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3
The Present Era: Managing Change in the Information Age
Postwar Changes in Scope
After World War II the United States found itself in the role of
"leader of the Free World." Its far-flung interests and commitments
led it to export funds and technology to encourage development in
the ravaged nations of Europe and elsewhere. (The Marshall Plan was
the most extensive program of international assistance ever
mounted.) The Cold War brought a continuing emphasis on national
security, which had ramifications for space and nuclear technology
as well as for "conventional" weapons systems—the latter
growing more sophisticated each year. At home, the baby boom and a
burgeoning economy fueled a massive increase in consumption of
goods of every kind, while the continuing expansion of business
brought about an accelerating flow of information in the workplace.
The concept of change—rapid, even revolutionary
change—increasingly dominated domestic and international
reality. The time scale of events seemed to become shorter.
In this context of increasing complexity and rapid change, four
factors seem to stand out in their importance for the engineering
profession: A great expansion of the role of government; a rapid
increase in the amount of information present in daily life and
work; the accelerating rate of technology development; and the
internationalization of business and the marketplace.
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Expansion of Government's Role
As we have seen, the federal government had played a key role in
technology development in the United States—in continental
expansion, in public works and public assistance projects, in
agricultural development, and through military systems development.
The postwar economic boom was attended by a rapid growth in
governmental participation in social and economic processes more
generally. A legacy partly of the New Deal and FDR's long reign,
federal planning, funding, and direction of major programs was now
widely accepted. The large-scale support of national
technological-social-economic objectives led to the establishment
of new federal agencies: the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947, to
pursue peaceful uses of atomic energy; the National Science
Foundation in 1950, to support scientific research in many areas of
national importance; the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) in 1958, to develop a civilian space program;
the Department of Transportation in 1966, to coordinate expansion
and development of the nation's transportation systems.
Perhaps most notable of all, in terms of its impact on
engineering, was the establishment of the Department of Defense
(DOD) (1949) to coordinate national defense efforts. Military
technology development continued at a rapid pace in the postwar
period—particularly in the nuclear submarine program, in
military aircraft and engine technology, missile guidance and
control, and military electronics. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s,
the Army Corps of Engineers continued to carry out large-scale
development and reclamation projects, particularly focusing on
irrigation canals and the dredging of rivers, harbors, and
inlets.
Since the late 1960s one aspect of societal demand-pull on
engineering has been the development of means of curbing technology
itself and controlling its effects. In response to this demand,
agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department
of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency emerged to
regulate and direct technology development. Large numbers of
engineers entered government service or the private sector to work
for these agencies directly or under contract to them. The net
effect was that engineers now acted as "technological policemen"
through the application of engineering skills and knowledge to meet
regulatory requirements.
As a result of government funding for R&D in new areas, new
engineering disciplines began to emerge, and older ones began to
experience a subdivision into new specialties. Massive NASA and DOD
spending on aircraft and rocket programs caused a considerable
upsurge in the numbers of people engaged in aerospace engineering.
Wartime and
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postwar programs to develop radar, communication, and computer
technology, funded especially by DOD, led to the emergence of
electronics engineering from the more established radio and
electrical engineering fields. Nuclear engineering developed as a
hybrid of chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering to
support the late-1950s and early-1960s enthusiasm for nuclear power
generation. Transportation engineering grew in proportion with the
federal highway system. By the late 1960s environmental engineering
was emerging in response to public concern about the disruption of
ecosystems and the pollution of air and water by chemical
by-products of industry and the internal combustion engine.
These new fields were well funded from the start, and demand for
specialists in them would often grow intense over a period of just
a year or so. Curriculum development in the new fields as well as
the older branches was driven to a great extent by large DOD and
NASA contracts for pilot programs and R&D activities, which fed
money and requirements back into the universities in the form of
research grants. Indeed, in many cases the new disciplines were
simply applications of an older set of skills in a specialized
setting with enormous funding. It was the degree of specialization
and the number of people involved that came to define a field.
Apart from the setting of directions, the major new factor
introduced by government support of technology development in the
postwar period has been the tremendous scale of programs. The
manned space program, defense command and control systems, the
interstate highway system, urban development programs, and many
other government-funded efforts all represent a quantum increase in
the human and technological resources devoted to applying science
to societal needs through engineering. The great expansion of the
defense industry in particular meant that U.S. leadership in high
technology now began to derive from defense rather than civilian
needs. This new driver of development in the present era has
surpassed the older, strictly commercial market-driven mechanisms
for development that characterized the first century and a half of
engineering in the United States. Its dominance has become so
strong that, in fact, it may be threatening the continued health of
those civilian market mechanisms. The panel is concerned that
future problems may emerge from either of two directions: (1) a
shortage of engineers to meet societal needs apart from those
driven by government [e.g., defense and space) and (2) the
possibility that government-based requirements will strongly
distort the fundamental nature and purposes of engineering
education.
