security managers reporting line was an important indicator of this authority.
Those who had authority and status within the business were wary of the
consequences should their reporting lines ever change:
“For me, if something happened and I no longer reported to this director

here then yes I would quickly lose respect. Everybody looks to who you
work for. When you say ‘yes, I report to the CEO’ then very few people
are ever going turn around and disagree with what you are saying. Here I
am treated as a peer because of the reporting that I have.”
While those who did not enjoy such proximity to the board or such senior reporting
lines speculated about the improvements a change in their circumstances could bring:
“I not satisfied at present. I think we should be reporting to a nominated

member of the board. Probably the Finance Director. Why? Well, firstly,
he controls the purse strings. But, more importantly, it would empower
the department and give us the status we need within the organisation.”
35
3.6 Attitude of the Board.
Upstream influences play an important part in ensuring success or otherwise of the
security function within an organisation. Most obviously, the board represents the
decision making authority within their respective organisations and as a result it is
most often at board level where the roles and responsibilities of the security function
will be defined and where the resources to fulfil those roles will be allocated. Less
obviously the influence and patronage of the board are crucial to the security
department’s ability to align its strategies to that of the business as a whole which in
turn is a measure of the worth of the security function (Hooten 2005). Hooten notes
that without the encouragement of board level figures within the business security
managers will not be able to enter the strategic planning cycle at a sufficiently
influential moment and thus the interests and input of the security department will be
under-represented in the plans of the business (ibid).
Accordingly the status of security managers and the security function within the
business is impacted significantly by the attitude of the board towards the discipline.
Without board level interest and activity the security department will inevitably lose
its power, authority and status within the organisation to other better represented
departments (ibid).
Significantly differing impressions of their board’s attitude to the security function

could be found among the security managers interviewed. In keeping with the
findings of CBI research on the subject none of our security managers reported that
the board’s interest in security had declined in recent years. Whether they felt the
attitude of the board had not changed, had changed temporarily or that the board had
demonstrated a sustained change of heart almost all of the security managers used the
events of 9/11 or the July London bombings as a frame of reference for examining the
attitude of the board to corporate security in recent years.
Among a small number of the security managers the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the
security upheaval which followed appeared to make minimal impact on the running of
security within their organisation or the attitude of their board toward security. This
appeared to be the case in organisations which had already countenanced attacks of
that nature and had the appropriate resilience provisions already in place. The few
36
cases where the impact of 9/11 had made minimal impact were also characterised by
an excellent pre-existing relationship between the security manager and the senior
management of the business. According to the security managers, this relationship
was underpinned by a belief in the necessity of the corporate security function on the
part of senior leaders in the business, and their faith in the competence of the security
management team:
“I don’t think that 9/11 or anything like that had a major impact on us
because frankly all the things you would do in response we were doing
anyway. A lot of what is said about incidents like that and their effect of
security is rubbish. People say ‘we’ve changed a lot since 9/11’. Well,
really, they should have been doing those things in the first place.”
For a number of the security managers the terrorist attacks notably increased the
interest which board took in their work and the resources which were allocated to the
department. A number of the security departments from which the managers in the
study came had been reorganised or even created from scratch in the wake of the
events of 9/11. Board members realised with alarm that the responsibility for security
had been spread in a disjointed fashion around their organisations lacking any
specialised management, any means of co-ordinating activity and without anybody to
hold ultimately accountable for security lapses.
It was apparent that some of the security managers interviewed have used the
increased currency which the aftermath of 9/11 gave their department as a base upon
which they have built security departments undertaking broad ranges of activites and
attracting significant responsibility. These managers, having appeared on the radar of
the board, were keen to maintain an improved level of visibility by drawing attention
to range of duties a security department can conceivably perform and the value it can
add to a business:
“Yes I’ve noticed a real change. We have a much fuller dialogue with the
board now. When we got their attention we were keen to impress upon
them the things we could do, that we are not just here for when things go
bang. If ever an event like that could be described as helpful, then it was.”
(Security Director, Services)
37
However, by the admission of some of the security mangers themselves and in the
experience of others who warned against it, in a number of firms the board’s sustained
interest in security was driven dominantly by concerns about an imminent repeat of
the events of 9/11 or the London bombings:
“Things like the 7th July bombings mean there is an obvious need for us.
They want information on how to respond to things like that… In terms of
our profile there has been a big change and when we need to get
something done we can get it done much more easily now.”
(Security Manager, Communications)
The point was made by more than one manager that security departments predicated
largely on the threat from extremely low probability/ high impact incidents, such as
terrorist attacks, were unsustainable in the long term. Security managers who derived
the rationale for there department’s existence from their board’s concerns about such
low probability/ high impact incidents without demonstrating a real day-today
contribution were unlikely to ensure the long term success of the security function
within their businesses:
“The risk we all run is crying wolf too often… they think by keeping
everybody wired they will get what they want… I know of one security
advisor who based his strategy on pedalling fear. ‘Armageddon is about to
happen!’ but what people don’t realise is that your senior directors and
chairman they mix in some very interesting circles as well. They are
talking to government ministers and the like and the CEO realised it was
all just totally over the top. That guy was soon a casualty.”
While the attitudes of some boards toward corporate security have undergone little
change and others have demonstrated a sustained interest in the topic a number of
security managers also reported a ‘yoyo’ dynamic in their board’s attitude to
corporate security. Generally in these cases the interest the board took in the work of
the security department was, under normal circumstances, fairly minimal. The
managers concerned felt that their organisations were not convinced of the case for a
security department and that it was considered a necessary evil “Security is always the
one that can be run off the side of a desk… because it is perceived as a cost centre
they say ‘lets cut it’” (Security Manager, Communications).
38
However, in times of acute crisis or in response to a particular threat security
managers found themselves thrown dramatically to the fore and in the words of one
security manager “…after not getting a sniff of the board since I had joined the
company all of a sudden I had the most senior people in the business on the phone to
me every hour.”(Security Manager, Communications). Inevitably, the managers who
reported this ‘yoyo’ phenomenon felt that as a crisis was resolved or a particular
threat passed their status within the business would one again decline and they would
return to the routine struggle to get board level buy-in and resources for the function:
“It’s a bit like a yoyo… after 9/11 I got a phone call and all of a sudden
security was on the agenda. We got a number of things done which had
not previously been possible due to resources. But, I would say five or six
months later they lost interest, until July last year and the London
bombings when they were on the phone again.”
(Security Manager, Finance)
The interviews with the managers revealed that the events of 9/11 and to a lesser
extent the July bombings in London served as key markers which many of the
security managers judged the development of their departments against. However, the
terrorist attacks and their aftermath, while transforming the organisation and
management of security permanently in some firms, did not constitute a sea change or
coming of age for the discipline of corporate security management in its broadest
sense.
Among our security managers, in the few instances where security was already a
closely integrated function and the relationship with the board already intimate, the
impact of 9/11 on security management was minimal. A number of security managers
have felt long term benefits for their departments. Some have achieved this through
using the increased currency of the department post 9/11 as a springboard from which
they have established a wide range of activities which contribute to their respective
companies on a day to day basis. Others, however, have sought effectively to milk the
events of 9/11 and continue to justify the existence of their department on the looming
threat of a repeat of such an incident. This practice is unsustainable and jeopardises
the credibility of security management as a discipline in the eyes of other security
managers interviewed.
39
Finally, a number of the security managers interviewed whose departments previously
existed well away from the mainstream activity of their businesses have simply been
further frustrated by the ‘yoyo’ attitudes of their boards. They find themselves
temporarily given a status and allocated a level of resource which they would prefer to
enjoy permanently only to find that the urgency and attentiveness of the board quickly
subsides as the memory of the crisis fades and the security function has ultimately
gained nothing.
3.7 The Status of our Security Managers, and that of their Peers.
When asked about the status they held within the business relative to the status given
to managers from other functions significantly different experiences could again be
found among the security managers. A select number of the managers were confident
of the fact that they were considered on a complete par with the managers operating at
their level from other areas of the business. Elsewhere, the security managers felt that
their department lagged behind the others in the business in terms of the perceived
importance of their contribution to the business, their ability to attract resources to the
department, to exert authority and influence and to get the buy-in of senior business
managers.
The managers who felt that they had achieved a state of complete parity with their
peers in other areas of the business cited management grading, leadership of cross-
functional committees, general management duties outside the security function and
their contribution to high level planning processes as examples of the value which
was attached to their role within their respective organisations. However, all of the
managers who placed themselves in this category noted that this was not a status they
had inherited. Most had been responsible for building up their security departments
and for some this had been a process that had taken over a decade. For the security
managers who had arrived in existing security departments they had often found
departments which existed away from the mainstream of the business, undertaking
much less ambitious tasks than was now the case and enjoying a fairly lowly status
among the management functions of the business:
“I don’t think adding to your head count or your budget is necessarily a

sign of a good security manager but we certainly did some of that because
40
we were under resourced for what we wanted to do. More importantly was
raising the profile and the background noise of what security did. It was
almost a secret department before I came to it - for no good reason.”
When discussing the contributing factors to their success in achieving parity with their
peers in other areas of the business these managers without exception cited the
building up of personal credibility as one of the most important facets of being a
successful corporate security manager.
3.7.1 Company Specific Crises and Credibility.

What emerged from the responses of the managers who were most confident of their
position was that company specific incidents which they had dealt with in the course
of their work had in fact provided them with much more of an opportunity to
demonstrate the worth of the security function and establish their credibility with the
board than the more generic threat of terrorism had.
In response to the terrorist threat the managers could do little more than reassure the
board that they had the correct procedures and continuity plans in place. However, in
response to company specific incidents such as fraud committed against the company
or malicious activity against employees by animal rights extremists there appeared to
be much more scope for the security managers to demonstrate dynamism and the use
of initiative. It was much more likely that their activities in relation to company
specific incidents would result in obviously tangible benefits for the organisation be it
the recovery of stolen assets or an end to nuisance behaviour.
“I’ve been fortunate in one sense that we’ve had some major dramas take
place across Europe so the senior management know me. It’s not the ideal
way to get your work recognised within the company but in our case it has
certainly worked.”
(Security Director, Finance)
“I can walk into the offices of any of the board members and have as
much time as I think I need. I think that is because of some of the
incidents we’ve dealt with, corporate incidents. They are aware of the
need for good security particularly when it costs the business money or
people’s lives are put at risk.”
The lack of recognised qualifications in corporate security will be examined later.

However, given this lack and that the majority of the managers had come from the
41
peacekeeping backgrounds- unfamiliar to most board members- some security
managers felt that upon their arrival their board members had little idea of what
security managers were actually capable of or what their experience equipped them to
do. While it is no doubt important for managers of all functions to demonstrate their
competence once in post, it appears that their unfamiliar background and the absence
of recognised qualifications place an extra onus on security managers to demonstrate
that they are competent and that they can add value to the business before they can
establish a close working relationship with those above them in an organisations
hierarchy.
“That point was made to me by a friend doing security in the banking

world. He said ‘what you need is to have a couple of major investigations
and you’ll find that if you have handled them properly then that’ll make
your credibility.”
3.8 The Challenge of Achieving Parity.

In the case of the security managers who were most senior and had greatest parity
within their organisations this was by consensus a major contributing factor in their
success. Crucially, while they felt that personal credibility was an important factor for
a manager hoping to achieve a senior status from any area of the business, there was a
feeling that as security managers they had to work longer and harder than their
equivalents from other areas of the business to achieve a similar status:
“I’ve been around this company for 13 years. Everybody knows I’ve been
here for 13 years they know I talk to the chief exec. Everybody gives me
time. However, I had to work to get to that position… I have as much
access as I want but I have got it through longevity and kicking on doors
and I have had to work harder than others of a similar level in different
functions.”
The interviews revealed that among the security managers there was the perception
that being from one of the more established functions of the business appeared to
immediately infer upon an individual a natural level of authority or credibility which
in turn contributed to their standing within the business:
42
“…the head of Audit can open doors because he is a professional
accountant or the head of legal can open doors because he’s a legal
professional. Even the head HR guy can open those relevant doors.”
When this security manager arrived in post he did not feel that any doors naturally
opened for him and as such the climb to achieving senior status was a much more
difficult one for him than for his peers from the audit, legal and HR functions of the
business. Arguably, this notion is reinforced by the fact that in the majority of the
organisations from which the security managers came security management, as a
discipline, and the security managers as individuals, according to their own
perception, were regarded as having a less important status than many of their peers
from other functions:
“Much lesser status, that goes without saying.”

“Second class citizens. I don’t think security professionals are seen as

business partners. There are exceptions, but that is the general rule…”
“Probably not regarded as highly. In this company my title gives the

impression of a senior role but in reality I can’t put myself up against, for
instance, the head of HR here.”
These security managers felt that they did not have the influence or authority that
managers from the other areas of the business held. According to the managers who
felt that they did not have equal status within the business their lesser status
manifested itself in a number of ways. Financially some of the managers reported a
sense that their department was the one which the business leaders most loathed to
allocate resources or funding:
“Whenever there is a round of budget cuts you can guarantee we’ll be hit.
That’s partly because we come under the finance director and dentist’s
kids always have the worst teeth, but it also reflects the ambivalence of
some senior people in this business towards the work of security.”
43
In addition, some of the managers felt that their lack of status was reflected in the
limited formal powers they were given and their inability to enforce decisions or exert
authority in areas of activity which were rightly their concern:
“The problem I face is that security plans are created for a particular
project and they are not then used. A project manager will instead opt to
do things at the lowest possible cost, which he has the power to do.”
The security managers who described holding an inferior status in the business
attributed their position to a number of factors. It was suggested repeatedly that the
image of ‘security’ was a key problem and that security managers struggled with a
perception among their peers and in the higher echelons of their organisations that
security still existed in something akin to Dalton’s ‘green-shack era’ described above.
“Why? It’s historical- security is seen as guns, guards and gates. The face of security
is the guards and all the baggage that goes along with it.”(Security Manager, Finance).
A number of managers subscribed to this idea that their problem was essentially one
of perception and was a hangover from days gone by.
However, some of the managers were equally clear that they felt the problems their
function faced were the result of entirely rational doubts grounded in problematic
aspects of modern security management. Foremost among these was the question of
how security could demonstrate its worth to the business. This encompassed security
demonstrating its worth in terms of its effect on the bottom line but also its worth as a
management function. One manager commented that, while he felt that as an
individual he had never witnessed anything to make him think he did not have the
respect of his management peers, he was unsure how aware they were of his
contribution to the business:
“I think that I am well respected within the business. But that’s maybe not
enough. It’s difficult to quantify our role here. It’s difficult for anyone to
say ‘they are good because this is what they know and this is what they
do.’”
44
Pressing more deeply into the question of what security management as a discipline
brings to the management capabilities of an organisation the observation was made by
another manager that the problem he and his peers in the security function faced was
that they could not readily show what their area of expertise consisted of or what
distinct contribution they were making to their organisation:
“I think it’s because we have not reached the right level of maturity. There
is no core central knowledge or best practice- it just doesn’t exist. Because
of that security people tend to invent things and respond pragmatically
and to some extent you could do that without ever having an
understanding of risk… perhaps people in other parts of the business must
look at me and wonder ‘what is he doing that I couldn’t do?’ Under those
circumstances how can you hope to be recognised for making a unique,
valuable contribution?”
3.9 Summary of Conclusions.

One might expect that the many drivers for corporate security described in this
chapter would be creating a business environment extremely conducive to the rise of
corporate security as a management activity. However, this brief study of the modern
condition of corporate security management indicates that the discipline’s
development appears to be taking place in a somewhat disjointed and uneven fashion.
The insights of our security managers suggest that experience of the typical corporate
security manager lies somewhere between two quite different extremes.
At the most positive pole are the security managers who have successfully persuaded
their parent organisation of the importance of corporate security and their competence
to undertake tasks far beyond the mundane guards and gates work which has been
historically associated with the role. While these individuals have apparently had to
work longer and harder than their peers from outside security management for their
rewards, those rewards have come in the form of senior positions within their
organisations, excellent reporting lines and parity of status with the other management
functions. These are the managers who are leading the ambitious new agendas for
corporate security, but in terms of the occupation as a whole they are also in the
minority.
45
Much more numerous are the security managers whose experience has been less
positive. The most frustrated among these security managers do not perceive any
conviction in the senior ranks of their organisation about the worth of their function
nor have they managed to take ownership the more interesting and sophisticated areas
of work which could conceivably come under the remit of their departments. These
managers suffer from unsatisfactory reporting lines resulting in an ongoing struggle
for resources, inability to get adequate access to planning processes and an inferior
status to their peers.
Both the security managers who have been very successful, and those who have not,
are united around the fact that being in the occupation does not automatically ‘open
the doors’ that being from the other more established business occupations does.
Clearly, with dedication and perseverance the most able security managers have been
able to surmount these barriers to success to achieve parity. One obvious way
forward for the discipline is to try and distil and spread the practices which have
enabled them to do so. However, more fundamentally, the discipline must try to
crystallise the barriers to success and remove them.
46
4. The Background of a Security Manager: the value of a security
background.
4.1 Introduction.
Broadly speaking the careers of security mangers play out differently from that of
individuals from other management functions and business professions. A much
observed feature of security management is that its practitioners are frequently
engaged in their second career having previously amassed security experience in the
police or military, the so-called ‘peace keeping’ professions. This transition from the
public sector to often very senior posts in the commercial world means that security
managers face some fairly unique challenges in terms of their professional
development. This chapter is intended to examine why industry appears to prefer
candidates with police and military backgrounds for their corporate security
departments, what challenges this raises for security management as an occupation,
whether the trend is set to continue and if so, what particular steps corporate
security’s professional project will have to take to accommodate it.
4.2 The ‘Peacekeepers’.

