Leadership and Management in Field of Engineering

The scope of this paper discusses and reviews the research areas and subjects covered in engineering management research and how it applies to technical skills in the larger context of answering the leadership and management questions which face the technical organizations today. There are various subject matters under the umbrella of engineering management. They are as follows: 1) leadership and organization management, 2) operations, operations research, and supply chain, 3) management of technology, 4) new product development and product engineering. 5) systems engineering, 6) industrial engineering, 7) management science, 8) engineering design management.

As we focus on the category of leadership and management, it can be said that leadership is more directed to what should be done whereas management is focused on how it needs to be accomplished. It is mentioned in the article by Kern (2002) that leadership can be defined as the ability to cope with changes and realize a sense of direction. The subject of research and development has been grouped in the leadership category as it is a subject which is fundamentally fixated on identifying new products or technologies and, therefore, identified with change.

Building leadership improvement projects have turned out to be progressively prominent as there is a perceived interest for engineers who are more balanced and have leadership qualities. A survey of the writing identified with these projects demonstrate that they plan to give proficient aptitudes, for example, correspondence, development, inventiveness, execution, individual drive, and cooperation. National designing bodies have additionally perceived this need to instruct builds in administration (ASE, 2018).

Despite the wide recognition that leadership attributes are needed in engineering graduates, there still remains a lack of clarity on the definition of engineering leadership. Specifically, there appears to be confusion in trying to explain the engineering component in engineering leadership and articulating key differences between general leadership and engineering leadership. This research paper aims to propose a definition of engineering leadership. The definition will be based on qualitative analysis of the results from a survey distributed in a Canadian engineering context, and informed by relevant literature. Much of this research was carried out as part of a graduate degree project (Robyn Paul, Dr. Arindom, Emily Wyatt; ASE, 2018).

As the increase in demand in industry for engineering leaders is increasing so is the programs to educate the students and make them ready for the industry with all the qualities needed to make them effective leaders in the workplace. Which has turned out universities and colleges to offer programs such as Bachelor’s in Engineering Management, Master’s in Engineering Management and at some places PhD is also offered. Engineering Management can be considered as the Engineer’s MBA which helps an engineer for the professional development at the managerial level. It has been seen increase in the programs for the bachelors, masters and PhD programs and so have the interest of people in taking these courses (Daughton, 2017). Majority being the international students.

A successful engineer should possess an array of management and leadership skills apart from being technically competent. Leadership consists of decision making and judgement. It needs a certain set of core competencies and traits like visioning, communication, honesty, integrity, continuous learning, courage, tolerance for ambiguity and creativity (Riler et al., 2008).

Trends show that in the last 10 years, the science behind leadership lies in the concept of emotional intelligence. It is the most accurate predictor of success than any other forms of measure. But most educational programs focus mainly on the technical skills and miss the mark in nurturing and developing leadership abilities. In a study performed at the University of Colorado, it was seen that the students in liberal arts programs have considerably superior emotional quotients than the students of engineering. The former showed more growth in emotional quotient in the four years of undergraduate education compared to the engineering students. (Brown, 2004). Four elements of leadership consistently appear across modern literature: leadership is a process, requires collaboration, entails problem solving, and results in transformative change.

Student leadership, teamwork, and management skills are supposed to be the program outcomes by studying an engineering management course. According to ECSA engineering graduates are expected to understand the engineering management principles and must be able to apply them in their own work as a member of the team. They are expected to able to manage projects (Dr. Ann S Lourens).

Industry is approaching colleges to expand educational plans past designing substance to incorporate proficient authority (Farr and Brazil, 2009) and in 2005 the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2005) expressed that designing alumni required specialized magnificence, yet in addition group correspondence, moral thinking, worldwide and societal logical investigation aptitudes notwithstanding understanding work procedures. Farr and Brazil (2005) recommended that pioneer improvement is an individual procedure and an individual undertaking, regardless of authority preparing and advancement programs. In this way, the prior the improvement procedure is begun, the additional time the individual should develop into a position of authority. Moreover, architects must comprehend, focus on and grasp a deep-rooted learning frame of mind, always evaluating and assessing themselves. The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) (McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004) proposed to concentrate on the development of inborn and as of now learned practices and built up a structure dependent on three segments, to be specific evaluation, challenge and backing.