To be sure, defense R&D expenditures have stimulated the
forma-
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tion and growth of important commercial markets (commercial
aviation and computers for business and personal use are just two
examples). However, these expenditures have also led indirectly to
the decline of interest in fields that later proved important. For
example, the near-demise of the traditional electrical power option
in engineering curricula had major repercussions when the energy
crisis arrived in 1973; and the decline of interest in
manufacturing engineering has no doubt figured in the gradual loss
of goods production to factories abroad in recent years.
The panel believes that there is a strong imbalance in the
overall impact that government spending has on the commercial
sector and on defense. Policymakers should recognize that,
ultimately, the private/commercial sector and the public/defense
sector of the economy are interrelated. To a large extent the
nation's economic health, its innovative capacity, and its
productivity depend on the strength of private business and
industry. In that sense, the strength of the commercial
infrastructure is a basic element of national security; its
maintenance and support should be matters of concern to the federal
government.
The Information Explosion
A second major change in the postwar period has been the
emergence of information as a new type of commodity. The
technological society produces and uses data at an increasingly
rapid rate. The proliferation of technological goods and services
combines with the information needs of a growing, increasingly
sophisticated population to create a strong demand for improved
means of generating, storing, manipulating, and communicating
information. Especially in industry and government, problems of
information resource management—that is, how to handle and
distribute massive amounts of information efficiently within an
organization—have gained prominence over the past two
decades.
The major new development affecting engineering with regard to
this phenomenon has been the advent of the computer. As a new
technology the computer may surpass the steam engine in its impact
on the way business is done, and indeed on the very nature of
business. It is a major factor in the shift toward a service-based
economy in the United States, in which the production and
management of information predominates over hard goods. Because
computer systems, which were devised to handle large quantities of
data, also produce it in large quantities, they are both a cause
and an effect of the "information explosion" of the past 20 years.
Furthermore, advances in computer technology are generalizable to a
great many applications, not all of
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them in business. (An estimated 17 million personal computers
were sold worldwide in 1984.] Thus, these machines generate a
self-perpetuating demand for the technology they embody.
Consequently, there is a great demand for engineers who design and
configure computer systems; the 1970s saw a nearly exponential rise
in demand for electronics engineers.
A new category of product brought about by computers is
software, which instructs the computer in a programmed method of
operation. Like any other product, software is designed and
developed before being produced for sale. Like many other
contemporary products it is highly technical in nature; but it is
based on computer rather than physical science (Jensen, 1984). The
designing of software products has opened up a new specialty of
engineering and is further broadening the definition of engineering
work.
Accelerated Technology
Development
Fueling the revolution in information products, and to some
extent deriving from it, has been a great increase in the rate of
technology development in general in the postwar period. Throughout
the first half of the twentieth century, technology (whether
measured by patents or any other yardstick) had progressed at a
steadily accelerating rate. But in the 1950s, spurred by massive
government R&D spending, by a vibrant economy, and by mass
consumerism on an unprecedented scale, the rate of development
climbed to new highs. New technologies spawned new technologies as
the demand for engineering-related goods and services continued
unabated. The fuller and more rapid incorporation of scientific
advances into engineering education and practice quickened the pace
of technology development. It became commonplace to observe that
the sum total of knowledge was doubling at shorter and shorter
intervals.
The overall rate of technological change itself thus had the
potential to exert considerable stress on engineering. It is
pertinent to ask whether the engineering supply system in general,
and the technology development process in particular, has adapted
adequately to the high degree of change—and whether it will
continue to adapt.
Global Business, Global Markets
Since the 1950s, American business interests have expanded in
scope to encompass most of the world's countries. Exports of raw
materials, agricultural products, and manufactured goods continue
to be a major
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element of the U.S. economy. The rise of multinational
corporations in the petroleum, electronics, machinery, chemical,
and other technology-intensive industries, as well as the sale of
weapons systems by the government, have a substantial impact on
engineering employment and business roles.