All the previous analysis of the backgrounds of security managers both in the UK and
the US indicate that the majority of security managers have come from what
Cavanagh and Whiting (2003) term ‘the peacekeeping professions’, either the police
or the military. In their study of security managers and directors in the US they found
that 47.2 percent of those questioned had come from a prior career in the police force
while 32.7 percent had previously been in the military. Hearden’s (1989) quantitative
study of UK security managers revealed that individuals formerly of the peacekeeping
professions similarly dominated security management in the UK with 42.5 percent
having previously been employed by the Police, 31 percent with the army and a
further 12.5 percent having been employed with both.
At the beginning of each interview each of the security managers was asked a little
about there career history. The vast majority of managers who took part in the
interviews for this research were formerly of the peacekeeping professions and there
were marginally more ex- servicemen and women than ex-police officers. Clearly
there is a historical pattern which continues today of individuals leaving the services
or police force and finding themselves in corporate security positions. While most
47
commentators have made reference to this phenomena (Barefoot and Maxwell, 1987;
Wyllie 1999; Manunta, 2000) little attempt has been made to explain it. In an effort to
add some depth of understanding our security managers were asked what it was that
had attracted them to the discipline?
There was a common feeling amongst our managers that the move into the general
field of private security was a natural progression from their previous peacekeeping
posts. A few former police and servicemen expressed a specific, predetermined desire
to work in corporate security. These were, on the whole, individuals who felt they had
skills which particularly qualified them for work in the corporate setting:
‘Head of special branch had given me experience with dealing with senior
people and dealing with outside agencies… For some time before [ I retired]
by looking at job advertisements and reading the literature it became apparent
to me that security was an issue within companies and I saw a niche there.’
‘Initially it was very much an information assurance role. I had transferable

skills from the military which were in demand… rare combination of
specialist IT knowledge and the ability to talk the language of physical
security.’
In addition to the managers who had targeted corporate security there was a handful
who had been headhunted either during service or upon retirement from their previous
career. These were mainly senior ranking officers from the police or military who
moved directly into security director positions which required the strategic thinking
and leadership skills they had acumulated in their previous roles.
For most of the interviewees it appeared that upon leaving their peacekeeping career
they were unwilling to begin learning entirly new skill sets and felt that their existing
skill sets were most marketable within the private security sector:
‘It was somewhere to use the skills gained in the police service. You know,
investigations and thinking about security.’
48
“I wasn’t attracted so much as moved into it almost by default. After 21
years in the X security branch you are not going to change career when
you leave, in my case aged 44.”
While they felt that the private security sector held the most possibility of well
rewarded employment for them there was a sense from many that their arrival in
corporate security positions specifically as opposed to any number of other roles in
the domain of private security owed as much to circumstance and chance as to a
particular desire to undertake that role. Accordingly, a number of the managers
interviewed had been involved in at least one other role in the private security arena
since leaving their former role.
When pressed on why they had left their former career most of the managers said they
had wanted a new challenge or felt they had achieved all they could in there previous
role. Some cited improved pay or the attraction of more comfortable working
conditions:
‘Frankly I liked the thought of coming to the city and being paid well and
the thought of a completely new environment- it was time to get out of
defence.’
Interestingly, among former police officers there was repeated expression of

sentiments along the lines of “I had become very tired of the police. The force has
changed a lot and to tell you the truth it’s not really fun anymore.”(Security Manager,
Services).
4.3 The Value of a Security Background.

As noted above the trend of former government security personnel, be they police or
military, moving from the services into corporate security has been the subject of
much discussion and debate in corporate security literature and forums. So much
discussion in fact, that it has clearly frustrated some in the field ‘the profession does
not have time to argue, yet again, the question of whether ex-service officers or ex-
police officers make better security managers…’ Despite this frustration in some
quarters, the question of who security managers are and what affect this has on the
49
occupation goes, in many ways, to the heart of the professionalism question and was
an reoccurring theme in the interviews.
The background of corporate security managers, namely the predominance of former

police and military professionals, has been singled out by a number of authors as
having a significant bearing on the way the occupation is regarded. Manunta (2000)
suggests that security managers’ backgrounds have a practical effect on there ability
to perform the management aspects of a modern business function:
“…most security managers are retired servicemen or policemen with only

a superficial understanding of management concepts and techniques,
furthermore referred to non-business, institutional organisations. As a
result those security managers who try to blend in with the new
environment tend to develop a schizophrenic attitude: they speak as a
manger but they think as a serviceman, policeman ect.”
(ibid: 8)
In terms of our security managers’ own attitudes to the merits of prior military or
policing experience they fell broadly into 3 categories:
• Those who were enthusiastic about the worth of such experience;

• those who were more circumspect about the worth of a peacekeeping
background;
• and those who very much doubted its worth.
Those who doubted the worth of a prior peacekeeping career were relatively few in
number and, perhaps unsurprisingly, were mainly drawn from the managers who had
not had a prior police or military career. However, among those who were dubious
about a peacekeeping background were also a small number who had come from just
such a background. These were corporate security managers who felt that their current
work bore no resemblance to what they had done before. Among the managers who
had not had prior military or policing careers there were some fairly negative
impressions of what employing a former military officer or policeman as a corporate
security manager entailed:
“95 percent of other security managers have been in the police or the
military and when I speak to them I tend to apologise and say ‘look guys
50
I’ve never killed anyone. What I do is that I tend to bring much more of
the commercial side. I know there is no way the business was going to
have an ex- military person. They wanted someone who could build the
business and be professional. They did not want some military type to
march around the place.”
At the other end of the spectrum were the enthusiasts. As with the doubters the
enthusiasts made up a relatively small number of the security managers. In their
answers they were the strongest advocates of the merits of a peacekeeping
background feeling that it equipped them very well for their latter roles in the
commercial world. While all the managers described some upheaval when leaving
their former roles for the corporate world the enthusiasts saw the most continuity with
what they had done in there previous military or police careers and did not see that
they had made any major chances in the way they operated in their current
environment as compared to their old one:
“It was critical. The armed forces provide the best quality and in- depth
information on security that I think it’s possible to get. When you spend
months on courses learning the trade of conducting security surveys,
understanding CCTV, understanding firewalls, understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of personnel vetting… all these things come
together… hence the reason I do what I do.”
Between these two extremes of strong advocacy and significant doubt, fell the bulk of
managers who were more circumspect. These were the security managers who felt
that there previous careers contributed to there current role but were keen to
emphasise that that a background in security by no means qualified an individual to
work in corporate security and should not be a pre-requisite do doing so. Somewhat
unexpectedly, when this group of managers discussed how well their previous roles
had prepared them for working in corporate security the specific security knowledge
they had accrued received relatively little attention. Of much greater significance to
them were the aspects of their former roles which qualified them for management
positions generally rather than security management specifically. In direct contrast
with the thinking of Manunta, a number of managers expressed their belief that
military or police service had endowed them with skills and qualities which enhanced
their ability as general managers in the corporate world:
51
“I think in the military we sell ourselves extremely short on our skills,
particularly our management skills. When I came into the corporate world
we would sit around for 30 minutes discussing the answers to problems
when it was perfectly obvious what the answer was. Why are we sitting
around here talking about it? That’s the answer, lets go and get it done. I
think generally we have the ability to think on our feet and come up with
solutions which are acceptable and workable and I think in some areas of
corporate life those management skills are lacking.”
“…the skills you develop in the service stand you in good stead. A work
ethic, leading by example and a can-do mentality is what people in
businesses look for. We often get asked to do things and you think ‘well
shouldn’t that be going to HR or elsewhere?’ It gets given to us because
people are comfortable with the discretion we put around things and the
fact that we deliver.”
By the same token, this group of security managers were keen to emphasis that while
some of the experience and the skills they had gathered from their former roles
continued to serve them well in the corporate environment, they were very aware of
the differences between to two. They felt that being successful in the latter to a large
degree meant leaving behind much of what had gone before. At the most fundamental
level this meant getting used to what success in the profit driven corporate world
means as opposed to success in the public sector. The security managers not only had
to adjust what their concept of what ‘success’ was but also had to adjust the
techniques and behaviour they employed while pursuing it:
“You work almost by drawing a line under everything you have learnt.
You use it as a frame of reference rather than trying to drag it forward.
There are some corporate security people who will spend there whole
careers trying to hammer square pegs into round holes.”
A number of managers talked about risk and their appetite for risk as an area which
was typical of the changed mindset they had to employ in their new commercial
guise. In their previous environments they were expected to take a risk adverse
approach where the aim of their activities was often to eliminate risk as far as
possible. In the corporate environment the ‘belt and braces’ approach to eliminating
risk was much less desirable. The security managers now found themselves taking a
cost effective approach to risk, doing the minimum possible to mitigate against risk
52
and occasionally choosing to do nothing at all “…before I was asking what could I do.
Now I find myself asking what should I do?” (Security Director, Finance).
In terms of changing the way they did things a point raised on a number of occasions
was the need to utilize softer skills in the corporate setting. Perhaps wary of
prompting criticisms such as that expressed above about ‘ex-military types marching
around’ a number of the security managers highlighted the changed approach that the
departure from their previous, hierarchical, peacekeeping environment had
necessitated:
“It’s a much more soft focused approach to security… I don’t think the
authoritative approach is what they are looking for. It’s about having the
soft skills, the people skills, understanding the needs of the organisation
and what it is prepared to tolerate.”
4.4 Distinguishing Between Different Peacekeeping Careers.
Existing literature, and indeed much of our security managers’ commentary, on the
relevance of a security manager’s background have tended to treat the peacekeeping
professions as almost a homogenous identity giving the impression that all individuals
emerging from it will have had broadly similar roles and training, and thus, will be
broadly similarly qualified for corporate security roles. Such literature has preferred to
address the question of whether this fairly homogenous bunch are better or worse
placed than those from traditional management backgrounds when it comes to
security management. What became apparent from the security managers’ comments
on the subject was that they often did not consider themselves to be part of a
homogenous whole and felt that to describe them as such was something of an over-
simplification. For some the important distinction lay between those from policing
and military backgrounds and their eagerness to make this distinction sometimes
conveyed a touch of prejudice “invariably ex-policemen are only interested in nicking
people”. (Security Manager, Finance)
One security manager highlighted the fact that being from the military or the police by
itself indicated very little about an individual’s skill sets or knowledge of security.
The point was made that in many branches of both professions there is little more
53
training or requirement to understand the principles of security and security
management than would be expected of a civilian:
“I was a security manager in the army and that has made things much
easier for me. I see a number of colleagues who are ex-military and ex-
police and I look at the things they have actually done in their former
careers and think ‘what does that have to do with security’? I doubt their
qualification and I doubt their experience. I think it is often exaggerated.”
4.5 The Security Managers of the Future?
4.5.1 Change.
The make-up of future generations of security managers remains unclear. Work by
Briggs and Edwards (2006) suggests that the current trend of former peacekeepers
dominating the ranks of corporate security managers will become increasingly
unsuitable as the role of security departments evolves within organisations. Firstly
they argue that many security managers from the traditional mould will struggle to
cope with the more strategic role which they envisage for corporate security
departments of the future. Secondly, they suggest that the complex matrix reporting
structures increasingly being found in large organisations demand the ability
persuade, collaborate and cooperate and can be “…antithetical to those with police or
armed service backgrounds” (ibid: 80). Thirdly, the risk adverse mindset which
formal security training breeds will continue to mean that those who emerge from
such training will not be able to contribute to the risk taking activities which are
central to the ethos of business. Fourthly, corporate security will increasingly demand
people who are happy to break rules and innovate, but people from the security-
related professions tend to be more inhibited from innovative responses to security
incidents. Finally, security experts are trained to respond to incidents in a way which
fails to factor in the human dynamics of situations. Briggs and Edwards (2006) argue
that the human element is critical to modern risk and security management but that
among the peacekeepers it is overshadowed by an emphasis on technical security
skills.
54
According to this analysis the skills which security managers from the classical
peacekeeping background have will be increasingly inadequate in terms of responding
to the demands that modern organisations will make of their security functions.
4.5.2 Continuity.
In contrast it was apparent from the interviews that some of the security managers felt
that far from becoming outmoded the experience that workers took with them from
the public to the private sector was in fact growing in relevance. The closing gap
between management techniques in the public and private sectors were cited as an
important consideration meaning that future generations of military and police
professionals will emerge from their service much better equipped for the corporate
business environment. The growing influence of New Public Management (NPM)
over the last 20years has meant a move away from an ethos of public administration
based on a largely hierarchical, formalised approach with its emphasis on avoiding
mistakes, caution and the application of rules. Those characteristics are being
substituted increasingly with a private-sector model of management based on
decentralization, valuing innovation, enterprise and problem solving (Pollitt &
Bouckaert 2000). The results of influences such as NPM are that the gulf between the
public and private sector is narrower than ever. This was graphically borne out by the
experience of one security manager while in the public sector:
“…when I went back to X it was, in effect, 19 devolved budget centres. I

went in I had to pull assets from all those places, it was a matrix
management exercise. Managing, understanding where the lay lines were,
where the influence was and how to influence people. In many senses X is
structured like many multi-national organisations… I was responsible for
3,500 personnel and had to reduce that to 2,000. The same as a business
manager would have to do.”
The case for service personnel being well equipped to thrive in industry is supported
to some extent by experience in the US where, once they have completed their
service, graduates of the various military schools and academies are in high demand
by major US corporations. The largest recruitment agency in the field boasts that
junior military officers, non-commissioned officers, and technicians have long been
sought for the leadership qualities, hands-on experience, and other intangibles, such as
55
loyalty, work ethic and integrity which distinguish them in the civilian workplace
(Orion 2006). Further evidence that those formerly of the peacekeeping professions
can succeed at the highest levels in business comes in the form of a study of CEOs
with military experience, again in the US. The study found that candidates with
military experience were over represented amongst the ranks of CEOs, that their
organisations delivered better results, and that they lasted an average of 7.2 years in
post compared with 4.5 years for CEOs without military experience (Korn Ferry
2006).
4.5.3 Diversification
The security managers generally felt that they were witnessing a very gradual
diversification of the types of people being found in the discipline. Based on the
observations of our security managers, diversification is slowly coming about by
various means. In a small number of security departments something akin to graduate
places are being created whereby young individuals with no experience of security are
being employed and trained within the business. This practice is currently confined to
a few of the largest security departments and remains ad-hoc in nature with no
guaranteed intake on a yearly or bi-yearly basis and no established sources to which
the departments look for candidates. A very small number of instances whereby
security managers had worked their way up from manned guarding or CCTV
operators positions into more general management positions could also be discerned
from the experience of the security managers interviewed. However, as with the
graduate places, this appears to account for a very small number of security managers
and remains extremely ad-hoc in nature. The lion’s share of the diversification which
has occurred in security management is accounted for by intra-organisational, inter-
functional movement of managers into the security department. This usually involves
individuals with particular skills, such as specific IT skills, being poached from other
areas of the business by security managers and gradually building up their knowledge
and experience in the security department becoming generally competant security
managers in the process.
4.6 Advantages of police and military backgrounds.

While the security managers interviewed unanimously welcomed the more diverse
range of people slowly appearing in corporate security positions there was equally a
56
feeling among many that, as candidates for corporate security roles, individuals from
a governmental security background maintained some natural advantages over their
civilian counterparts. These advantages meant that candidates from a peacekeeping
background offered an added value which those who had not come from a policing or
military background could not. The natural advantages most alluded to could be
grouped as:
• Contacts and networks.
• Demonstrable pedigree.
• Pre-existing capability.
• Experience and judgement.
4.6.1 Contacts and Networks.

In instances where the link between what the manager did in their old career and what
they do in their new one is not obvious a number of security managers raised the point
that the value of the contacts they take with them has, at times, been over-estimated
by firms and occasionally overplayed by security managers themselves. Some
managers made the point that peoples contacts rarely have a very good shelf life and
that, in fact, the personal relationships they built up in their respective service careers
are likely to be with people of similar age to themselves and at a similar point in
career progression. As such, quite often these potential contacts are planning to
similarly move on from their peacekeeping post for the same reasons that they have:
“The contacts are pretty short term and the younger generations coming
through probably won’t feel the obligation to give them the time or the
resources.”
However, for some of the security managers contacts and networks they had
established in their previous incarnations had real value in terms of their suitability as
candidates for latter corporate security roles. One of the security managers
interviewed had moved from a senior post in a branch of the armed forces to a senior
security role with a firm providing equipment and services to the same branch of the
forces. The security manager felt that his understanding of military bureaucracy and
the relationships he had built at the MOD and elsewhere gave him a real advantage in
managing the security of the business he subsequently moved into:
57
“Coming from an X background to a company like X is actually very
helpful. Some important relationships are already established, such as that
with the MOD, and others can be established much more easily.”
4.6.2 Demonstrable Pedigree.

In terms of their security function, for many organisations it is not good enough to
take security seriously, they must also be seen to take security seriously. Briggs and
Edwards (2006) suggest that corporate security is increasingly a source of competitive
advantage. Organisations which can project an image of a competent security
operation can give themselves an edge over their competitors when customers are
deciding who to do business with. Whether it is rational or not the security managers
reported a perception on behalf of both the businesses and their customers that having
either a senior ex-policeman or senior ex-military officer at the helm of a security
operation adds credibility on the part of the seller and builds confidence on the part of
the buyer:
“Its still an old mans game. When X recruited me they wanted somebody
of a certain age with a certain background. They will not recruit
somebody younger than early forties or somebody without that security
background because they will not be credible to go and speak to board
members or speak to customers and say I’m your security guy. They are
looking to buy that credibility into the business.”
The point was also made by some of the interviewees that, when they are appointing
security managers, executives are mindful that any appointment they make should not
leave them vulnerable to third party criticism. In companies where security is of a
particular importance, for instance those that form part of the Critical National
Infrastructure (CNI), board members are conscious of the need to make decisions
which are readily defendable in hindsight:
“…you can imagine, if there was a disaster with X’s infrastructure, some
prat standing up in the House of Commons and saying ‘and you appointed
as your head of security somebody with no previous experience?’ …it is
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easier for some companies; they can be seen to have discharged their duty,
and due diligence and all the rest of it.”
In a small number of recent instances large organisations have taken the step of
appointing individuals without a predominantly military background to senior security
positions. However, given the sheer criticality of security in some organisations and
the potential ramifications should something go wrong, this was judged likely to
remain the exception rather than the rule by many of the security managers
interviewed.
4.6.3 The Importance of Judgement and Experience.

