A STUDY OF THE ROLE AND PERFORMANCE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROFESSIONAL SECRETARIES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In this world it is known that professions have remarkable features that differentiation them from other professions depending on the effectiveness of the profession.

The layman’s idea about a profession is the nature of the job carried out by the members of the profession and its importance to the society. This is the reason it is mostly agreed that medicine and law are the only professions existing before the advent of the industrial revolution.

In recent past, secretarial profession was not regarded medicine and law irrespective of the indispensability of its service to the survival and growth of any organization.

Secretarial profession requires expertise training education and moral conduct. The position of secretaries then was not something to write home about, in a research carried out by Carr-Saunders (1964) confirmed the deteriorating social position of secretaries at that period when the issue of whether or not secretaries deserve the more honour to be consulted when matters affecting the conditions of their services are made. Secretaries were then regarded by people as more servant”.

Secretarial profession was the product of commercial school with in that period, those who attended commercial schools, were regarded as secretaries but in actual sense they ware typists.

However curriculum used in training of secretaries at the advent of industrial revolution changed to new techniques and equipment. Carr- Saunders (1964) also stated that the rise of the secretarial profession took place almost in our own time and may be traced down to profound changes which have come over the educational world.

Secretarial profession in Nigeria today is distinguished as one of the profession that exist as a result of its immense contributions to commercial social and political growth of any nation. It is generally conceived as an instrument for achieving national growth, more so now that there is a urgent need for it.