The other side of this coin is that many of our allies and many
newly developed nations have in recent years acquired (or regained)
formidable engineering and industrial production capabilities of
their own. Thus, the importation of manufactured goods becomes a
major factor for American business and the economy as international
competition intensifies. Also, large numbers of American engineers
are now employed by foreign multinational corporations and even by
foreign countries. Business is effectively becoming
internationalized as geographic and language barriers dissolve. The
panel believes that the rate of technology development, the quality
of engineering education, and the role of the engineer in society
are all far more critical under such competitive circumstances than
they were at a time when American dominance of nearly every
technical field was secure. It is the economic corollary of the
earlier assumption by engineering of a critical role in national
security. Thus, concerns about American competitiveness,
particularly in "high-technology" areas, are bringing about
significant changes in the orientation of government toward
business. Not only are joint R&D and cooperative
industry/university and intercompany ventures being encouraged, but
the possibility of targeted government assistance to industries and
other forms of intervention is being considered. It is clear that
these developments have major present and potential ramifications
for engineering.
Impacts on Engineering
The effects of these changes in the scope and scale of American
business on the engineering profession are numerous and, in some
cases, profound. Because the rate of change is increased and
because circumstances often affect more than one industry, impacts
tend to cross disciplinary lines and to affect large segments of
the profession. If the U.S. economy is no longer isolated from
world events, neither are engineers isolated from societywide or
worldwide events. One of the purposes of this report is to assess
the extent to which the established structure of engineering is
taking the strain and meeting contemporary needs. To that end, we
will examine impacts on the professional disciplinary structure, on
the engineering educational system, on the professional societies,
and on the individual engineer.
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Multiplying
Specialties/Interdisciplinary Activity
The rapid—and sometimes sudden—introduction of new
products and processes throughout the present era has caused a
fragmentation of disciplines into subdisciplines and narrow
specialties. This degree of change (and thus of specialization)
leaves engineers more vulnerable to obsolescence. A dramatic
example was the substitution of transistors for vacuum tube
technology in the mid-1950s, followed by the similar substitution
of the integrated circuit for transistors some 10 years later.
Contrary to what might have been expected, the impact on
engineers of those two events was relatively minor. In each case,
the fact that there were virtually no engineers specifically
trained in the new technologies—and that the changes came so
quickly—meant that practitioners of the obsolete technology
were the best positioned and best prepared to apply the new
technology. They adapted.
This capacity for adaptation is often evident when new
technologies are introduced. It is even more striking when it
involves cross-disciplinary movement. For example, when the manned
space program geared up in the late 1950s, there were virtually no
qualified aerospace engineers. Instead, aeronautical, mechanical,
and electronics engineers, mathematicians, and scientists of all
types were able to adapt their knowledge to the requirements of the
space-flight regime. When the Apollo program ended rather abruptly
in the early 1970s, those several thousand engineers were
eventually reabsorbed by industry—although the process was
traumatic for at least three years, and its repercussions may still
be seen in the careers of individual engineers.
Currently, new composite materials being employed in the
construction of aircraft bodies require ''composite structures
engineers''; since there are few people actually trained in this
technology, the need is being met by metallurgical engineers,
materials scientists, and chemical and mechanical engineers.
One reason for this capacity for flexibility may be that
engineering work is often more interdisciplinary than in the past
and is becoming even more so. This might seem paradoxical, given
the increased specialization mentioned earlier; but in reality,
specialization often demands the presence of many specialists in
different fields on a development project, particularly for complex
systems. Thus, engineers acquire on the job a familiarity with
associated or related specialties, as well as added competence to
handle real-world problems that are beyond the scope of any narrow
group of skills.
These countervailing requirements to be a specialist and a
generalist are part of what is, in effect, a new definition of
engineering. The new definition derives from a pervasive trend
toward the systems approach
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to engineering development. The aerospace field led the way in
developing the systems engineering approach, because of the
emphasis on high performance at minimum size and weight. In
general, systems engineering permits the interfacing of various
subsystems and components of a complex product in such a way that
performance, weight, cost, and other important parameters can be
optimized in selective fashion. The product can be designed as a
single, integrated system, rather than as a loose assemblage of
separate systems.
The interfacing of different areas of knowledge is also
essential in new fields such as biotechnology, in which
sophisticated scientific methods are used by engineers for
production of completely new forms of biological "materials." Even
as conventional a project as the design and construction of a
modern office building is an exercise in the systems approach;
heating and air conditioning engineers, structural engineers,
design engineers, electrical, electronics, and environmental
engineers routinely participate with civil engineers and architects
in the development of a building that functions in many respects
like an animate object. The panel believes that such a working
environment imparts a flexibility to engineers that allows them to
better adapt to the changing environment in which they operate.