When discussing the important traits of a successful security manager the managers
questioned almost unanimously made reference to good judgement which they felt
was borne of experience. Writers on the topic of security management have made
reference the particular importance of good judgement and experience as qualities of a
security manager. Wyllie, for instance, describes the ‘art’ of security management and
talks of successful security managers having a ‘nose for trouble’ (Wyllie, 1999).
Among our security managers this nose for trouble was something of an illusive
quality and appeared to endow those possessing it with something almost akin to a
sixth sense in terms of security. One of the security managers described it thus:
“It’s about the elephant. There are people who have seen pictures of the
elephant and then there are the people who have actually seen the
elephant. I have sat with a family telling them how to negotiate with
kidnappers so they get their son back. That experience and that
background are important. It’s one of the things that I bring to the
corporate world which my line managers value. It allows me to judge
when things are going pear shaped and when they are not really that
important.”
The impression from the security managers was, that in their role, their instincts and
judgements played a more important part in decision making than it did for many of
their peers across the other functions. This extra emphasis on their personal
judgement meant that having suitable security experience was essential. However, this
was not to say that security experience could only be gathered through a career in the
military or the police. It is fair to say that, with the exception perhaps of firms in the
59
mobile communications sector, the size of the security departments from which our
security managers came was generally small in relation to the size of the organisations
which they were responsible for. One symptom of this was that very few of the
security departments had graduate places and as a result when our security managers
were recruiting they were looking for people who already had specific skills and
experience which could be immediately employed rather than for people with the
potential to learn skills and gather experience:
“There is no substitute for experience. That sounds like an old dinosaur

defending his territory and I don’t mean it to because I am quite
progressive and receptive to new ideas. But, you know, if you spend a
lifetime training and learning through practical experience then it counts
for a lot. I was fortunate that the police service provided me with that…
I’m not saying that you have to come from a police or military
background. I’m saying that you have to build up your experience
somewhere and the police and military are perfectly acceptable and seem
to offer many more opportunities to do it.”
The work of the security manager places a premium on the attributes of good
judgement and experience. However, this demand for experience, and the extra
pressure on individual judgement that being part of a small team adds, mean that
rarely is there the opportunity for individuals to build up their experience in a
corporate security context. Rather than invest time and money in developing security
management talent it makes good sense for organisations to effectively buy in the
experience which has been gained at somebody else’s expense:
“My previous career has been fundamental. I was recruited to X because

of what I had done in the past and who I was. X is a huge company but
with a tiny security function. It’s not in the business of growing and
developing its own executives. It doesn’t need that capacity so it buys that
experience in. It goes to the military or the civil police where it can find
people who have formal training in security and also in general
management. So yes, my former life has been fundamental to me getting
this job.”
60
For the most part the security managers rejected the notion that a prior career in either
the police or the military left individuals fundamentally ill-suited to fill security
management positions in the private sector. While a conclusive analysis will
obviously require some sort of corroboration from the consumers of corporate
security management, outlined a convincing set of rationale for the preference of
former peacekeepers on the part of industry to-date and the likely continuation of this
trend in the future.
The fact that security managers, particularly those arriving in their first corporate
security jobs, are somewhat thrown into an alien environment and expected
immediately to operate a senior level means that security management as an
occupation faces some unique challenges. Our security managers all report steep
learning curves, upheaval and trauma in the move from the public to the private
sector. They quickly had to change their conceptions of success and the means they
employed to achieve it. These problems are not insurmountable but certainly appear
to constitute the barriers to success, discussed in the previous chapter, in the short
term. Based on the contribution of our security managers in this chapter, the
occupation as a whole has not done enough to help individual managers cope with
these challenges. An obvious way in which a professional project can add value to the
occupation in these circumstances is by organising practitioners so that they can
develop coping mechanisms and mitigate against the unique challenges that the
second career dynamic of their work entails.
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5. The Professional Project of Human Resource Management in the
UK.
5.1Introduction.
Although they have not described it explicitly as a ‘professional project’, human
resource practitioners and their occupational predecessors have been engaged in
efforts to raise the status of their work and themselves since the origins of the
discipline. These efforts have notably intensified in the last 15 years culminating in
the award of full chartered status in 2002. This case study is intended to highlight the
institutional structures and organizational strategies which Human Resource
Management (HRM) has employed in the course of its ‘professional project’.
5.2 The Origins of Personnel Management.

The history of HRM can be traced through personnel management back to the end of
the 19th century when the extension of the franchise and the growing influence of the
labour movement led to the appointment of the first welfare officers. These early
welfare officers were women and were generally employed in the newer industries
where they were responsible for the welfare of women and children employed to do
routine tasks such as packing and assembly. (Cannell 2001)
With the outbreak of the First World War the discipline of personnel management
began to develop more quickly. The Munitions War Act of 1915 sought to ensure the
supply of labour to the munitions industry and it made the provision of welfare
services mandatory within munitions factories. Personnel management also became
concerned with industrial relations as Unions resisted the influx of women into
factories complaining of ‘dilution’ as they undertook tasks previously done by
craftsmen. (ibid)
The 1920s saw the proliferation of ‘labour managers’ and ‘employment managers’
particularly in the engineering sector where they took responsibility for issues such as
absence, recruitment and dismissals. As large companies began to emerge as a result
of mergers and takeovers personnel departments were created with the aim of
standardising employment policies across the respective firms. In the more cutting
edge industries there was a growing awareness of the merits of suitably motivating
62
employees through holidays and pensions however, continued recession and
consistently high levels of unemployment meant recruiting labour was not difficult
and more progressive personnel practices were slow to spread. (Jossernad 2004)
The Second World War again added emphasis to personnel management. The
Ministry of Labour and National Service viewed it as a key tool in the push for
improved efficiency. Industrial relations again came to the fore with the unions
concerns over dilution of skills. Ernest Bevan the Minister for Labour engaged the
unions in extensive dialogue persuading them to suspend restrictive practices for the
duration of the war sowing the seeds of the consultation and negotiation which
became a key feature of post-war industrial relations. War time experience had
demonstrated further the benefits to productivity of good employment management
and considered welfare polices. These two areas began to come together formally in
the context of personnel management. The role of personnel management was further
cemented by the growth of local level bargaining. While pre-war industrial relations
had taken place at a national level in the 1950’s and 1960’s there was a trend to local-
level bargaining which gave much greater scope for the company-level personnel
function to intervene. However, these local level interventions were too frequently ad-
hoc in nature and unsustainable in the longer term. The poor industrial relations which
resulted were known as the ‘British disease’ and productivity levels which compared
unfavorably with the UK’s competitors prompted the creation of a Royal Commission
under Lord Donovan.
Donovan, reporting in 1968, was critical of all the parties concerned. His report
suggested that personnel managers lacked appropriate negotiating skills but also that
the companies which they worked for were failing to give them a sufficiently high
priority within the business (Donovan 1968). In reaction to criticisms such as these
and also to the growing body of legislation from the European Economic Community
(EEC) pertaining to workers rights the number of personnel managers as well as their
prominence within organisations was gradually increasing. In tandem with the
increasing demand of personnel management was a growth of academic study on the
subject. Theories borrowing from the social sciences about motivation and
organisational behaviour were developed and increasingly employed. Management
63
techniques aimed at improving performance arrived from the US and were also
applied in the UK context. (Cannel 2001)
5.3 The Challenge from Human Resource Management.

Throughout the 1980s under successive Thatcher Governments the central thrust of
economic, industrial and legislative policy in the UK was to create a market driven
economy. With regard to the management of personnel the most crucial aspects of
these efforts were successive pieces of legislation designed to limit the role and
influence of trade unions. The effect of Thatcher’s legislative programme was
essentially to move the unions and the issue of industrial relations from being a
central corporate concern, and frequent corporate headache, to a position much more
on the periphery of corporate thinking (Guest 1995).
In terms of their employee relations businesses were increasingly seeking to move

away from the ‘endless merry-go-round of collective bargaining’(Armstrong 2005)
and a combative industrial relations model whereby all the businesses people
management energies were used keeping the peace rather than moving the business
forward (ibid). Emerging HRM models espoused tools such as ‘psychological
contracts’ to breed organisational commitment and persuade employees to go above
and beyond minimum expectations because they felt they held a stake in their
company’s success. The classic personnel manager had two key roles: employee
champion, whereby they concerned themselves with the day-to-day preoccupations of
individual employees and administrative expert. In contrast, emerging HR theories
argued that effective people management had the potential to give organisations a
competitive edge but that in order to benefit HR must work in partnership with the
organisation at a strategic level (Josserand 2004).
Throughout the later half of the 1980s, the title ‘Human Resources Manager’ was
steadily being found more commonly among large UK businesses. Yet the motivation
for adopting the term was often unclear. In some organisations it seemed that the
move from ‘personnel manager’ was more indicative of a re-branding exercise by
personnel managers hoping to impress the corporate centre than a real change in
thinking about the management of people:
64
“HRM is regarded by some personnel managers as just a set of initials or
old wine in new bottles. It could indeed be no more and no less than
another name for personnel management, but as usually perceived, at least
it has the virtue of emphasising the virtue of treating people as a key
resource, the management of which is the direct concern of top
management as part of the strategic planning process of the enterprise.”
(Armstrong 1987)
While the situation varied from organisation to organisation Armstrong’s comments

reflected that broadly speaking personnel management had failed to become an issue
which board members took a serious interest in outside times of acute crisis and that it
had also largely failed to make any impact upon the strategic decision making
processes of the business.
5.4 Personnel Management as a Business Function.

When describing the realities of Personnel management at the end of the 1970s Legge
(1978) noted that while the importance of the effective manpower management was
formally recognized by the senior management of organisations; in practice it was
neglected in the course of strategic decision making and indeed in the course of
almost all decision making which was not personnel specific. One result of this
indifference from senior management was that personnel policies were rarely
conducted within the context of any long-term plan and that the personnel function
was particularly prone to the whims of the organisation:
“…while major shifts in policy could occur in all functional areas,

personnel was uniquely susceptible to a swings and roundabouts approach
as their resources, not being irreversibly committed, were seen as being
relatively flexible.”
(Legge 1978: 41)
As part of the same work Legge spoke to a number of middle ranking and senior
managers about the importance of the work of the personnel department an how
effectively they felt it was performed. The results make for an interesting insight into
how personnel management was regarded through the period:
“The trouble with the personnel department here is that they try to
introduce new gimmicky theories. They should stick to welfare- that’s
what personnel’s job is- looking after routine welfare matters.”
65
“The statistics they give us don’t provide the information we need.”
“I, along with a lot of my colleagues, am worried that it’s impossible to

measure the real impact as there are so many variables to be considered in
the effectiveness equation.”
(Legge 1978: 68-71)
This last quote was indicative of the fact that part of the personnel function’s problem
was that it had not sought to develop any means of demonstrating its worth in terms of
an organisations bottom line and senior management appeared reluctant to give their
backing to an operation which could not demonstrate its contribution. The lowly
status which personnel managers held in relation to their other management
colleagues is demonstrated by surveys of the period which revealed that personnel
was among the most poorly remunerated of the management disciplines (AIC, 1980).
Poor wages and low status contributed to a vicious circle in personnel management:
“…whereby brighter managers steer clear of the personnel function

because of its lack of status, and in consequence the personnel function
remains low in regard because of the relative lack of talent.”
(Jenkins, 1981)
By the end of the 1980s perceptions in some quarters about personnel management
and personnel managers as professionals seemed to have improved little. In a paper
titled ‘Personnel Management: the End of the Orthodoxy’ Guest (1991) argued that
personnel management was being sidelined by organisations as a result of its failure
to embrace technology and poor record of personnel managers in terms of innovating
and pushing the discipline forward.
This failure of personnel managers to innovate was attributed by some to the state of
personnel as a profession. Tyson (1985) argued that UK personnel managers typically
lacked belief that what they were doing was genuinely grounded in a professional
base of knowledge. The result of this was that they were overly risk-averse and
reluctant to question the established way of doing things. In practice, he argued, the
model of a modern personnel manager in the 1980s was of an individual who,
chameleon like, blended into whatever organisation they could find and did whatever
they were told as long as it suited the immediate needs of the organisation. Acting
with greatly increased speed and flexibility had become key aims of large businesses
66
throughout the Thatcher period. However, moves towards flexibility and innovation
naturally challenged the ‘expert administrators’ of personnel management and
commentators concluded that British organisations were setting challenges, in terms
of their employment practices, which classical personnel management was not well
positioned to respond to (Guest, 1990).
5.5 Personnel Management as a Profession.

Sisson (1995) noted that there was a particularly pronounced tendency for most of the
functions into which management can be divided to aspire to be regarded as a
profession akin to medicine or law and that in that respect personnel management up
until the early 1990s had been no different. Personnel management had for some time
held some characteristics which suggested professional status. It had a permanent
organisation in the form of the Institute for Personnel Management (IPM) which, by
1993, had a permanent staff of around 100; education and training provisions- the
IPM was responsible for two major education programmes; qualifying examinations
in the form of the Professional Education Scheme which was the main route into
membership; and a code of ethics. In addition the discipline was serviced by a semi-
academic journal in the form of the monthly publication ‘Personnel Management’.
However, as a profession, personnel management still showed significant signs of

immaturity. Large numbers of personnel managers did not belong to the IPM and as a
result of it was estimated that the professional association only represented a minority
of personnel managers in the UK and that a significant number of the most senior
personnel managers and directors were not members (Marginson 1993).
Linked closely to the question of professional membership was the issue of

professional qualifications. Despite being the profession responsible for the
qualifications of workforces up and down the country estimates of the time reveal that
in fact in the second half of the 1980s the number of personnel specialists with a
qualification of any sort actually fell from 54 percent to under 50 percent. Among
those managers who were qualified the nature of the qualification varied significantly,
only 18 percent of personnel managers were qualified to degree or post-graduate level
and few managers held the professional qualification being issued by the IPM (Airey
Tremlett & Hamilton.1990).
67
In the early years of the 1990s personnel management found itself facing a number of
challenges:
• Membership in the field was disjointed and split between overlapping

associations. Large numbers of personnel managers did not belong to any of
these associations and were not qualified. Many that did not even see
themselves as ‘professional’ in the sense of owing their prime loyalty to the
occupation. Most were “managers first and personnel people second” (Mackay
and Torrington 1986:161- 162).
• Personnel management as it had traditionally been practised was increasingly
being seen as irrelevant to modern business practices and this problem was
being compounded by the inability of personnel managers to innovate. This
added to the ongoing inability of personnel to demonstrate its worth to the
bottom line of the business meant that personnel as a business function was
struggling to wield authority and attain seniority within organisations which in
turn inhibited its ability to attract the best management talent.
• Personnel as an aspiring profession had not definitively codified the body of
knowledge which it laid claim to. There was some ambiguity as to where the
boundaries of a personnel professional’s knowledge should lie and what the
demarcation between personnel and neighbouring occupations such a training
and development was.
5.6 Professional Project.

The professional projects which Larson (1977) describes such as that of medicine and
law can be observed over periods of time running to centauries in length. As such they
should not be thought of in the sense of a single project with discernable consensus on
end goals or a clearly mapped and definitive strategy. Rather, the most ancient
professional projects have been driven by the determination of successive generations
in a particular field to improve their status and achieve autonomy in their work.
Where such professional projects have been successful the net result of these
concerted ‘projects’ has been the closure of an occupation and monopolisation of
work in that field. In this sense the efforts of modern human resource managers to
improve their status and attract respect for their occupation can be traced to the
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establishment of the Welfare Worker’s Association (WWA) with a membership of 34
in 1913.
5.6.1 Historical Project

World War I and the mandatory appointment of welfare workers to munitions
factories boosted the association’s membership to 600 members and also saw it
change its name as it moved to incorporate the various local welfare associations
which had emerged across the country. The newly named Central Association of
Welfare Workers (CAWW) resisted a merger with the employer dominated Industrial
Welfare Society (IWS) in order to maintain its professional independence before
adopting the new title of Welfare Workers Institute (WWI) in 1920. This new title
was an effort to promote the professionalism of welfare and the new institute was
accompanied by the launch of the Welfare Work journal. (Evans 2006)
In 1931 the Institute was renamed the Institute of Labour Management (ILM) in an
effort to encompass the growing band of dedicated labour managers within industry.
The Welfare Work journal was renamed Labour Management soon after and as its
articles reveal that the term welfare soon became redundant coming to be replaced
first by ‘industrial relations’ then ‘labour management’ and latterly by ‘personnel
management’. The welfare professions had been dominated by women however, new
labour and personnel management positions were being largely populated by men and
by 1940 they made up 44 percent of the ILM’s 1800 strong membership.
By 1946 the term ‘personnel’ had become sufficiently popular as to merit another
change of name and the Institute of Personnel Management (IPM) was born. During
the 1950s the activities of the IPM expanded as it moved to provide short courses,
publications and qualifications for its members. In 1955 full membership of the
institute was restricted by means of an entry examination. Throughout the 1960s the
IPM showed a greater appetite for influencing government policy and a number of
national committees were established in order to determine the line the IPM should
take on the great debates of the day. In 1977 a merger between the IPM and the
Institute of Training and Development (ITD) under the name Institute of Personnel
and Training Management (IPTD) was proposed and put to a ballot by the members
of both organisations. The merger was backed, but by such a slim majority that it was
69
decided sufficient support did not exist and the idea, while occasionally discussed, did
not become a real possibility again until 1993 when it once again went to a ballot of
both organisations members. (ibid)
The suggested merger was again a controversial subject for members in 1993 as
demonstrated by the letters sent to the respective publications of the two bodies:
The Price of Admission.

It was with some dismay that I studied the recent briefing document
highlighting the moves towards a possible merger with the Institute of
Training Development. As a fellow of the IPM I am deeply concerned
about the future of my professional institute and, in particular, want to
urge the rank and file membership to resist any moves which would dilute
our standards… we will not be a true profession unless we insist on the
examination path as the only route to professional status… As Groucho
Marx said ‘I would not want to be a member of a club that would have me
as a member.’ How many IPM members would wish to belong to a club
where everyone can join?
David Butterfield
Devizes, Wiltshire
(Letter published in Personnel Management. June 1993)
Despite the resistance of hardliners in both camps the overlap between the two
disciplines was increasing with the growing influence of HRM and, accordingly, so
was the number of members who belonged to both institutes. Geoff Armstrong the
then Director General of the IPM argued:
“It really does not make sense to retain to separate institutes’, duplicating
their efforts, their resources and their headquarters, but working towards
the same end and representing members whose roles increasingly
overlap.”
(Armstrong 1993: 22)
He went on to outline the benefits of a single institute which would facilitate the
presentation of a coherent voice to outside agencies including the government and the
EC. In addition, it would better place the profession to nominate members to external
bodies and strengthen the chances of obtaining a royal charter.
70
“It is more likely that the department of employment will support us in
our charter application if we speak for the whole profession with an
authorative voice, a single set of qualifications and a clear code of
ethics… this clarity of view and the value of our contribution will earn us
a place at the top management tables.”
(ibid: 22)
Apparently accepting this logic the membership of both the IPM and the ITD voted
strongly in favour of a merger and on the 1st July 1994 the new Institute of Personnel
and Development (IPD) was born. The integration of the two organisations was not
without its problems. In July 1995 one year after the merger the journal People
Management reported that in some areas the integration of regional branches had been
problematic “…generally due to personality clashes or area loyalties when it is not
possible to please everybody” (Mac Lachlan 1995). It went on to report that in the
most serious cases the central IPD committee was having to become involved in order
to break the log jam (ibid).
However, such problems were the exception and in general terms the merger was
proving a success. The combined membership of the existing organisations together
with a surge of new members prompted in part by the higher profile of the IPD meant
that after a year it could boast a membership of some 75,400 making it the largest
organisation of HR professionals anywhere in the world (ibid). While the efforts of
those working in the field to organise themselves and co-ordinate their activities
toward raising the standards of practice and the level of reward associated with the
occupation had begun almost 100 years earlier the creation of the IPD marked a
renewed emphasis on professionalisation and personnel management’s professional
project.
5.6.2 Modern, Reinvigorated Professional Project.