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As mentioned by Dr. Ann S Lourens what management principles include which later contributes as attributes of an engineer and helps in leadership too are as follows:

1. Planning: set objectives, select strategies, implement strategies, and review achievement.
2. Organizing: set operational model, identify and assign tasks, identify inputs, delegate responsibility, and authority.
3. Leading: give directions, set an example, communicate, motivate.
4. Controlling: monitor performance, check against standards, identify variations, and take remedial action.

The fundamental mission of the executives has continued as before, administrative errands have moved toward becoming progressively confused, for instance, because of the expanding assorted variety of workforce (Niitamo, 1999). This pattern shows in the representations developed: pioneers are directly seen as nursery workers, birthing specialists, stewards, hirelings, preachers, and facilitators, which talks about a make light of administrators' de forma position in any case, in the meantime, accentuates the potential for social de facto authority dependent on genuine pioneer results and execution (Hunt and Dodge, 2000). The present authority hypothesis has withdrawn from the mechanical worldview concentrated on order, control, and division of work and moved to a post-mechanical one highlighting connections, systems, trust, morals, and cooperation (Rosch and Caza, 2012). This likewise talks about a move in research foci: where authority was prior the subject of brain science thinks about, it is by and by analyzed through the viewpoint of social brain science, enthused about exploring the job of the person as an individual from the gathering and part of the social environment (McAdams and Pals, 2006).

Notwithstanding these higher-level patterns, changes in the thought of work are further adding to the unpredictability of the assignment of driving workers currently: staff can never again be submitted what's more, spurred by methods for money related motivations alone. Rather, different higher-level needs should be taken care of: workers need difficulties, they long for directors who are available and accessible for them, they request de-bureaucratization, and they call for sound working standards and values (Niitamo, 1999).

According to Pia Lappalainen (2015) leaders’ contextual performance increasingly drives productivity and effectiveness in knowledge-intensive work. Engineers when promoted based on their technical skills as managers they face problems later in the job because the newer job profile demands not just technical abilities to perform the job but also social skills and self-leadership ability. If you are not motivated to lead yourself it is not good to lead other people. To ensure that doesn’t happen analytic competence, inter-relation competence and emotional competence are the keys to tackle various aspects of emotional stress at work.

The management can be characterized as a development activity and used to keep balance, while the leadership is a strategy for improvement and vitality; the leadership is about change. The management capacities are imperative to the leadership accomplishment, and delegates must execute authoritative undertakings; be that as it may, the management stretches out past these (ASE, 2018).

In the paper released by ASE in 2018 the following attributes were mentioned about engineering leadership and explained as follows: leadership is a process; leadership requires collaboration; leadership entails problem solving; leadership is transformative. As there has been a rise in the importance of engineering leadership in the past decade, several studies and research have been done to find out the definition of engineering leadership. To summarize, engineering management organizes the work on the project in the right way, has a vision of things and can influence others with their vision and also help others in their work. Building trust is also one of the things that must be there while talking about engineering leadership. Engineers value their work based on its technical precision and perceived leadership to be imprecise, emotional, impractical and elitist (ASE 2018).

The authors sent out a survey after the study with the categories and themes which helped them to understand the definition better and helped them to propose a definition of their own. The survey results were analyzed descriptively, and it contained a lot of words to describe leadership in engineering. It contained a total of 4408 words averaging 27 words with a range of 2 to 113 words. They were coded, and it brought up to the total of 689 codes with each definition averaging 4 codes ranging from 1 to 15 codes each.

The conclusions that define the leadership in the field of engineering helped them to find a definition of their own were: “Engineering leadership is an approach that influences others to effectively collaborate and solve problems. Engineering leadership requires technical expertise, authenticity, personal effectiveness, and the ability to synthesize diverse expertise and skillsets. Through engineering leadership, individuals and groups implement transformative change and innovation to positively influence technologies, organizations, communities, society, and the world at large”.

In conclusion, engineering management has been in research for the past few years and there is still research being carried out about it right now. It plays a very important role in the industry as with no proper management of engineering there is no proper manufacturing or engineering that can be carried out. It is right to say that without engineering managers who are good at their work and show a proper leadership and authoritative qualities and help their subordinates in getting the work done are rare to find. The industry should appreciate what they have and educational institutions and the industry both should work together to help students learning about these programs in the best way possible to make the next engineering leaders of the upcoming industries.

References

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