The Educational System
The rapid pace of technological change, the increased degree of
specialization, and sharp fluctuations in demand for engineers in
various fields have all placed considerable stress on the
engineering education system. Over the past 10 to 12 years, as the
overall number of students entering college has plateaued and
federal subsidies have begun to decrease, engineering schools have
had fewer funds available for improvements to existing facilities
and equipment—even though at the same time engineering school
enrollments have climbed dramatically. Rapid changes in industrial
equipment and tools used by engineers—particularly in
electronics engineering, but also for computers in
general—have meant that schools cannot afford to keep current
the equipment they use for training engineers (see, for example,
National Academy of Engineering, 1981). Thus, in the most rapidly
developing and critical fields, graduates enter industry with a
serious lack of some important skills and knowledge.
High salaries and attractive benefits offered by industry to
young B.S. engineering graduates have led to a severe decline in
the number of American students opting for graduate study in
engineering—especially at the Ph.D. level. Consequently, there
is a shortage of Ph.D.
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engineers to staff engineering schools. As a result, schools
have difficulty coping with larger enrollments and shifting
patterns of enrollment. With employment in industry booming, a
relatively low-paying faculty position is less attractive to
qualified young engineers. More money is not the only consideration
here; the nature of the job in general is less appealing under
today's constrained circumstances. The shortage of faculty has been
a major problem for engineering schools for a number of years (see,
for example, Shakertown Conference, 1981). Combined with the
generally increased numbers of engineering students in classes, the
changing patterns of enrollment, and the scarcity of adequate
equipment, the faculty shortage has serious implications for the
quality of engineering graduates (see National Association of State
Universities and Land Grant Colleges, 1982).
Fluctuating demand by industry for graduates in various fields
and with specific kinds of training is something that schools in
general are not well equipped to deal with—particularly when
changes in demand occur relatively quickly. Since the duration of
schooling is generally four years, there is a lag time of at least
that long before requirements can begin to be met. The high demand
for environmental engineers came somewhat suddenly around 1970;
some seven or eight years later, that demand declined just as
abruptly. Fortunately for many young environmental engineers who
had just entered the profession or were still graduating at that
point, their training was sufficiently interdisciplinary (usually
chemical and industrial engineering with some chemistry and biology
on a civil engineering base) that they were still employable by
government and industry in other areas (for example, energy
systems, safety, occupational health) if environmental jobs were
not available. However, not all environmental engineers were
generalists and thus so adaptable. And in other disciplines, where
greater specificity of knowledge is the rule, such flexibility is
not as easy to achieve.
In fields where growth is forestalled by stabilized or declining
demand, surpluses of engineers occur. At present, for example,
civil and chemical engineers are said to be in oversupply. This
condition is partly a function of increased demand in other
fields—intensive development elsewhere draws capital resources
as well as consumer interest away from mature industries. Here
again, these shifts often occur more quickly than the student
cohort is able to adjust to them.
The example of environmental engineering suggests another form
of fluctuating demand that has come to affect engineering education
in the past 20 years: fluctuations in student demand for
engineering as a major. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a
dramatic drop in engineer-
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ing school enrollments, resulting from a decline in general
economic activity, a recession in the aerospace field, and changing
attitudes among the young. Yet student demand for engineering
education later rose as sharply as it had dropped: Fluctuations at
this end of the "engineer supply system" can create stresses as
great as fluctuating industry demand can create. Figure 1 depicts
changes in engineering enrollment, and their primary causes, over a
nearly 40-year period.
Engineering schools and departments of engineering have to cope
in different ways with both of these stresses, usually under
conditions of declining resources and diminishing faculty. This is
not an easy task; it has led to calls of "crisis" from many
quarters in recent years. Fortunately, government and industry are
now paying attention to the seriousness of these problems and to
the need to devise ways of easing the strain on the educational
system. Industry, for example, as an alternative to hiring
engineering faculty members, has begun to emphasize such creative
approaches as shared staffing, fellowships to encourage graduate
study, support for young faculty, and "forgivable" loans.
Cooperative industry/university R&D programs in such fields as
manufacturing engineering, robotics, and computer-aided design and
manufacturing are also a positive step.
The Professional Societies
Much of the pressure to manage change in the present era has
been put on the engineering professional societies. The role of the
societies has largely shifted, over the last 50 years, from that of
a business information clearinghouse (in essence, a club) to that
of an educational society. The societies are all active in
publishing technical papers, sponsoring conferences, etc.; through
technical communication they follow advancements in the state of
the art. To some extent they also function as spokesmen for the
interests of their members in the policy-making process (whether
state or federal).