Professional Standards.
Goode (1969) describes abstraction as an essential feature of a profession noting the
importance that knowledge be organized into a codified body of principles if it is to
maintain or enhance the social status of an occupation. Larson outlines the line which
professional knowledge must tread being “formalized or codified enough to allow
standardisation” without being “so clearly defined that it does not allow a principle of
exclusion[or discretion] to operate.” (1977: 31).
71
One of the most significant aspects of HRM’s reinvigorated professional project was
the creation of its professional standards document. The document was borne out of
determination to explicitly define the profession (Whittaker 1995).From the outset the
new Institute saw the establishment and monitoring of standards as one of its key
objectives (ibid). The Professional Standards document which first launched in 1995
and is continually updated. In its current form it runs to 220 pages. The document
defines standards across the whole spectrum of personnel and development and
details what a professional working in people management should be able to do or
should be able to understand, explain and critically evaluate if he or she is to work at
the varying levels of expertise within the discipline and at the varying levels of
membership within the organisation (CIPD 2004).
Table: 5.1: ‘Membership Grades of the CIPD’

Chartered Companion (CCIPD)
Membership
Chartered
Chartered Fellow (FCIPD)

Chartered Member (MCIPD)
Graduate
Non- Chartered Grades
Licentiate
Associate
Affiliate
Organisational membership
The Professional Standards are designed around the philosophy that they should
answer the question: ‘What is a CIPD Professional?’ As a reaction the historical
inadequacies of personnel management modern professional standards emphasise the
role of a HR professional as a ‘business partner’ contributing to the overall goals of
the business. The CIPD argues that as hard evidence that HRM is built on a discreet
body of knowledge; and as a benchmark for the levels of understanding that CIPD
members must attain, the Professional Standards “provide the firm foundations on
which external credibility and respect for the organisation have been built.”(CIPD
2004b: 5)
CIPD Membership and Qualifications.
72
According to various analysis of professions they are defined in part by their search
for shelter from the rigours of labour markets. Professions attempt to gain a monopoly
over an area of work by erecting entry gates between those areas and the general
labour markets. They assert that only those who meet the criteria inherent in the entry
gates should be allowed to practice. The CIPD has attempted to create entry gates to
the field of personnel management through its membership and qualifications
structures.
Routes to Chartered Membership.

The CIPD has developed a range of different routes to membership in order to cater
for the differing circumstances of individuals at different stages of their careers and
different stages of their professional development. Of these different routes the two
most popular routes to full chartered membership are the educational route and the
professional assessment of competence route featured in table 5.2 below.
The Educational route.

With some 13,000 new members coming in via the educational route each year it
accounts for the majority of members which gain a professional grade within the
CIPD. At the heart of the Institute’s educational activities is the Professional
Development Scheme (PDS) which is an interpretation, via a qualification, of the
Professional Standards at a practitioner level. The mission of the PDS is ‘To set a
professional standard of competent CIPD Graduates.’ (CIPD 2004: 51)
The CIPD argue that the PDS represents a valuable mechanism for enabling entrants
into the profession to credibly claim a full professional status (ibid). Crucially, the
CIPD has continued to set the PDS at a post-graduate level making it more stringent
than many of the established professions.
While the CIPD determines the content of the PDS it is delivered across the UK by a
network of CIPD approved centres which operate a combination of full and part time
courses. Historically the PDS has been assessed in two ways, either through national
assessment or through internal assessment. National assessment entails a combination
of locally set and marked assignments and management research reports with
nationally set and marked examinations at the end of each of the modules taken.
73
Internal assessment similarly uses locally set and marked assignments. However, it
also entails locally set and marked examinations. The process of becoming an
approved centre is a rigorous one which can take up to ten months and involves
examination of assessment strategies, quality assurances processes and facilities. This
system of accreditation means that centres for higher learning such as universities can
run their own post-graduate courses and providing that the content maps equitably
against that prescribed by the CIPD’s Professional Standards individuals can emerge
from the course as graduate members of the Institute.
Professional Assessment of Competence.

Among the Institutes non- educational routes the PAC has an important role to play.
The route is aimed at professions who for a variety of reasons have not previously
sought membership of the CIPD but now operate in senior HR roles and for whom the
educational route would be neither attractive nor appropriate. The PAC allows them
to demonstrate that the knowledge and competence that they have accrued during the
course of their careers meets the criteria set out in the CIPD’s professional standards.
Historically competence based assessments have not always been available and where
they have they have at times not been taken seriously. As a response to this the CIPD
has gone to great efforts to increase the number of people undertaking the assessment
of competence but is also keen to emphasis that it is not a ‘quick and dirty’ route to
membership:
“In terms of the PAC route it’s not just a case of somebody turning up
and saying ‘well I’ve worked in recruitment for 20years I must be good
mustn’t I?’ We say, ‘Well ok fine but these are the criteria and standards
that we work to and this is what you’ll be assessed against.’ People think
that somehow accrediting people is a less credible way- or a quick and
dirty route- into getting qualifications and membership. We aim to ensure
that it isn’t. It’s just more appropriate for some people, such as busy
senior professionals.”
(Williams 2006)
Candidates submitting themselves to the Institutes PAC are required to have been
working at a senior management role within HR for a minimum of five years before
74
table 5.2: ‘Routes to chartered membership.’
Chartered Member
Professional Professional
Standards criteria: Standards criteria:
Senior HR Professionals.
Successful completion of Demonstration of 5 years
PDS and three years relevant managerial
relevant management experience.
experience.
Graduate.
Generally business and social Successful completion of
science graduates seeking to the four fields of PDS
progress in human resource study obtains post-
management graduate level
qualification
Licentiate.
For those seeking to transit from Complete the CIPD
AS/ A’ level or non HR degree certificate in Business
qualifications to the post- graduate Awareness and Advanced
PDS. Professional study.
NVQ level 5
Associate.
Those seeking fairly basic,
practical skills such as: line Complete a CIPD certificate
managers secretarial/personnel equivalent to NVQ level 3/4
assistants, or clerical staff.
Professional
Educational Assessmentof
Route. Competence
Route.
they will be considered. They are then subject to a variety of assessment methods
including one-to-one interviews, the provision of worked based evidence and a 7,000
word management report. In all the process can take up to 18months. It is estimated
that over 80 percent of the most senior HR practitioners working at up to director
level come into the Institute through the PAC route (ibid).
From a position 20 years ago where most practitioners in the field did not belong to
the IPM and had not achieved its qualifications the CIPD has achieved a high degree
of occupational closure with its membership almost doubling from 67,000 to 125,000
since the introduction of its qualifications. This occupational closure has been
75
accompanied by impressive market closure with approximately 80 percent of
recruitment adverts for HRM practitioners requiring Institute membership.
5.8 Broader Activities.

The CIPD’s Professional Standards and membership structures are integral to its
professional project. However, social closure and the other natural goals of a
professional project cannot be achieved through qualifications alone. Fournier (1999)
notes that all aspects of the profession are man-made and there is no natural area of
professional knowledge with neatly defined boundaries. The most successful
professions depend on deliberative employment of rhetoric and co-ordinated activities
which go beyond the obvious tools of qualifications and membership systems. The
CIPD serves as an excellent example of Fournier’s point having undertaken a range of
extra- credential activities to bolster its claim to professional status. The CIPD’s
reinvigorated professional project is apparent in numerous aspects of its work and
organisation beginning with its systems of governance.
Governance.
The CIPD as it is currently constituted consists of a headquarters in south London
where most of its 260 full-time staff is employed alongside a large network of
branches spread throughout the UK and Ireland. The branches operate thanks to the
voluntary efforts of their members with some logistical and financial support from the
CIPD in order to provide updates and organise meetings for people who are interested
in networking on a local or regional basis. Each of the branches nominates a member
to sit on the CIPD council which meets twice a year. The council facilitates the
representation of membership views to the CIPD’s executive although its actual
decision making powers are limited. Most of the power within the CIPD apparatus
lies with its Executive Board. Unpaid and serving for three year terms the executive
board consists of senior members of the Institute and is chaired by the President who
serves as a figurehead for the organisation. Reporting to the Executive Board is the
CIPD’s Director General and staff management team which takes responsibility for
the various aspects of the Institute’s work. The power now concentrated with the
CIPD’s Executive Board is typical of a trend among professional associations which
have sought to move away from traditional, unwieldy models of decision making.
Many associations have replaced a large council and numerous sub-committees with a
76
much more streamlined form of governance based loosely on the corporate model
found in large commercial organisations (Friedmann & Phillips 2004). While this
corporate model raises concerns about democratic deficits in membership
organisations in terms of a professional project they do facilitate the dynamism and
strategic thinking which the creation and maintenance of professional boundaries
requires.
Evidence based Advocacy.

The CIPD acts in a variety of ways which constitute its role as the voice of the
profession and effectively the manager of the profession’s image. The Institute’s work
as the voice of the profession involves advocacy, consultation and marketing. In terms
of the former of these one of the most important roles the CIPD and its predecessor
the IPD have undertaken is that of advocate for HRM to the business community. As
discussed above, prior to the creation of the IPD the worth and relevance of the
traditional personnel role was increasingly being called into question. Upon its
creation an urgent priority for the IPD was that of finding a strategy which would
enable them to effectively advocate the worth of a personnel or HRM function to a
business. A weakness of personnel as a discipline until the 1980s was that many
practitioners were resigned to the fact that the contribution of the function to the
business was difficult if not impossible to measure and that its worth certainly could
not be appreciated through such tangible measures as productivity levels or the effect
on the bottom line.
Inspired by the HR theories which were growing in influence in the early 1990s there
was a growing demand within HRM circles for evidence based advocacy of their
work. With the key underlying assumptions of HR theory being that HR should
contribute to organisational aims and that this contribution should be demonstrable,
one of the early actions of the IPD was to create the Professional Knowledge and
Information Network (PKIN).
“We have a great advantage over some bodies in that we have always had-
and indeed now have a very successful PKNI… We’ve also been able to
do research which validates HR as a profession demonstrating that good
HR practices can make a difference to your bottom line. Some of that
77
research has taken pace over quite a long period- several years- it’s been
about evidence based work.”
(Williams 2006)
While the research of the PKNI is not solely aimed at producing HR validating reports
it has resulted in a number of influential pieces of research which contrast the fortunes
of businesses where HR practices are being successfully employed with businesses
where they are not (ibid). Williams argues that faced with such stark evidence it has
become increasingly difficult for sceptical business leaders to refute the logic of good
personnel management practices:
“When you can amass that sort of data about how important it is that
people are properly managed and developed and that doing so makes a
sustainable difference in an organisation it makes a powerful case and
changes the way people think about the function. We can demonstrate that
it is not a Cinderella profession.”
(Williams 2006)
Aside from this advocacy role the CIPD also acts in a kind of consultancy capacity
being a centre of expertise which other bodies and governmental departments can
consult for information. This recognition of the CIPD being the foremost authority in
the area of people management is an implicit feature of it being awarded chartered
status and Williams argues that the willingness of both governmental and non-
governmental bodies to consult with the Institute is in part a reflection on the success
of its research activities (ibid).
Attracting Management Talent.

As a marketing body one of the most important roles that the CIPD plays is that of
attracting talent to the profession. As discussed above the personnel function
historically faced a vicious circle whereby young management talent did not see the
profession as appealing. Lacking sufficient calibre in its practitioners personnel as a
profession struggled to advance its cause and improve its status in relation to the other
business functions which, in turn, meant that it continued to be an unattractive
prospect for managers considering which discipline to enter. Since the creation of the
IPD the problem of this vicious circle has been addressed by the Institute in a number
of ways. Members from local branches do much of the work at ground level
volunteering to go to local schools, colleges and universities to speak about the
78
profession and the work of the Institute. Centrally, the CIPD currently works with the
Universities and Colleges Administration Service (UCAS) to raise awareness of the
profession and arouse the interest of potential management talent even prior to them
becoming undergraduates. In addition, the CIPD participates in ‘countless recruitment
fairs and open days’ ensuring that HRM is presented as an attractive option alongside
the other management functions.
Image Management.
Linked closely to the CIPD’s work in attracting people to the field is its role
managing the image of the profession. HRM has traditionally attracted a number of
stereotypes, in terms of the people that work in the function, Williams was conscious
of the ‘tea and sympathy’ view of personnel. According to this view people who
could not survive the cut and thrust of other areas of the business would console
themselves with the idea that they were ‘good with people’.
“We struggled with the idea of tea and sympathy. If you were no good at
accountancy or one of the proper professions you would go to personnel.
It was the bane of the profession.”
(Williams 2006)
Similarly, in terms of the work which the HR function does there have been
stereotypes to contend with. Largely as a hangover from the classical personnel
function ideas persist in some quarters of a HR department which rather than being a
genuine partner in the business is purely a home for administrative tasks and
transactions:
“There are a lot of administrative things that have to go on but a modern

HR department should be about so much more than just that… a failure to
communicate that to people outside the profession was part of our image
problem.”
(Williams 2006)
The images of the different management functions and the different professions have
an important role to play as a factor in the decision making process of potential
practitioners and negative stereotypes can have serious practical consequences. A
student with little or no experience of the business world can only go on their own
often simplistic understanding of what the work of different professions involves and
79
the type of people he or she can expect to be working alongside. Often, irrespective of
what the contemporary reality is, if a profession has failed to counter perceptions
borne out of historical practices or entirely out of ignorance they may struggle to
attract candidates who are put off by the stereotypes. Equally problematically, may
attract candidates who are not troubled by the stereotypes and are be happy to
perpetuate them (Connelly 2002).
The CIPD has used various tools to try to counter the stereotypes which have
surrounded the people management profession. It has been keen to substitute the
importance of ‘being good with people’ with the importance of understanding that
people contribute to the success of an organisation and that a good HR professional
facilitates this contribution. It has developed the largest body of company case studies
in Europe partly in an effort to emphases that in the most successful companies HR is
not simply a home for transactions and administration. Williams notes that the
achievement of Chartered Status has also been a crucial tool for the Institute in its
efforts to have HR recognised as a ‘proper profession’ “...an important incentive in
seeking chartered status was the return it would give us in terms of being seen as a
valid, prestigious profession and to a greater degree now we have achieved that.”
(William 2006)
The Ethical Role.

A key distinguishing feature of professions, and thus a key goal of professional
projects is that of achieving a high degree of autonomy in their occupational field.
Professional status and the privileges which it entails are not irrevocable. They are
offered on the condition that in return for monopoly and shelter from the general
labour markets professions will act in the public good and avoid abuses of there
special position. Traditional faith in professions has been severely undermined in
recent years by a string of high profile scandals which have posed questions about the
various professions ability to define and enforce high ethical standards (Friedman
2005) and as such the ethical role of professional associations has taken on even
greater significance.
Wiley (2000) argues that the ethical dimension of the HRM profession is particularly
important as it practitioners are so often faced with ethical dilemmas surrounding
80
issues such as favouritism, inconsistencies in pay, sexual and racial discrimination,
harassment and breaches of confidentiality. The CIPD sets out the ethical standards it
expects of its member sin the form of its Professional Code of Conduct. The code is a
condition of the organisations royal charter and pertains to ‘professional standards of
behaviour’ dictating that CIPD members have a responsibility towards the profession,
towards themselves, towards the organisations within which they function and toward
the public interest more generally. To this end members are required to:
[4.2.1]
To exercise integrity, honesty, diligence and appropriate behaviour in all
their business, professional and related personal activities.
[4.2.2]
Act within the law and must not encourage, assist or act in collusion with
employers, employees or others who may be engaged in unlawful
conduct.
(CIPD 2004c)
Where complaints fill the appropriate criteria the complainant is required to formally
write to the Institute Secretary specifying which part of the code they feel has been
breached and supplementing their complaint with any evidence they may have. If the
Secretary decides that there is a case he or she will with an investigation and then pass
the case to a disciplinary panel. If the disciplinary panel, having taken into account the
available evidence, the decision of the Institute secretary and any appeal the accused
may have lodged, upholds the complaint, they have a range of sanctions at their
disposal. The sanction against the offending practitioner may take the form a formal
warning, withdrawal of chartered status for a specified time or in the most serious
cases, permanent expulsion from the institute.
The non-licensed nature of the HRM discipline means that unlike the Law Society or
the General Medical Counsel it cannot strike members from its register and stop them
practising. However, HRM practitioners have noted that the general expectation that
HRM hold CIPD membership, combined with the stigma attached to having been
expelled, mean that the practical employment opportunities in the field of HR for
somebody who has been expelled from the Institute are extremely limited. (CIPD
2005)
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5.8 The Current State of the HRM Profession.
Sisson (1995) notes that throughout the 1980s practitioners in the field of personnel
could have been forgiven for thinking that the time when their work was considered
useful to business had almost come to an end. Of course the situation was different
from organisation to organisation but there was a general sense that others who
considered themselves genuine business partners looked upon personnel with disdain
and other business functions predicting its demise and began to lay claims to take on
its responsibilities once it had passed:
“An organisation’s employees can be effectively influenced and motivated

to customer-mindedness and improved buyer-seller relations, not by
administrative actions and tasks, typically the responsibility of the
personnel department, but by a marketing-like internal approach and by
using marketing activities such as marketing research, segmentation
strategies and communication efforts internally.”
(Richardson & Robinson 1986:13).
Far from this gradual fade into insignificance modern surveys of the personnel or HR
function reveal that it is in a rude state of health and in fact being employed more
widely and exerting more influence than ever. Recent surveys have revealed that 71
percent of HR managers and directors work under chief executives who are convinced
that the HR function had a key role to play in achieving business outcomes; the same
percentage reported that HR issues were frequently discussed at board level (CIPD
2003).
Far from being subsumed by the other functions the report notes that HR is actually
taking on broader, higher profile responsibilities prompting the phrase ‘more
communications and organisational design, less canteen and toilets.’ HR was found to
have partial or complete responsibility for organisational design in 45 percent of
responding businesses, responsibility for internal communication in 41 percent of
businesses and oversight of corporate social responsibility in 39 percent of businesses
(ibid).
The traditional image of personnel as a function of last resort for managers also
appears to have been shaken as almost 50 percent of the HR managers questioned had
spent time in other functions of the business outside HRM. A high proportion of these
managers had spent time in established functions such as sales and marketing or
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finance at a senior level before switching to HR suggesting perhaps that the image of
the profession is now one which can attract high flyers within business.
The drivers for the resurgence of people management in the face of the predicted stall
of the personnel function are numerous and the subject of fierce debate. The most
ardent proponents of HRM feel that it has represented a fairly radical departure from
what had gone before it and that its emphasis’ on adding value and strategic input has
to a greater degree saved people management as a mainstream business activity from
extinction. At the other end of the spectrum are the sceptics who feel that HRM
consists largely of what the best personnel departments were already doing by another
name along with some ‘fads and gimmicks’ thrown in. In the middle ground are those
that feel that HRM is more evolution than revolution from what had gone before and
that the repackaging of a mixture of old and new under the title HRM was a useful
exercise (Armstrong 2005).
Regardless of arguments about the other driving factors one point that raises much
consensus across the entire spectrum of thinking is that, whether they describe
themselves as personnel managers or human resource managers, the practitioners in
the field of people management today are on the whole much more professional in
their own right and part of a profession which has a much stronger claim to ‘proper’
professional status than it did twenty years ago. “One thing I think we can all agree on
is that people management as a profession has come of age over the last two
decades”(Armstrong 2005: 4).
The WRES, when comparing surveys of the people management discipline from the
1980s and 1999, noted that one of the most striking changes had been in the people
working in the field. From a position where only a minority of those working in
personnel management had qualification in the mid 1980s, by 1999 some 75 percent
of practitioners held a qualification- most commonly that of the CIPD. Today that
figure is even higher. Sisson argues that an especially significant feature of the trend
is that qualifications have not solely been adopted by newcomers to the profession. In
fact, the proportion of specialists with qualifications increases in relation to their
length of experience suggesting that seasoned professionals have been convinced of
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the case for qualifications and keen to be associated with the emerging
professionalism (Sisson 2004).
Asked what the symptoms of not being regarded as a proper profession were for
personnel managers and how things had changed in the wake of the re-invigorated
professional project Williams noted:
“15 or 20 years ago people were discarded into personnel. It was a case of
organisations with failing people or people in the twilight of their careers
and needing a place to put them. People thought personnel was soft, it was
associated with housekeeping and certainly not essential to the
performance of the business… Now HR has developed standards and we
have been able to say ‘there are things which people must know and the
consequences of not knowing them are this and this for your business.’ If
you want to avoid disputes with unions and maximise your productivity
you have to think carefully about the way you manage your human
resources. We have been able to prove that and as a result HR has moved
along way from being the least important of the business professions.”
(Williams 2006)
By definition, professional projects are never completed and should be regarded as an

ongoing search for improved levels of status. However, as a marker of the success of
the reinvigorated professionalisation efforts in the field of HR since the creation of the
IPD in 1994 practitioners would point to the successful achievement of chartered
status for the CIPD. The IPD in it past guises had sought chartered status on a
number of occasions however dialogue with the Privy Council had revealed that prior
to the merger with the Institute of Training and Development (ITD) doubts had
existed about the old IPM’s claim to be the sole authoritive voice in the field as well
as its claim to be based on a distinct body of professional knowledge. The merger
with the ITD, the explicit outlining of the professions body of knowledge in the form
of its Professional Standards and the continued growth of membership to 100,000 full
members meant that the Privy Council’s fears were eventually allayed. The IPD
became the first body to be granted chartered status in the new millennium being
renamed the Chartered Institute Personnel Development (CIPD) and in 2002 its
members were further granted individual chartered status allowing them to describe
themselves as chartered members and fellows of the CIPD. As a result Williams
argues that:
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“HR practitioners are now getting a better deal out of their employment in
terms of the way they are recognised and rewarded. HR has risen in
profile and is now better placed within organisations to implement good
HR practices so hopefully it will continue to be an upwards spiral.”
(Williams 2006)

The central tenet of Larson’s (1977) exposition of professional projects is that
occupations engaged in such projects attempt to trade the valuable commodity in their
possession, specialist skills and knowledge, for the valuable commodities they seek,
improved social status and economic reward. HRM’s professionalisation efforts
provide an excellent practical model of this process. HRM first set about creating for
itself the capability for occupational negotiation by a politically fraught, but
ultimately successful merger of the representative bodies in the field. HRM engaged
in boundary work to explicitly define the reach and content of the profession by
producing its ‘professional standards’ document. The occupation was closed through
the establishment of membership criteria and qualifications and the CIPD’s research
activities and consultation with industry have helped its members to substantially
monopolise the market for HRM.
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6. Professions, Professionalism and Corporate Security.
6.1 Introduction.
The question of whether security management constitutes a profession is one, which
has emerged often in security management literature (for example: Manunta 1996,
Simmonsen 1996). However, previous discussion of the topic has failed to
acknowledge the substantial body of sociological study, concerning the professions
and professionalism. This chapter is intended to give a brief overview of the
development of thinking on professions before exploring the attitudes of our security
managers to the subjects of: professionalism; being professional; and being a
professional. Finally, this chapter is intended to examine the current proximity of
corporate security to genuine professional status by comparing it to the ideal type-
professionalism as described by Friedson (2001).
6.2 The Study of Professions.

The apparently simple question ‘what is a profession?’ has in fact become a rather
complicated, ongoing theme in sociology literature. The term ‘profession’ itself is
now widely acknowledged to be closely intertwined with the historical context in
which it is used and as such its meaning has changed periodically and progressively in
the West over at least three centuries (Everetts 1999). Until the early 19th century the
professional landscape was dominated by the three learned professions of law, the
church, and medicine. However, stimulated by the industrial revolution, the number
of occupations which lay claim to professional status grew into the 20th century
paving the way for an ongoing sociological debate as to what constitutes a profession
and why members of certain occupations seek to raise the status of their work above
that of other occupations in order to achieve professional recognition.
MacDonald offers “Occupations based on advanced, or complex, or esoteric, or

arcane knowledge” (1995: 1) as a working definition of a profession. Although
MacDonald’s definition correctly identifies knowledge as an essential criterion of a
profession, credible professions are not constituted simply by knowledge alone.
Restricted access to the relevant body of knowledge and the codified nature of that
knowledge are distinguishing characteristics of occupations, which have lifted
themselves to professional status (O’Regan 2001). These, knowledge based,
86
characteristics combine to create the widely held acceptance that only a professional
surgeon should perform an operation and only a certified public accountant should
give a formal audit opinion on a set of corporate financial statements (ibid). However,
although knowledge is an important ingredient, by itself it cannot constitute a credible
profession.
To illustrate this point Scruton (1982) uses the example of the ‘professional’ criminal.
While the knowledge possessed by a professional criminal may fit MacDonald’s
criteria of advanced, complex or arcane the professional criminal lacks the social
legitimacy which is a further key ingredient of genuine professional status. Friedson
(1986) attributes the lack of social legitimacy to the absence of a discernable
institutional framework and an acceptable ethical basis. While one may admire the
bank robber’s audacity, their technical expertise in defeating counter measures and
disabling alarms society has resisted elevating them to professional status alongside
barristers or human resource managers. Friedson (ibid) suggests that this is because
the credibility of a profession is also derived from its social legitimacy and the
manner in which its knowledge base is institutionalised and ethically framed.
A profession’s institutional framework represents, governs and restricts access to the

profession and is typically characterised by a formal constitution and a system of
examinations which serve to license its members (O’Regan 2001). Institutional
structures, which surround professions tend to be responsible for research activities
and the issuing of written standards of professional conduct and best practice. These
features mean that the existence or otherwise of a profession’s institutional framework
is usually clearly identifiable. However, questions relating to the ethical legitimacy of
the professions have proven somewhat more opaque and the ethical qualities of the
professions have been the subject of much debate in sociological literature. Thinking
related to the ethical basis for professions and efforts to professionalise can be broken
into two broad streams which Johnson has describes as the ‘functionalist’ and
‘interactionalist’ schools (Johnson 1972).
Barber (1963) was one of the most influential proponents of the functionalist school
and argued that a professional possesses a “high degree of generalised and systematic
knowledge” which they would employ with a naturally occurring “primary orientation
87
to the community interest rather than to individual self- interest”(ibid:33). Barber
argued that professions emerged as a result of the need for those with high value
knowledge to assert control over the practitioner- client relationship for the greater
public good. He argued that professionals were essentially altruistic in nature and that
their natural inclination to employ their knowledge for the greater good was
recognised by the public and rewarded in terms of the status and autonomy, which
they were afforded for their work. (ibid) The functionalist perspective depicts a
professional culture characterised by public spiritedness, altruism and virtue.
According to this view the desire to be a professional is based on a vocational calling
and a commitment to public service and professions form “moral communities” which
glue together society’s bonds (Johnson 1972: 12). In the functionalist vein, Anderson
has observed that: “… what makes a profession a profession is the sort of person who
practices it.” To this end professional training should be considered “… not just as
knowledge inculcation but as the formation of a certain sort of person. Only those of
good character should be accepted and only those of good character accredited.”
(Anderson 1998:9).
From the 1960s onwards, the ‘interactionist’ school of thought increasingly

challenged this wholesome interpretation of the professions. The most prominent of
the interactionist thinkers was Larson (1977) who interpreted the rise of professions as
expressions of institutional self-interest. Far from altruistic groups of citizens
concerned for the betterment of society, interactionists portrayed professions as
greedy and cynical groups of men and women craving economic advantage and social
advancement through the employment of ‘professional projects’. These professional
projects, where successful, led to workers in the specific occupations rising from the
general population by achieving dominance, closure around their field of work and
sheltering themselves from the rigours of the labour markets. The result of this
monopoly for the occupational elites which drove it were the economic and status
rewards associated with social mobility. Many interactionists argued that power was
at the root of occupations professional projects as groups of experts sought to translate
their competence and authorized power over specific discourses into much more
overtly political power (Larson 1990).
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Larson’s (1977) initial critique of professions and those who aspired to professional
status was deeply critical of both. She viewed professional projects as deeply selfish
adventures resulting in the ‘stratification’ of society. According to Larson
monopolistic practices reinforced societies discriminatory power structures
compounding structural inequalities associated with gender, race and ethnicity
(MacDonald 1995). This dismal initial critique of the motivations behind professional
projects has, to a significant extent, faded as the study of professions has matured. As
is demonstrated by the example of HRM in the last chapter, and the experiences of
occupations such as internal audit and risk management, the pursuit of a professional
project is now viewed as a worthy activity. However, Larson’s work remains
important due to its consideration of the deliberate nature of professionalisation.
Previous theorising about professions had paid little attention to the processes which
took place prior to arriving at ‘professional’ status or, had tended to treat the
development of professions as natural history in which worthy occupations made
gradual inexorable progress toward and inevitable professional conclusion. The
interactionist school of thought was the first to treat the process of professionalisation
as a conscious effort requiring strategy and rhetoric.
If an appropriate professionalisation strategy is to be developed for corporate security,

it is worth first examining the views of practitioners in the field towards the concept
of being ‘professional’ and merit of belonging to a profession.
6.3 Varying conceptions of being ‘Professional’.

Lester (1994) has distinguished between two understandings of professionalism, that
of being ‘a professional’ and that of being ‘professional’. These two different
paradigms for understanding professionality he has termed as ‘Model A’ and ‘Model
B’. Model A is a model of professionality, which closely resembles that represented
in much of the sociological literature on the subject. According to Model A
professions are bounded, externally- defined and based on a knowledge common to
all those belonging to the said profession (ibid). Under Model A being professional
means being a professional, submitting oneself to formal, external validation and
abiding by the relevant rules and codes of practice usually defined by a professional
body.
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Model B involves a quite different perception of being a professional, which is not
tied to membership of any recognised profession. Professionality, as Lester terms it,
under this model, is dependent upon a “…portfolio of learningful activity individual
to the practitioner, integrated by common personal values and beliefs.” (Lester 1994:
2). According to Model B being professional is not the sole claim of those who belong
to recognised professions. Rather, individuals who demonstrate adequate personal
ethics, undertake work which requires reasoning and intelligent intuition, and do so in
an effective manner can also properly lay claim to the term professional.
This idea of being judged professional on the basis of the quality of your work and
your personal integrity, without belonging to a profession, is one which also emerged
repeatedly in the course of discussions about professionalism with our security
managers:
“I think a lot of it depends on what you mean by professional, we can all

become a little bit precious about it. What is a profession? It’s an
organisation that regulates itself. We are not barristers or doctors. If you
mean professional in terms of doing things right, doing things
competently, then yes, I strive to be professional and so do most of my
peers.”
This security manager was typical of a number of the security managers from the
point of view that he appeared to have given some amount of prior thought to the
question of what it meant to be professional. In this instance the security manager
chose to interpret the concept of being professional in a manner, which correlated
closely with Lester’s Model B, being largely dependant on the competence and
integrity of the individual. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the security managers who
had Model B conceptions of what it was to be professional judged that they were very
much professionals:
“Well quite simply I have to be. If I did not come here every day, work
hard and work effectively the business and the people I have to deliver to
would not tolerate me. So yes, I am a professional.”
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“I am dedicated. In this area of the business we cannot afford to make
mistakes so, I am professional, and, I expect all my staff to be very
professional as well.”
Roughly half of the managers adopted the Model A interpretation of being a

professional. Model A requires validation by a recognised profession and adherence
to regulatory and ethical frameworks of that profession as pre-requisites for being a
professional. The opinions of those who subscribed to this more classical sociological
view of professionalism as to whether they belonged to a profession were more
mixed. A small minority of the security managers felt that theirs was a discipline
which had sufficient professional structures in place to merit its being recognised
alongside the other emergent management professions:
“Yes I am a professional security manager. I’m proud of that. I have been

validated by the [Security] Institute. I think the growing number of
training courses available and TSI [The Security Institute] reflect the fact
that we have professionalised.”
Generally however, most managers did not feel that security management could be
considered as a credible profession. For most this was a reflection of the fact that as
an occupation it had not yet matured sufficiently, had not developed many of the
characteristics and institutional structures expected of a profession and had not
established proper entry gates controlling access to the occupations area of work:
“No. I’ve never really thought about it in those terms. We don’t really
have, well, we don’t have the trappings of a profession.”
“No. Not now at the moment. I know how the dictionary defines
professionals and it usually surrounds some sort of academic qualification.
Being able to prove that you posses a certain level of knowledge and I
think a lot of people in the industry can’t do that.”
Almost without exception the security managers who felt that security management
did not yet merit the label ‘profession’ noted that moves towards becoming a
profession, in the Model A sense of the word, was a desirable way to proceed. Some
noted the progress they felt had already been made in the form of professional
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associations, academic study of the field and the diversity of people who were seeking
to enter the occupation:
“…I think it’s slowly getting that way. Over the years I’ve seen the
difference. There are good quality individuals entering the field and if you
are that way inclined, you can go out and get yourself an MSc.”
A number of things became apparent from the discussions about professions and
professionals with our security managers. Perhaps most striking was the obvious
degree of consideration many of them had given the subject. This is perhaps testament
to the fact that, in one form or another, the question of professionalism has been a
reoccurring theme in security management for some time. Some of the security
managers interpreted their professional status as a phenomenon, which was specific to
themselves, their competence and their integrity. The remainder of the security
managers subscribed to a group interpretation by which their ability to be a
professional security manager was dependant on the existence of a credible security
management profession to which they could belong. In the opinions of the majority of
these managers, and to their regret, such a profession had not yet satisfactorily been
established.
6.4 Professionalism: the ideal type.

While they offer an interesting insight into the views and aspirations of our security
managers with regard to the question of professionalism, the interviews with our
security managers are not sufficient by themselves to impartially assess the proximity
of security management to full and credible professional status. Thus, it is intended
here to triangulate the security manager’s assessment of their occupation with a
comparative analysis of corporate security management using Friedson’s (2001) ideal
type- professionalism as the basis for comparison. Friedson stresses that his ‘ideal
type’ approach is an intellectual tool and heuristic device rather than an effort to
portray the varied realities of professions in different times and places. As such, the
elements of his ideal type should not be considered a checklist of criteria to be
fulfilled prior to proclaiming professional status. Friedson doubts that any profession
has entirely fulfilled all of the theoretical criteria he lays down and that individual
92
profession’s proximity to the ideal type is likely to have fluctuated over time (ibid).
The key elements of Friedson’s ideal type- professionalism are:
• specialised work grounded in a body of theoretically based,

discretionary knowledge and skill;
• exclusive jurisdiction in a particular division of labour created and
controlled by occupational negotiation;
• a sheltered position in both external and internal labour markets that is
based on qualifying credentials created by the occupation.
6.4.1 Specialised Work Grounded in a Body of Theoretically Based,

Discretionary Knowledge and Skill.
According to Friedson, the privilege of professional status is bestowed upon
occupations whose work is specialized and beyond standardisation to the extent that it
is deemed that those with the required training and experience should be allowed to
control their own work (ibid). Dietrich & Roberts explain the link between
theoretically grounded, specialised, work and professional status by suggesting that
purchasers of professional services face problems which entail decision- making
complexity of such magnitude that they themselves are “incapable of pre-thinking all
the issues involved” (1997: 16). This scenario provides the economic basis for
professionalism in that professionals must demonstrate that their professional
knowledge and skills provide the means to satisfy client ignorance. Continued
satisfaction fuels societal recognition of the professional’s uniquely valuable abilities
and lends credibility to their claim for enhanced professional status. In Friedson’s
ideal-type model these claims eventually lead to recognition from the state, which
facilitates greater institutionalisation and occupational closure.
With regard to corporate security management, the extent to which the occupation is
underpinned by a theoretical body of knowledge appears limited. Manunta (2000) has
been one of the keenest critics of the lack of a theoretical base upon which to build the
occupation and suggests that the continued absence of a broadly agreed core of
theoretical knowledge has a number of negative consequences for those in the field.
Perhaps foremost among these is the problem of understanding. Manunta notes that a
number of authors in the field have discussed and written on the subject of security
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whilst candidly admitting they have no clear definition of what security is about.
(ibid)
“Some confound security with deterrence, mutual destruction, retaliation

and war readiness… Some include within the domain and responsibility of
security the full spectrum of negative events, from acts of God, global
warming, meteorites and ethnic movements to terrorism, money
laundering and organized crime… whilst others think in terms of risk
management and equate security with loss prevention.”
(ibid: 8)
The absence of a core body of knowledge in which decisions are grounded also
generates questions about how those decisions can be justified. Complaints about the
difficulty of attracting resources to the security function have been a common theme
among many of the security managers participating in this research. Security
decisions and initiatives must be approved by senior managers within organisations
who frequently consider security as a marginal activity and work to a set of
expectations and criteria, which have not been conceived with security issues in mind.
Manunta argues that, under these adverse conditions, to win their case, the security
manager must build a robust argument (ibid). Robustness depends on clear definitions
and reliable information, but crucially also on the transparency of the decision making
process. The absence of codified, abstract principles for decision making is
problematic for transparency.
Among the managers who doubted the professional status of their occupation a factor,
which was repeatedly cited, was the absence of any core body of knowledge. As will
be discussed further below there was a sense from many of the security managers that
they had, to a significant extent, taught themselves how to perform the role and that
there was no central body of security management knowledge in which they could
claim their work was grounded. Rather than applying abstract theories of security
management to different situations as they progressed there was a real sense that
among some managers that their work was too frequently based on pragmatic
solutions. Bluntly, they questioned security management’s entitlement to professional
status because they felt much of their role involved making things up as they went:
“I think it’s because we have not reached the right level of maturity. There
is no core central knowledge or best practice- it just doesn’t exist. Because
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of that security people tend to invent things and respond pragmatically
and to some extent you could do that without ever having an
understanding of risk.”
In response to the problems that arise for security managers working without a core
body of knowledge it appears that in relation to some reoccurring security problems,
managers have at times developed theoretical frameworks and abstract principles of
their own. At times this knowledge has been used to justify spending or demonstrate
project feasibility while at other times it has been used as a teaching aid for
developing junior security managers. The various undergraduate and postgraduate
courses related to security management, which have emerged in recent years will also
have contributed to the theoretical body of knowledge. Manunta’s work in defining
‘the security problem’ is an example of this (Manunta 2000a). However, security
management has nothing even close to the codified knowledge core of other
professions such as HRM’s Professional Standards document described in chapter
five.
When Friedson describes “a body of theoretically based knowledge and skill”

(Friedson 2001: 89) he is referring to a centrally held and consolidated body of
knowledge which all members of the profession will have access to and be expected
to have an understanding of. At present, the slowly increasing, body of theoretical
knowledge, which relates to corporate security, does not match this description. It is
largely anonymous, disparate and uncoordinated in nature being held by individual
practitioners and individual institutions in a fashion, which makes access to it in its
entirety difficult if not impossible. Adding to and co-ordinating the knowledge on
which the occupation is based appears to be one of the most urgent tasks for corporate
security if it is to seek genuine professional status.
6.4.2 Exclusive Jurisdiction in a Particular Division of Labour Created

and Controlled by Occupational Negotiation.
Friedson (ibid) observes that professions are able to claim specialized expertise in the
performance of work. As a result, they are in a position to negotiate where the
boundaries of their work lie and to ensure that only those considered “bona fide
members of the occupation” may practise (ibid: 56). For corporate security
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management this analysis raises two main questions: do corporate security managers
have exclusive jurisdiction over the work in their field and are they equipped to
engage in occupational negotiation?
Occupational negotiation and the ability of an occupation to speak with a single

authoritative and representative voice are an important characteristic of professions
according to almost every definition in sociological literature. For instance, Larson’s
(1977) analysis of professions suggests that occupations use their collective monopoly
of a certain branch of knowledge as a bargaining chip in their dialogue with the state.
They dispense their knowledge in exchange for further autonomy and legal
entrenchment of the entry gates, which they place in front of those wishing to practice
in their field. Clearly, the ability of a profession to bargain, and to use its monopoly of
expertise as a bargaining tool, would be extremely limited if the practitioners within
the profession did not have a means of acting in concert and engaging in occupational
negotiation. The experience of HRM serves as an example of the broader imperative
of an occupation being able to coordinate its activities and speak with a single
coherent voice. For HRM, with the CIPD at its hub, the ability to act in a concerted
fashion and been seen as representative of an entire occupation has been crucial to the
success of it efforts at engaging in a dialogue with business about the competitive
edge that HR can offer. It has further been an important consideration in its efforts to
attract the best young management talent to the HR function (chapter 5).
However, the interviews with our security managers as well as a survey of the
corporate security landscape suggest that the ability of corporate security management
to enter into any form of occupational negotiation is limited. One of our security
managers observed:
“Our problem is we proliferate. If you look on the web there are all sorts
of different bodies. All with good intentions, but there is a danger in that.
Who actually represents the industry? If the government has a question in
our field who does it go to to get a sensible answer? I think if we could
develop something like that and all of us would, as it were, bend the knee
to it, that would be a positive step…”
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The discussions with the security managers about their knowledge of, and affiliation
to, institutions and associations related to security substantiated this point. The
interviews with the security members revealed membership or knowledge of thirteen
different bodies, associations or institutes whose membership encompassed corporate
security managers. Considering the actual number of security managers being
employed, estimated to be around 5000 in the UK, and allowing for the fact that many
may have no affiliations at all, this seems to be an exceptional number of occupational
bodies. The composition and purpose of many of these bodies was different. However
to some extent they all competed for the membership and time of our corporate
security managers. Thus, serve to make it much less likely that any single institute or
association could credibly speak for security managers as a whole and facilitate
engagement in occupational negotiation.
Similarly, corporate security managers ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ in the field of security

management is not yet a reality. In tandem with Friedson’s (ibid) criteria of exclusive
jurisdiction is Wilensky’s (1964) observation that a critical step in professionalisation
is that an occupation become ‘full time’. In combination, Wilensky and Friedson’s
analysis imply that an occupation must be regarded as being of such importance that
generally only those who specialise in the field are employed and, that their work is of
sufficient substance and complexity to require their full- time effort. As such, it is
pertinent to ask: to what degree is corporate security management only undertaken by
corporate security managers and to what degree is corporate security management the
sole responsibility of those involved in the work?
It seems that, on both counts, the standing of corporate security management has
improved in recent years. As discussed in chapter three, corporate security
management has been driven, over the longer term, by the continued growth in crime
generally and the increased threats which globalisation and operation in international
markets have entailed for large businesses. Over the shorter term, the rise of a brand
of terrorism which views western corporations as legitimate and desirable targets,
along with a regulatory emphasis on good governance within businesses, have served
to even more acutely raise the profile of corporate security management. As is
revealed by the fortunes of our security managers and their security departments, this
has meant that in some companies the profile and resources available to corporate
97
security have increased. In others, entirely new positions and departments have been
created to bolster resilience and coordinated previously balkanised security efforts.
However, despite this progress, there remains substantial evidence to suggest that
security managers do not have exclusive jurisdiction over security management. As
was also discussed in chapter three, it seems that less than 50 percent of FTSE 100
and FTSE 250 companies have a dedicated, full-time security manager. It is
reasonable to suppose that in the remainder of these companies there are security
management issues and decisions, but that these issues and decisions are dealt with by
somebody whose speciality is not security. This characterisation of the state of
security management is backed up anecdotal experience such as that of the security
managers involved in an SMT debate (SMT, 2004) titled ‘Should security
management remain as a separate discipline?’ One contributor to the debate ruefully
noted that: “…what has happened is that some key services have been contracted out
to facilities management service providers. Ultimately, we’ve seen the security
manager begin to lose some status” (ibid: 4). Given such observations from those
working in the field it must be concluded that security management has some way to
go before achieving the professional ideal of exclusive jurisdiction in its occupational
field.
6.4.3 Shelter from Labour Markets based on a Qualification.

As will be discussed further in the next chapter one of the early goals of the
professional project and a feature of professionalism, which makes it so attractive to
aspiring occupations is the shelter from the general labour market which professionals
enjoy. Such shelter ensures that the number of people who enter a professional
occupation can be controlled, the supply of professional services can be manipulated,
and those services can then be provided at a premium. The most important tool at the
profession’s disposal, in building entry barriers and ensuring shelter between itself
and the outside labour market, is the professional credential:
“It is the authoritative source establishing the legitimacy of the practical

work activities of the occupation’s members, and it is the primary source
of status of its members and their personal, public and official identities.”
(Friedson 2001:84)
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Friedson (ibid) notes that the credentials it results in are not the only valuable aspect
of ‘professional schooling.’ As one of the institutions supporting Friedson’s ideal
type, the professional qualification also serves to provide the intellectual basis for the
professions jurisdictional claims and its relation to other occupations. Friedson notes
that the individuals and processes involved in administering professional schooling
usually also serve as a factory where new theory is developed and new knowledge is
produced. Qualifications and the schooling process also contribute to a practitioner’s
commitment to an occupation invoking a shared identity and sense of community
among all those who have passed through it (ibid).
Gibson & Borodzicz (2006) have drawn attention to the difficulties corporate security
has faced in identifying a single core of knowledge on which a professional credential
might be based. Given these difficulties, opportunities to create a professional
qualification derived from the core knowledge of security management have been
limited. While a number of different qualifications, ranging from certificate to
postgraduate in nature, were mentioned in the course of the interviews with the
security managers there is little evidence to suggest that any of them bolstered
security management in the fashion alluded to by Friedson (2001).
About a quarter of the security managers held a security management qualification of

some kind. Of these managers a very small number felt that their current employment
had been dependant on their qualification. In the most limited sense these security
members benefited from some shelter from the general labour market. However, they
were by far the exception. Generally a qualification, of any kind, is not a pre-requisite
for working in corporate security in either the formal sense of it being a legal
requirement, as in medicine, or the informal sense, where possession of a specific
qualification has become a convention, as in HRM. As such the qualifications, which
exist around security management cannot be said to offer the discipline any
significant shelter from general labour markets as Friedson’s ideal model suggests
they ought.

The discussions with our security managers revealed that they distinguished between
the concepts of being ‘professional’ and being ‘a professional’. The security mangers
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without exception felt that they were ‘professional’ in the self-regarding sense of the
notion. However, the majority did not feel that they could credibly claim to be ‘a
professional’ in the sense of belonging to a profession, owing to the relatively low
level of maturity which their occupation demonstrates.
Their assessment of the work which remains to be done before the occupation can
claim professional status is corroborated by a comparative analysis between what
currently exists, in terms of professional institutions and capabilities, and what should
ideally exist. Friedson’s (2001) ideal model of a profession includes a grounding in a
theoretical body of knowledge, the ability to engage in occupational negotiation,
exclusive jurisdiction over the occupations chosen field and shelter from general
labour markets based on a qualification. The analysis suggests that, while the
occupation has made recent advances in relation to some of these criteria, it does not
yet adequately fulfil any of them.
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7. A Proposed Professional Project for Corporate Security.
7.1 Introduction.
The preceding chapters of this thesis have been directed at:
• examining the types of people who are, and who will be, employed in the
field of corporate security now and in the future
• adding substance to the widely perceived issues of status which face
corporate security management
• examining how others occupations have addressed similar status problems
through professional projects
• offering an insight into corporate security manager’s views about
professionalisation and examine the progress which corporate security’s
professionalisation efforts have made to date.
Based on the views of our security managers professionalism, Friedson’s (2001) ideal
type and Larson’s (1977) concept of the ‘professional project’, this chapter is intended
to outline a broad, strategic roadmap, which the corporate security as an occupation
may consider as a template for a route to genuine professional status.
7.2 Corporate Security’s Professional Project.

The professional project proposed in this chapter is broken into five distinct elements:
1.) A conversation about corporate security’s professional future.

2.) Developing the capacity for occupational negotiation.
3.) Boundary work.
4.) Occupational closure.
5.) Monopolisation of supply.
These five elements of the corporate security roadmap are not sequential nor are they
neatly contained separate areas of activity. While an initial ‘conversation’ about
corporate security’s professional future would be a sensible pre-requisite to the other
elements of the roadmap, it is likely that, given shifting work patterns, societal
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contexts and the length of time over which corporate security’s professional project
would unfold, that this initial debate would become something of a periodic dialogue.
The purpose of such a dialogue should be to consider what any professional project
had achieved and what its next sub-goal should be. Similarly, most of the elements are
reciprocal in nature. The ability to act cooperatively and in unison in order to partake
in occupational negotiation is also essential if a universal qualification is to be
developed and occupational closure achieved. In return, studying for a qualification
which is common to all those practising the occupation, will undoubtedly breed a
sense of community further cementing the discipline’s capacity for occupational
negotiation (Friedson 2001).
Inherent in Larson’s (1977) accounts of the various professional projects which

occupations have embarked upon is the idea that professional projects are essentially
cynical undertakings by greedy self- serving occupational elites seeking to harness
their owns skills and knowledge as a commodity to be traded for economic
betterment. Larson argued that this greed aggravates society’s inequalities to the
detriment of its most disadvantaged members. As discussed in the previous chapter,
these negative assumptions have come to be challenged in academic circles. While the
roadmap outlined below will focus on harnessing corporate security manager’s skills
and knowledge in order to make them a more marketable commodity, the experience
of this project also contradicts Larson’s assertions that occupational elites’ only
considerations are personal gain.
In fact, in the case of corporate security management, the most active and enthusiastic
advocates of a reinvigorated professional project have been members of the
occupation who have least to gain personally. They have already enjoyed long careers
in the field and do not expect to reap the rewards of their efforts. In any case, in
achieving their positions as occupational elites, they already personally enjoy many of
the benefits associated with being a professional in terms of economic rewards and
status. Thus, the research has revealed a somewhat altruistic element to professional
projects in which professional elites seek to pave the way for those who follow.
Larson’s model cannot account for this phenomenon. Nevertheless, it is the means by
which occupations professionalise rather than the spirit behind their
professionalisation, which makes Larson’s work of relevance here.
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7.3 A Conversation about Corporate Securities Professional Future.
The historical professional projects which Larson observed entailed “…attempts to
translate one order of scare resources, special knowledge and skills, into another-
social and economic rewards” (Larson 1977: xvii). While very deliberate
undertakings, these historical professional projects unfolded over the course of
decades, even centuries, and as such it was impossible for a single generation to
envisage the beginning and the end of a professional project. Writing in 1977 Larson
observed that the number of occupations embarking on professional projects was
increasing, and that contemporary professional projects were becoming more acute in
that occupations were becoming more adept at translating their knowledge and skill
into marketable commodities. With proper planning, a conducive social and work
context and sufficient intensity of effort, occupations such as HRM have moved from
a state very similar to that of contemporary corporate security to credible professional
status easily within the span of a single generation of practitioner.
However, the notion of working towards becoming a profession in the institutional

sense is not without its detractors. Both in broad occupational terms, and more
specifically among our security managers, concerns have been raised about the future
of professional work and the worth of pursuing a professional future. Gold, Rodgers
& Smith (2002) note that, while the system of professions has dominated UK society
for much of the last century, it is a system, which is increasingly being challenged
from a number of directions. Advances in technology and the ease with which
information can be sieved and accessed threaten the markets for specialised
knowledge on which professional work is based (Pearson 1999). Deregulation and the
growing faith in free markets and competition have presented a further challenge to
professional work. Powell, Brock & Hinings (1999) cite the experience of
accountants, the efforts by others to rountinise their operations and the falling
profitability of audit work as examples of the pressures which the appetite for free
markets has placed on professions since the 1980s. The declining social recognition
given to professional work is probably the most frequently commented upon aspect of
the challenges facing professionals. Scase (1999) highlights the increasing distrust,
cynicism and suspicion of authority as features of modern society, which do not lend
themselves easily to the self- regulation and autonomy long prized as the central
privileges of professional work.
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While the majority of our security managers favoured professionalisation of some
kind some of the security managers clearly held different perceptions of what the
problems facing security management were, what professionalisation entailed and
how it could help address the problems the occupation faced. Not all the security
managers subscribed to the general consensus described in the last chapter
surrounding the need for a theoretical grounding for security. Among some of the
mangers there was a perception that there was little lacking in the substance of
security management. These managers felt that corporate security management met
the criteria of a profession and that the status issues they faced stemmed entirely from
the disciplines failure to communicate its good work. Accordingly, these security
mangers felt that the most important function of professionalising was to develop
mechanisms and structures, which would enable corporate security to broadcast its
merits:
“I feel that, really, we are professional enough. We just do not get the
recognition. I don’t think that what we require is a whole load of navel
gazing, we have to get out there and make people realise what our work
involves.”
If corporate security management is to invest the effort and resource associated with a
professional project and to achieve the collective action that a professional project
strives for, as an occupation it must first test whether it can come to a single agreed
analysis of the problems it faces. If this can be achieved it must then be decided
whether pursuing a professional project is the most appropriate way of advancing the
occupation. On this point, despite the challenges to professionals and professional
work outlined above, there have been recent compelling defences of the system of
professions:
“I have analysed and then discarded the criticism of professions which has
become increasingly common over the past few decades. I do not deny the
occasional truth of those criticisms, nor the need to make professional
institutions more honest, but the criticisms have failed to deal with the
central problem: how else to nurture and control occupations with
complex esoteric knowledge and skill, some of which provide us with
critical personal services and others with functional knowledge without
which much of our standard of living could not exist.”
(Friedson 2001: 220)
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The challenges facing professions do not appear to have discouraged other
occupations from striving for professional status. In the UK, for example, the number
of jobs in the professions increased by 50 percent between 1981 and 1999 (Skills task
Force 2000). The evidence from our small sample of corporate security managers
suggests that consensus concerning the problems which face the discipline can be
achieved and that corporate security managers are broadly aligned in their desire to
address these problems through a professional project. If this turns out indeed to be
the case, corporate security will have to develop for itself the capability to enter into
occupational negotiation.
7.4 Occupational Negotiation.

The space which professions occupy must be initially justified and continually
maintained through occupational negotiation. This occupational negotiation takes
place with the state with whom the occupation must negotiate shelter from general
labour markets together with the authority to regulate its own work. Furthermore,
occupational negotiation is entered into with other occupations and professions in
order to establish and maintain the boundaries of a professions work and guard
against encroachment across those boundaries.
In order to make occupational negotiation feasible, and to engage in it credibly, an

occupation must have a means of establishing a single coherent position on the
particular topic for negotiation and must have institutional structures capable of
representing, advocating and deliberating on that position as necessary. Historically
professions have established a capability for occupational negotiation through the
creation of a professional association or institute. As such, professional associations
have long been seen as a marker of professionalisation: “…in particular the existence
of a single, identifiable national association, is clearly a prerequisite of public or legal
claims on the part of a would- be profession” (Abbott 1988: 83). Almost every
measure of professionalisation includes an examination of the capacity for
occupational negotiation. The award of chartered status by the Privy Council, for
instance, demands that:
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“(a) the institution concerned should comprise members of a unique
profession, and should have as members most of the eligible field for
membership, without significant overlap with other bodies.”
(Privy Council 2006)
While much work has been done on how, once organised, an occupation pursues
professional status, much less consideration appears to have been given to how a mass
of individuals with a variety of interests manage to organise itself into a group
coherent enough to undertake a professional project. Berman (2006) has documented
the fierce early institutional competition between different factions of medicine. This
competition was eventually resolved through the creation of the British Medical
Association (BMA), which in turn facilitated medicine’s rise to true professional
status. The disagreements between the different medical factions were profound and
went to the heart of what it meant to be a doctor. The number of factions competing to
be the voice of professional doctors was few but the gulf in thinking and attitude
between them was enormous. Corporate security management currently appears to
suffer from the opposite problem in that, based at least on the experience of this
project, there are no huge ideological issues to be overcome between security
managers but, as a discipline, it is balkanised and disparate. As one security manager
put it:
“Our problem is, we proliferate. If you look on the web there are all sorts
of different bodies. All with good intentions but there is a danger in that.
Who actually represents the industry? If the government has a question in
our field who does it go to get a sensible answer?”
As discussed in the last chapter, between them our small sample of security managers
acknowledged or stated an affiliation with thirteen different groups, associations or
institutes with corporate security managers making up part of their membership. Not
all the groups sought to be a representative voice of security managers, some had
much broader security ‘industry’ focus and a few were by invitation only. However,
the existence of all these groups, vying for the time and contributions of security
managers, inevitably inhibits the chances of corporate security engaging credibly or
successfully in the occupational negotiation which is crucial to a professional project.
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The Security Institute (TSI) is currently proud of its status as a source of information
and consultation for government and is arguably at the fore of the associations
claiming to represent corporate security managers. While it has many of the
institutional structures required of a professional association, the disparate state of the
occupation means that it has a membership running only into the hundreds, someway
short of the magnitude required for credible occupational negotiation. Currently,
much of the administrative work of TSI is duplicated elsewhere, resources are wasted
and the potential membership is divided. If security management is to embark on a
reinvigorated professional project it must address its capability to project a single
coherent voice with which it can engage in occupational negotiation.
Provided that corporate security as an occupation decides that it is prudent to embark

on a professional project of the type outlined here, and provided that it can develop its
capability for occupational negotiation, it can then begin to address the core purpose
of the professional project- the attempt to lift the value of security managers
knowledge and in turn improve the status and economic reward they are afforded for
dispensing that knowledge. For corporate security, this thesis proposes that attempts
to do this should encompass boundary work and occupational closure before ideally
culminating in monopolization of the field. Essentially, the goal of these three
elements, in combination with the occupational negotiation already discussed, is to
harness the skills and knowledge of the corporate security discipline so that they
become a tradable commodity, controlling the supply of that commodity so that its
value, and the status of the practitioners who dispense it, is raised. The successful
operation of this process is represented below in figure 7.1 and figure 7.2.
In its unreformed state (figure 7.1) Occupation X is discernable but not distinct from
the general labour market. Its boundaries are unclear and the content of the work
which it lays claim to within the boundaries is not explicit. Movement between
Occupation X and the general labour market is not subject to any formal restrictions.
It is impossible to identify exactly who is inside and who is outside of Occupation X.
For the purpose of this model client markets are constituted by those who pay for and
consume a specific service. In the case of corporate security managers, the client
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market is made up of the companies who employ security managers and make use of
their specialist security management advice.
In 7.1 the movement of services from the labour market to the client market is
relatively unstructured. Clients may or may not realise that they have a problem which
requires solving. In the case of clients who do not realise they have a problem the
labour market’s efforts to inform them are disparate, uncoordinated and possibly
contradictory. For these reasons messages from the labour market are unconvincing
and fail to fully penetrate the client market. The client may leave the problem
unsolved, or turn to the general labour market rather than the relevant occupation for a
solution. In the case of clients who do realise they have a problem, which they cannot
solve, identifying which service is appropriate for them can be difficult.
Figure 7.1: An occupation in its unreformed state.
Labour Market Client Market
Occupation X
Movement of services
Free movement of labour in and out of the occupation
Messages projected from the Labour Market to the Client Market
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The exact nature of Occupation X’s work is un-codified and unclear. The client
cannot easily decide what their service is and whether it is appropriate for their
problem. If they do decide that Occupation X has the appropriate service they are then
faced with the task of discerning which service providers belong to Occupation X and
will be properly experienced and qualified to provide their solution. Occupation X is
not closed from the general labour market and potentially anybody from the
(opportunistic) general labour market can claim to be competent to provide the client
with the service they require. For the same reason that clients are not qualified to
solve the original problem themselves, they are unlikely to be well placed to decide
which offers of help are credible and which are not.
The views of our security managers indicate that, while corporate security as an
occupation has moved beyond this most extreme theoretical state of an unreformed
occupation, it still suffers many of the same problems, albeit to a lesser degree. As a
disparate uncoordinated occupation corporate security has struggled to communicate
the worth of a specialist security management sufficient widely. This means that over
50percent of the UK’s largest businesses do not employ it and do not realise the
benefits of employing it (chapter three). In terms of our model, these are the clients
who do not realise they have a problem. The lack of a codified theoretical core of
knowledge means that corporate security has struggled to lay exclusive claim to an
area of work. Security managers bemoan the difficulty which employers face in
distinguishing between themselves, their competent peers and those who do not have
the required skills, but are not restricted from entering the occupation. The results of
this phenomenon can be seen in the mixed success of the function from organisation
to organisation.
Figure 7.2 represents Occupation Y, which has undergone a successful professional

project and enjoys the market closure associated with professional status. Occupation
Y has engaged in boundary work, which means that the services it claims jurisdiction
of are easily discerned. It has established occupational closure, which means that it
can restrict entry into the occupation to those who can demonstrate the appropriate
knowledge. Thus, Occupation Y has the ability to project a single coherent message,
which much more successfully penetrates the client market.
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Thanks to the credible message it can project Occupation Y is well placed to persuade
clients who do not realise that they have a problem. Clients who realise they have a
problem can easily discern whether Occupation Y provides a relevant service for them
and occupational closure means that they can equally easily distinguish between those
who belong to Occupation Y and those who do not. Those who do, by inference,
possess certain skills and knowledge. The skills and knowledge of those who do not
belong to the occupation represent something of an unknown quantity to clients, and
as such they are at a competitive disadvantage in the race to provide the required
service to the client.
7.2: A successful professional project.

Labour Market Client Market
Movement of Services Restricted

Occupational Access
Occupation Y featuring
Boundary Work Message projected
Occupational Closure from the Profession
Provided that the client considers that their problem is of sufficient complexity and
importance to merit the premium they will have to pay for the assured service
provided from Occupation Y, they will logically always choose the service of
occupation Y. Thus, the professional project is complete and a professional monopoly
is achieved. Occupation X and Y represent a simplistic model of the transition that
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has historically been made from occupation to profession. The idea behind a
professional project for corporate security would be to move it from a state close to
Occupation X, as far as possible, to a state which resembles Occupation Y.
7.5 Boundary Work.

Fournier describes boundary work as: “… the constitution of an independent and self-
contained field of knowledge” (1999: 69). She argues that such activity is the basis
upon which professions build their authority and exclusivity, and as such, it is central
to the business of establishing and replicating professions. As various bodies of
knowledge become legitimised and professionalised through boundary work and
professional projects, the boundary areas become a battlefield on which power games
are played as rival bodies compete for status and influence. A contemporary example
of this is the international posturing for position between accountants and lawyers, as
members of rival professional bodies, seeking to claim the domain of the international
legal scene through the national position of their knowledge boundaries (Dezalay
1995).
Academic literature on boundary work builds a picture of competing professions,

acquisitive if not imperialist in nature, all prepared to annex knowledge, and
associated work, which lies at the fringes of their own field and which cannot be
claimed or defended by rival professions. This is a picture, which is borne out in our
HRM case study (chapter 5) but also in the direct experience of our security
managers. When asked about sources of conflict in their working lives, a number of
security managers cited the blurred boundaries between their own work and that of
other functions:
“I wouldn’t put it as strongly as ‘conflict’ but sometimes there are

problems with demarcation… other people think that you are fishing in
their pond… Yes, I would say it probably is more of a problem for us than
some of the other functions”
Another manager put it even more graphically “…it can be irritating. I find myself
having to ring different managers and say to them, you know, ‘get your dick out of
my custard’” (Security Director, Services). Given the competitive nature of the
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system of professions it is essential that corporate security engages in boundary work
and attempts to credibly lay claim to the activities it wishes to be considered as its
areas of professional specialization.
A profession seeks to isolate and then control an area of work but what will constitute
that area is dependant on factors of rationalisation and expedience as much as any
naturally occurring boundaries. Focoult (1977) has demonstrated that even a
profession apparently so naturally and neatly isolated as medicine was not always
considered a separate entity. Medicine has had its boundaries shaped by social and
economic factors, as well as the personalities involved in its professionalisation (ibid).
In order to keep this project manageable the research has concentrated on ‘corporate’
security management as its unit of analysis. However, it has quickly become clear that
in fact corporate security managers by themselves are an unlikely focus for
professional isolation and that the principles of their work bears enough in common
with the work of other types of security managers as to necessitate a broader
conception of what a security management profession will encompass. However, just
as all other professions have done, security management as a profession will also have
to set perimeters and, to an extent, set itself adrift of those who fall outside those
perimeters. Conclusions on how the activities of security management, risk
management, security consultancy and private investigation (to name but a few) will
fit together are beyond the remit of this study, nevertheless, must be determined as
part of an aspiring profession’s boundary work.
Decisions on the breadth of a re-invigorated professional project will have to take into
account the requirement that the profession has a theoretical underpinning. It seems
likely that not everybody in the new profession will precisely be ‘corporate security
managers’ but, everybody in the new profession must engage in work which springs
from the same core principles and theories. Before it can be established which work
springs from this core knowledge, this core knowledge must be assembled.
Professional knowledge is defined by the fact that it cannot be entirely taught from a
textbook, that it requires the skill and experience of a professional to interpret and
implement it in a given situation. Yet, at the same time, a professional’s claim to
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professional status is based on their possession of specialist knowledge and there must
be some hard evidence of that knowledge in the form of a codified theoretical core.
For example, HRM has codified a core of knowledge on which their work is based in
the form of their ‘Professional Standards’ (CIPD 2004). Similarly, Internal Audit has
its ‘Code of International Standards’ (IIA 2006), Insurance has its ‘Job Role and
Competency Framework’ (CII 2006) and Librarians and Information Professionals
have their ‘Body of Professional Knowledge’ (CILIP 2004). The absence of any
comparable core of theory within security management was remarked upon by one of
our security managers:
“There is no core central knowledge or best practice- it just doesn’t exist.

Because of that security people tend to invent things and respond
pragmatically and to some extent you could do that without ever having
an understanding of risk.”
Abbot (1988) is emphatic about the importance of a theoretical grounding arguing that
the evolution of and interrelationships among professions are determined by how a
profession controls its required knowledge and skills. “Practical skill grows out of an
abstract system of knowledge, and control of the occupation lies in control of the
abstractions that generate the practical techniques” (ibid: 77). He argues further that,
in the competitive system of professions, without professional knowledge, rooted in
abstract principles and theories, a profession cannot redefine its problems and tasks,
cannot defend its turf and cannot hope to seize other activities, which it may hope to
perform. Abstract theoretical cores of knowledge are, according to Abbot, “…the
ultimate currency of competition between professions.” In charting the rise and fall of
various professions over time Abbot cites the key variable as “…the power of the
professions’ knowledge systems, their abstracting ability to define old problems in
new ways” (ibid: 79).
7.6 Occupational Closure.
Occupational closure refers to the raising of barriers between practitioners in a

particular occupational field and the larger general labour market. Witz (1992)
observes various means by which occupations pursue closure of their field. Foremost
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among these is ‘exclusionary closure’ which is the exercise of power downwards by
an occupational association concerned with defining the shape and nature of an
occupational membership. This type of occupational closure may be thought of as a
proprietor locking all but one of the many entrances to a large building. Before the
doors were locked people could flow in and out of the building at their leisure. The
proprietor could not restrict the number of people entering the building, could not tell
how many people were in the building and could not enforce any criteria he might
have for the type of people he wanted in the building. But equally problematic for the
proprietor, being the generous and helpful type, was the fact that they could not greet
everybody who entered the building, could not offer help to those who were visiting
the building for the first time and, with people coming and going as they pleased,
could not breed any sense of community within the building.
Having established the perimeters of a building with boundary work, occupational

closure means locking all but one of the entrances and then controlling how many
people enter, what type of people enter, what people must know before they can enter
and ensuring that people who do not act according to the rules of the building are
forced to leave and refused re-entry.
MacDonald (1995) notes that the initial closure efforts of British psychologists during
the 1980s were typical of many professional projects in that they involved agreeing
definitions of membership for those already practising the occupational skills as well
as defining criteria by which future entrants into the closed occupational field will be
judged. The former of these is commonly referred to as the ‘grandfather’ clause while
the latter most commonly refers to the passing of professional exams and obtaining of
professional qualifications.
As the most potent tool which can be used for occupational closure qualifications, and
the attendant examinations, play an important part in the professional project. As will
be seen below, successful monopolisation of a market depends on demonstrating to
consumers of a service that all who belong to a closed occupation have the requisite
knowledge for the work and thus are more employable than those outside the closed
occupation whose knowledge cannot be assured. Qualifications are the easiest and
most widely credible way of doing this.
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Occupational closure also entails controlling the numbers of people who enter an
occupation. Closing all the doors to a building is worthless if the proprietor then
proceeds to let as many people as wish rush through the remaining entrance without
consideration for the capacity of the building. As occupations professionalise the
number of people seeking to enter them increases. In order to prevent professionals
disproportionately increasing supply and undermining demand, they use qualifications
as a means of controlling numbers entering the field. Sweet (1990) has observed a
correlation between the demand for professional services and the difficulty of
professional examinations:
“…professional examinations have notably low pass rates, generally

between 25 and 50percent… this was an indicator that professional exams
were being used as a deliberate means of restricting entry to professions
by setting high standards.”
(Sweet 1990: 6)
Friedson (2001) notes that genuine professions do not merely recruit and train those
who will enter their ranks. What sets the professional qualification apart from those of
other occupations is that is that the educating process also serves as a means for
“systemizing, refining and expanding the body of knowledge over which the
profession claims jurisdiction” (ibid: 96). Friedson has observed that the process of
educating professionals is itself a factory from which new professional knowledge is
produced and existing professional knowledge is refined. If this is true for the fresh-
faced graduates who embark on other professional qualifications, it is likely to be the
case even more so for corporate security candidates bringing with them a career’s
worth of experience. Exposing aspiring corporate security managers to academia and
encouraging them to refine and codify their security expertise has the potential to
produce much, urgently required, core theory and knowledge for the discipline.
The educating process may also help to remedy the arms length relationship which
appears to exist between security management and academia. All professions must be
grounded in an academic base. Abbot notes that the ability to refine problems and
solutions to abstraction and apply that abstract to new scenarios is crucial to the
progress of professions (Abbott 1988). Typically, the role of abstraction falls to
academia, the role of application to the practitioners. But there is a natural tension
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between the two, the need to document and refine, versus the need to achieve results
and meet targets. In other fields this tension is bridged in part by individuals who are
practitioners in their first incarnation and academics in their second. In corporate
security most are already in their second career and as such there are few academics
in the field of security management, and even fewer with practical corporate security
experience. Inevitably this dynamic has fostered some tension:
“We end up despairing of the universities. In the past we have wanted

them to produce things. But, as seems to be the case with academics,
things revolve around their interests rather than our needs.”
The educating process is likely to ease this tension, enabling corporate security
managers to more readily articulate what they want, and academia to more accurately
deliver it.
As discussed in the previous chapter, while there are currently a variety of different
qualifications related to security management our security manager’s repeatedly
bemoaned the absence of a single, widely recognised and credible qualification to the
extent that many felt that a universally recognised qualification should be the single
highest priority of any professional project:
“…first of all the different organisations must stop competing with each
other. We have to have a single qualification that we can throw all our
effort and resources behind. We badly need something that people
recognise and can say ‘oh, he has that so he must be able to do this, this
and this.’”
“We are never going to get there if we continue with this plethora of
competing organisations. ASIS, ISMA, they all offer security
qualifications of some sort but I don’t think there is anybody in this
company apart from me, and I would struggle, who could tell you what
they represented or what they are worth.”
Occupational closure need not just be about restrictive practices and limiting numbers.
The upheaval associated with the move from the public sector to a senior position in
116
the private sector, described in chapter four, was commented upon by almost all of
our managers. Corporate security management, lacking the direct impact on an
organisations bottom line of other functions, is inclined to co-operation and is
characterised by the quite free sharing of sensitive information, often even between
competing businesses. Yet this co-operation is often informal and, while support
networks exist, they are discreet and built upon personal trust. For the new corporate
security manager, first happening across one of these support networks, and then
being accepted into it, can be a haphazard process. Occupational closure offers to
lessen this problem by effectively funnelling new practitioners into contact with the
central institutions of the occupation and mitigating its initial ‘sink or swim’ nature.
Like the helpful proprietor wishing to offer information to those visiting his building
for the first time, this provides corporate security the chance to offer assistance to
those entering the field:
“You learn the craft out there… but to then take it and apply it in a
executive management context you need another set of skills, and those
aren’t security skills, those are executive skills… The role of an institute
should be as a sand pit where security people can make that transition
relatively comfortably.”
If corporate security as an occupation can create the capacity for occupational

negotiation, successfully engage in boundary work and achieve a degree of
occupational closure it will have already gone some way to achieving the final
element of its professional project, the drive to monopolize the provision of security
management.
7.7 Monopolisation.
Market closure and monopoly over the supply of a specific service or branch of
knowledge has been described as the ‘glittering prize’ of the professional project
(Abbot 1988:17). During the 1970s and 1980s Anglo- American sociological analysis
of the professions came to concentrate on their quest for monopolies and market
closure. Throughout the period professions were considered almost as conspiracies.
Critical theorists (Larson 1977; Johnson 1972) argued that monopolies served only to
promote their occupation interests. Larson’s work is still frequently cited, and, while
117
the search for professional monopolies is now a broadly accepted feature of
professions and professional projects, the negative consequences of professional
monopolies and profession’s fiercely self-interested reasons for pursuing them are
aspects of Larson’s analysis which have increasingly been challenged in academic
circles. Friedson (2001) has bemoaned the ‘ideological shibboleths’, which surround
professional monopolies and urges society to recognise that, while the curtailment of
free markets has become anathema in many aspects of modern life, the need for
professions to benefit from market closure represents a special case. The economic
efficiency of free markets demands that prices be kept low and that work is always
calibrated to the interests of the consumer. Friedman (ibid) argues that exposing
professions and professional knowledge to these principles would be devastating:
“…economically successful goods and services are those that consumers

understand, desire and are interested in. if professions could survive at all
without shelter they would be popularised and lose some if not most of
their disciplinary character and value. It is economic monopoly that
reduces this necessity for modifying or at least diluting disciplinary
knowledge and skill so as to gain a greater resemblance to everyday
knowledge.”
(Friedman 2001: 23)
Nevertheless, as academic interest and esteem for the professions has begun once
again to rise, the public’s preparedness to defer unquestioningly to professional
knowledge has begun to wane. Gold, Rogers & Smith (2002) note that this is a
process which has been hastened in the last decade by a number of scandals, not least
Harold Shipman and Enron, which have, in the eyes of the public, highlighted either
the inability or unwillingness of professions to properly regulate their members.
Inevitably, this growing public disquiet has been reflected in government policy and,
under successive Labour Governments, the supply of professional services and the
existence of some professional monopolies have been viewed as a problem: “I don’t
see why consumers should not be able to get legal services as easily as they can buy a
tin of beans”, remarked Department of Constitutional Affairs Minister, Bridget
Prentice in October 2005 (Prentice 2005).
The result of this attitude is that established professions have had to fight to maintain
their monopoly and the chances of emerging professions establishing the near
118
watertight market closure which law and medicine have enjoyed have greatly
diminished. Larson (1977) notes that successful professional monopolies require the
outside sponsorship of authority in order for legitimacy. Historically professions
directed their claims for the right to monopoly to the social elites and gentry. Steadily
throughout the 19th century the source of authority became the state, and professions
sought to convince governments to sponsor their professional projects with legal
entrenchment of occupational closure, for example through mandatory licenses to
practice medicine. However, with the declining willingness of the state to support
existing monopolies, yet alone sponsor new ones, emerging management professions
such as internal audit and HRM are dependant more than ever on the patronage of the
users of their services for the degree of shelter from the market, which they can
achieve.
HRM provides a useful model for corporate security in terms of pursuing market
closure in the contemporary, monopoly unfriendly, world. Our case study reveals that,
since the 1980s, HRM has made great progress in persuading industry that there is
significant competitive advantage to be gained from well-informed HRM practices.
Further, it has convinced industry that it should implement these practices using
specialist HRM management from the relevant, occupationally closed area of the
labour market. In short, the profession has successfully transmitted the message that
businesses should take HRM seriously, and that the most prudent way of doing so is
by employing individuals whose knowledge and competence have already been
assessed and so come with a level of assurance.
HRM has succeeded in convincing industry that the management of people offers the
possibility of a competitive edge through the various strategies described in chapter
five. The most important of these has been the use of evidence-based research:
“We’ve produced case studies of business where we think HR has not

been properly regarded and contrasted that with business where HR is
really working. When you can amass that sort of data about how
important it is that people are properly managed and developed and that
doing so makes a sustainable difference in an organisation, it makes a
powerful case, and changes the way people think about the function.”
(Christine Williams, 2006)
119
As HRM achieved success in persuading industry that as a management activity it
could make a difference the IPD, and latterly CIPD faced the separate task of
persuading industry that its members were the best qualified to deliver that specialist
management. This has been done through boundary work, occupational negotiation
and closure. The CIPD has maintained a running dialogue with industry in an effort to
decipher what it expects its HR managers to be able to contribute to the business and
translate that into its professional standards and the continued professional
development of its members.
“We have established that there are certain things HRM practitioners must
know. If you run a business the only way you can be sure your HRM staff
know those things is if they have been accredited by us.”
(William 2006)
The CIPD sells it members expertise to industry not just on the basis of what they will
know when they get the job but also on there ability to keep up to date with new
trends and ideas while responding to the needs of the business. CIPD members can do
this because of the huge information sharing infrastructures it has put in place for its
membership, not least its online communities.
The success of these strategies is borne out firstly by the huge increase in the numbers
of businesses which have accepted the need for carefully planned people management
strategies and have opted from HRM specialists, rather than general management, to
implement those strategies (WERS 2004) The success of the CIPD in selling the
calibre of its members to industry is reflected in the fact that 80percent of recruitment
adverts for HRM managers now stipulate CIPD membership. In of our occupation X
and occupation Y models, HRMs professional project has been a success to date
having closed the occupation from the general labour market, projecting a credible
penetrating message to its client market and proceeding to monopolise the provision
of a particular service to that market.
“HR practitioners they are now getting a better deal out of there
employment in terms of the way they are recognised and rewarded. HR
has risen in profile and is now better placed within organisations to
implement good HR practices… As a result HRM has moved a long way
from being the least important of the management functions.”
(Williams 2006)
120
If corporate security is to successfully embark on a professional project, achieve a
degree of market closure, and similarly enjoy the benefits outlined by Williams it
must engage in the same strategies as HRM. As an occupation security management
must be able to demonstrate the different consequences for an organisation where
security is treated as a specialist management activity and an organisation where it is
not. To do this they must employ evidence-based research be it quantitative or
qualitative in nature. However, this requires consolidation and the pooling of the
occupations resources. HRM’s research output would certainly have been much less
prolific if it had operated on the basis of ten different groups with divided budgets,
different agendas and duplicated running costs.
If security management can demonstrate the advantages of its being treated as a

specialist management activity to industry it seems likely that the corporate world
would embrace the assurance of competence and articulation of capabilities which a
professional association would entail.
“…the CEO does not know what a security manager or director should
know or should be able to do. The CEO does not know if he has a good
security man or a bad one and, if he has a bad one without realising it,
there is every chance he will just write off the whole function”
Corporate security is certainly one of the most esoteric of the management activities.
The military and policing backgrounds of security managers are alien to the majority
of senior business figures and, with the content of the security managers job varying
from organisation to organisation, there does not appear to be any widely understood
conception of what the potential contribution of a security department is. If an
occupational association could, given these circumstances, formulate a set of
competencies which complimented the needs of industry and then guarantee that
everybody within its ranks would possess the requisite skills and knowledge, there is,
according to the experience of other similar occupations, no reason why a
professional monopoly and genuine professional status cannot be achieved.
121
8. Conclusions.
This research has been guided by the three research questions set out in chapter one.
8.1 What is the current status of corporate security as a business function within
the UK’s largest businesses?
The State of Corporate Security.

Among the security managers who have taken part in this study, widely held notions
about the mixed health of corporate security management as an occupation have
proven to be well founded. Our security managers enjoyed distinctly mixed fortunes
in their efforts to attract similar status for their work to that of their peers from other
areas of the business. While some of our security managers and directors were
confident that the leaders of their business understood and appreciated the value
which security could add to an organisation, equally there were a number of our
security managers who described their position within their organisation, and the
regard in which their work was held, in frustrated tones. The most successful of our
security managers cited their senior reporting lines and breadth of responsibilities as
evidence, while the most frustrated described a failure to include them in the planning
considerations of the business and the struggle to attract resources. The interviews
with our security managers painted a picture of an occupation which, at worst, lagged
behind the other functions of the business and, at best, could achieve equal status, but
had to work longer and harder to do so.
Background
Some have attributed the mixed fortunes of the occupation largely to its constituents
questioning their suitability for executive life in the corporate world coming from, as
most have, public sector police and military careers. However, this study suggests that
background alone does not provide adequate explanation for the state of corporate
security. While a few of our security managers appeared somewhat exasperated with
their experience of the private sector, equally a number offered convincing arguments
that the gap between public and private management was not unreasonably difficult to
span and that the slow convergence of the two meant the cross-over was becoming
easier all the time. Added to this, is the fact that almost all of the most respected
corporate security practitioners have come from public sector backgrounds. Their
122
ability to succeed in a profit driven environment does not appear to have been overly
inhibited by a former career in the police or the military.
System of Professions
Based on the analysis of our security managers and lessons from sociological study of
occupations and the professions, this thesis contends that the predicament which
corporate security faces stems partly from structural and organisational inadequacies
of security management as an occupation.
Sociological and management literature paints a picture of a highly competitive

system of management functions and professions. Each lays claim to an area of
knowledge and attempts to achieve monopoly over the specialised work related to that
area. However, the boundaries between the profession’s respective fields are in
continual flux as they lay competing claims to areas of knowledge and work, each
trying to annex attractive work at the boundaries of others, while protecting their own.
Our security managers described how this pattern was played out on a smaller scale
within their organisations. For example, the most successful managers and directors
had expanded their remits well beyond the traditional bounds of security, usurping the
responsibilities of other functions in the process.
Occupational Challenges
To be well equipped to survive and thrive in this environment occupations must be
dynamic and well organised. Members of an organisation must be able to act in
concert and project a single coherent voice if they are to manage their reputation,
lobby for improved position and persuade existing and potential consumers of their
service’s value and necessity. The research interviews with our security managers and
a survey of its institutional features suggest that corporate security, as an occupation
and aspiring profession, does not currently fit these criteria.
Corporate security is balkanised; perhaps no other management activity has a ratio of

groups, associations and institutes to practitioners as high as security does. The result,
as many of our managers observed, is that it cannot project a single representative
voice, cannot act decisively or in concert and so cannot put together a coherent
strategy for defending or bettering its position in relation to its occupational rivals.
123
The disparate nature of the occupation means that it cannot achieve closure or shelter
itself from the general labour market. Its problems are compounded by the absence of
a discernable theoretical core which acts to bind genuine professions together. Other
occupations and professions in the UK have developed formal systems of identifying
new knowledge and best practice and disseminating it around their membership.
Corporate security managers must compete with these other occupations on the basis
of sharing knowledge in small, cliquey networks. Most of our security managers
reported essentially teaching themselves the job. As a result, while other professionals
break new ground with improved practices, security managers re-discover that already
learnt elsewhere.
8.2 How have other business disciplines previously sought to improve their levels
of professionalism and status within business?
Lessons from Sociology

What study of the professions reveals is that at some stage all aspiring professions
have existed in this disparate state. Even such grand professions as medicine and law
struggled to achieve cohesion in their formative years. However, having done so, they
collectively worked to harness their specialised skill and knowledge so that it could be
used as a commodity and traded for the scarce resources they sought, namely status
and economic wealth. This is now widely understood as the professional project.
Occupations are continually becoming more adept at implementing professional
projects and, whereas the professional projects of law and medicine took decades and
centuries to deliver genuine professional status, occupations such as HRM have
successfully transformed value attached it their work, and the status of their
practitioners, in a matter of years.
8.3 What steps can corporate security take as a discipline to consolidate or

improve its status?
A professional Project.
Based on the successful experience of other comparable business occupations, and the
appetite for professionalisation apparent among the security managers participating in
this study, it is proposed that corporate security should set about addressing the
124
structural weakness of the occupation. It should consider lifting the value of its work,
and the status of its practitioners, through a reinvigorated professional project of its
own.
This study’s survey of corporate security management reveals that a number of the
activities which constitute professional projects has already been undertaken in one
form or another. However, in keeping with the disparate nature of the occupation, its
professional project efforts have been sporadic. While admirable, and indicative of an
ambition to progress, they have originated from different factions of the occupation at
different times. Lacking any overall co-ordination and unable to attract widespread
support from the estimated five to ten thousand security managers in the UK, these
activities appear to have undermined corporate security’s professional project as often
as they have advanced it.
• the first element of the proposed, reinvigorated professional project is a

conversation about the professional future of corporate security. Such a
conversation would require talks between the many representative voices
within the occupation to establish whether the desire for professionalisation
expressed among the mangers in this small study reflects attitudes in the
occupation more broadly.
• If this is the case, corporate security must then develop for itself, through
institutional structures, the capability for occupational negotiation with
other professions, industry and the state.
• Simultaneously, it must engage in boundary work to explicitly identify what
the body of knowledge belonging to a future profession would contain and
where its perimeters would lie.
• This study took corporate security as its unit of analysis however it seems
unlikely that ‘corporate’ security managers alone would constitute a
profession. Occupational closure, most likely in the form of a professional
qualification, would offer corporate security managers some shelter from the
general labour markets, the ability to control the supply of their work and thus
the ability to lift and maintain its value.
125
• The successful combination of these steps, according to the experience in
other occupations, might lead to the ‘glittering prize’ of professionalism, the
professional monopoly and genuine professional status.
8.4 A Future Corporate Security profession?

The theoretical model, which this study proposes cannot account for the human
barriers of politics and personality. Presumably if these barriers could be easily
overcome security management as an occupation would be less disparate than is
currently the case. However, other much larger bodies of people separated by much
deeper ideological divides have historically managed to form and maintain
professions.
Professions advance and recede through time due to any number of political, social
and economic factors. Similarly, the success of a professional project is contingent
upon a favourable context against which it may be played out. We have seen that the
convergence of conducive factors was crucial to the success of HRM. Presently, many
of the necessary ingredients appear to be in place for a re-focused professional project
in security management. Corporate governance, crime and terrorism have increased
the complexity and currency of the occupation at the same time as joint funding of
projects such as this suggest there is a mood for co-operation. With this in mind, it
does not seem unreasonable to conclude that more favourable conditions for a
resurgent professional project have probably never existed.
126
Appendix A.
Interview Invitation Letter.
Dear Sir/Madam.
My name is Anthony McGee. I am a graduate of Hull University and previously

worked for the Rt. Hon Bruce George MP. I am writing to ask if you would be
prepared t participate in the research I am currently undertaking which is aimed at
establishing the status of corporate security as a business function.
The research is based at the UK Defence Academy in Shrivenham and is being

sponsored by the Risk and Security Management Forum (RSMF), The Security
Institute (TSI), British American Tobacco and Prudential amongst others.
As the head of security for your organisation I would be grateful if you would allow
me to come and interview you in an effort to establish the status of corporate security
within your organisation and to gauge your views on how corporate security as a
discipline can be further professionalised.
The interview will take no longer than an hour and while your specific contribution
will be entirely anonymous I would be happy to acknowledge the help of you or your
organisation in the final report should you so wish.
If you are prepared to participate perhaps you could contact me by email or by phone
and we can arrange a date and time which is convenient or you.
Yours gratefully,
Anthony McGee.
127
Appendix B
Setting the Scene.
My name is Anthony McGee.
You may already be aware, but just to clarify; I am a student at The Resilience Centre,
Cranfield University and am working towards my MSc.
The project I am current working on is looking at the professionalisation of corporate

security management. This is one of approximately 30 interviews I hope to complete
with corporate security managers.
All the interviews are conducted on grounds of complete anonymity. Everything you
say in the interview will be in complete confidence and neither your name nor the
name of your organisation will be used in the final report.
The aim of these interviews is to establish the current state of corporate security and
to establish the need for, and possible means of, professionalisation.
Is it OK for me to tape-record this interview to save me trying to remember

everything and from writing it down?
I will of course turn of the tape recorder at any point in the interview should you wish
me to do so.
Do you have any comments before we start?
128
Appendix C
Interview Schedule
Section 1.
Background.
1) Could you briefly outline your career history prior to your current post?
2) What was it that attracted you to security management?
3) Could you outline how your company is structured?

(e.g. Business model, size, turnover, global reach.)
Section 2.
Security Managers Role.
1) What does your role as a security manager involve?
2) Does your role include work that you do not strictly consider to be in the domain of security?
Section 3.
Becoming a Security Manager.
1) How have you learnt to become a security manager?
2) What resources have you used in the process?

(e.g. Magazines, Courses?)
3) How would you rate these resources?
4) How important has the experience gained in your previous careers been in your work as a
security manager?
(If negative reply go to next section.)
5) Could you offer an example?
Section 4.
The Security Department.
1) Could you offer a brief outline of the development of your department?

2) How many people does the security department currently employ?
3) Have you detected any change in the board’s attitude to security in recent years?
4) Has your budget gone up, down or stayed the same in the last 12months?
5) Where is security currently positioned in the organisational structure of your business?
6) Are you satisfied with this positioning?
7) Do you feel that security currently has the potential to contribute more to the organisation than
it currently does?
(If no, go to next section.)
6) What are the limitations?
129
Section 5.
Information Sharing.
1) Do you currently share information or working practices with other security professionals?
(If no go to question 3)
i) How?
ii) Why?
2) What determines who you share information and working practices with?
(e.g. Those employed in a similar sector?)
3) Would you like to exchange information or working practices more?
(If no go to next section.)
i) With whom?
ii) Why?
iii) What are the current limitations?
Section 6.
Security as a Business Function.
1) How do you view the role of security within your organisation?

2) Do you consider it to be a business function alongside other functions such as Human
Resources or Accounting?
(If yes go to question 4.)
3) What are the differences?
4) What are your company’s priorities and objectives for this year? And how do your objectives
help to meet them?
5) Are you under pressure to demonstrate the return on investment security makes to your
organization?
(If no go to next section.)
5) How do you do this?
Section 7.
Security Managers as Professionals.
1) Do you consider security management to be a profession?

2) What status do you feel is afforded to you as a security professional relative to professionals
from other business functions?
i) Why is this
ii) Is this appropriate?
3) How frequently do you work in partnership with colleagues from other functions?
4) What, if any, are your major sources of internal conflict?
130
Section 8.
Institutions and Associations.
1) Are you aware of any institutions or associations which are aimed at corporate security
managers such as yourself?
(If no go to question 6 )
2) Which, if any, do you have the closest links with?
(If none go to question 4 )
3) What do you gain through your membership of that organisation(s)?
4) What do you feel are the aims of those organisations?
5) How successful are the organisations in achieving those aims?
6) Can you think of any services not currently adequately provided which would be of use to you
if delivered by an institution or association?
Section 9.
Qualifications.
1) Do you have any qualifications related to your role as a security manager?

i) What are they?
2) Have these qualifications proved useful in your work as a security manager?

3) Would you seek further qualifications?
i) Which ones?
4) Would you recommend formal qualifications to somebody seeking to enter the discipline?
i) Which ones?
5) Do you feel existing qualifications adequately meet the needs of security managers?
Thank you. Are there any further comments you would like to make on the topics we have covered or
on the conduct of the interview?
131
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CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY

DEFENCE COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY ANALYSIS

Academic Year 2005- 2006

CORPORATE SECURITY’S PROFESSIONAL PROJECT:

Supervisor: Dr. Helen Peck

Master of Science (by research).

Table of Contents iv- vii

CHAPTER 1: Introduction, Literature Study and Review. 1

CHAPTER 2: Research Design. 14

Chapter 4: The Background of a Security Manager: The Value

CHAPTER 6: Professions, Professionalism and Corporate Security. 86

6.4.3 Shelter from Labour Markets based on a Qualification. 98

CHAPTER 7: A Proposed Professional Project for Corporate

CHAPTER 8: Conclusions. 122

Appendix A: Interview Invitation Letter 127

“Key conclusion should be whether or not education and qualifications at

Other discussions of ‘professionalism’ in the context of corporate security have, at

1.2 Literature Search.

“Security Relates directly to the practice Tends to generate large numbers of

This further search effort unearthed 4 additional literature pieces judged to be of

Table 1.3. ‘ISI/ Index to Theses Search Results.’

ISI Web of Knowledge

1.3 Literature Review.

1.3.1 Is Security Management a Profession?

“Those employed in the private sector tend to be mature, retired people

• Specific standards and a code of ethics governing members.

Despite these challenging criteria to be met by professionals Simonsen was optimistic

“Other professions do not behave the way security professionals do- we

As well as expressing frustration Garcia also indirectly subscribes to Manunta’s

1.3.2 Sociological Perspective

• Skills based on theoretical knowledge

“…what makes a profession a profession is the sort of person who

While Larson’s cynical interpretation of the motivations behind the desire to

1.3.3 The Status of Corporate Security.

1.3.4 Summary of Literature Conclusions.

• While writers such as Wyllie (2000) argue that corporate security as a

• Despite the general appetite for further professionalisation in the field, no

1.4 Research Questions and Aims.

• What is the current status of corporate security as a business function within

Through an analysis of the development of established professions a further aim of

2.1 Research Strategy

According to Chalmers this is a process which continues indefinitely and as such a

“Through the creation of operational indicators, there is a tendency to

2.1.2 The inductive approach.

Ontology is the study of being, that is the nature of existence. While

2.3 Theoretical Perspectives.

Any attempt to go beyond this representation plunges science into the

Various aspects of positivism have been subject to “devastating criticism” (Blaikie

• Emphasizes inductive logic

A significant contributing factor to this apparent confusion appeared to be the way in

Interviews vs. Questionnaires.

“Yes it was very good, quite relaxing really.”

“It is nice to talk about the work.”

Strengths and Weaknesses of Interviews as a Research Technique.

Added to this problem of understanding is the problem that respondents may

2.4.2 Single-Case Study.

2.5 Summary of Research Design.

3.2 Corporate Security’s Historical Roots.