A third, and very important, function is their participation in
the voluntary standards-setting process for techniques and products
relevant to their respective disciplines. Relying on member support
and participation, societies develop standards and submit them to
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for authentication
and publication.
A fourth function of increasing importance for the societies is
representing the engineer to the public at large. This public
relations function is relatively new, deriving from the late 1960s
and early 1970s, when mistrust of technology was more prevalent in
society. In essence,
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Figure 1
Engineering degrees and 1st-year enrollments: Historical factors
influencing changes in engineering enrollments.
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it is an attempt to represent the profession accurately to the
voters and taxpayers whose support for engineering and for
technological advancement in general is important to the
profession. A fifth function of the societies is related to this
concern for image, although it predates it considerably: The
professional societies are active in the continuing process of
establishing and adjusting professional ethics. The historical
basis for this concern is the duality of the engineer's role as
both professional and employee (Florman, 1981). The issue has
intensified in the present era as the potential harmfulness of many
engineering products has increased (particularly in the chemical
and nuclear engineering fields), and as public attention to these
matters has grown accordingly.
The Engineer as Employee
Engineer as Corporate Employee.
In the postwar period the rapid growth of big business has led
to major changes in the way that most engineers work. A growing
emphasis on the science of business administration from the late
1950s on has strongly affected the role of engineers in the
corporate world; indeed, many top engineers nowadays acquire
management training to enhance their professional status and
abilities. Panel members now see indications that, with increased
international competition in recent years, the emphasis in
management style within many companies is shifting toward the
integration of technical knowledge with management skills.
The more competitive and international environment of
engineering today has multiple impacts on the engineer as a
corporate employee. A variety of new business management approaches
have come into use in engineering-oriented companies during the
last 10–15 years. One of these is the "matrix management"
structure for organizing project work. Under this system,
engineers, scientists, and technicians are assigned as needed from
functional departments for the duration of a project; when the
project is concluded, the project team is broken up and dispersed
to other projects. While this approach permits efficient allocation
of human resources, in many cases it minimizes the cohesiveness of
the team because members do not work together on a permanent basis
(of course the length of association depends on the size of the
project). Such project teams also usually include a large number of
engineers, so that specialization of individual roles is
emphasized. This may again detract from an individual's sense of
professionalism and commitment to the project.
Rapid developments in technology and the changing competitive
fortunes of companies create a sense of turbulence in some
engineering
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fields—particularly in the high-tech electronics,
aerospace, and biotechnology industries. Whether there are
shortages of engineers in these fields or not, the sense of
shortage persists. The problem is compounded by engineers in these
disciplines frequently switching jobs to obtain higher salaries.
This practice imparts a "free lance" quality to contemporary
engineering employment in many fields: the emphasis is strongly on
the engineer's personal advantage and advancement, often at the
expense of company welfare. The loss of company identification that
results from this mobility complements the loss of team
identification that may result from project staffing practices.
Another important aspect of engineering work life in the
contemporary corporate environment is the tension that many
engineers feel between their professional role and their role as an
employee. This tension has been present to some extent since the
late nineteenth century, when corporate employment of engineers
became widespread; but it has acquired new forms with the
intensification of business competition and the development of
potentially harmful commercial and consumer products. The most
common form is the emergence of ethical dilemmas such as the
question of "whistle-blowing." These situations often involve
instances of blatant wrongdoing, where one's duty as a citizen as
well as a professional is clear-cut. But there are also more subtle
ethical questions that a professional must sometimes confront,
relating perhaps to a basic conflict between one's values and the
nature of one's work on a particular project.
Engineer as Government Employee.
The engineer as civil servant is not a new phenomenon, or even a
phenomenon strictly of this century. One of the earliest examples
of the engineer as employee on a large scale was the Army Corps of
Engineers, and planners of development on the municipal, state,
regional, and national level have often been engineers. However, it
was not until the 1930s, and particularly from World War II on,
that government began to employ civilian engineers in large numbers
from every discipline. In the postwar period the formation of the
various federal agencies dedicated to planning, directing, and
regulating development in nearly every area of social and economic
life prompted a virtual boom in engineering employment
opportunities. By 1980, government employees at every level of
government accounted for 15 percent of the 1.4 million engineers
then in the U.S. work force (unpublished NSF data). Table 1 shows
the distribution of these engineers in the federal government, the
military, and state and local governments.
Apart from direct employment, government supports many more
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TABLE 1 Engineers in Government, 1980
Category
Number Employed
% of Total
Federal
101,600
7.3
Military
22,300
1.6
State & local
84,300
6.1
All government
208,200
15.0.
Total U.S.
1,387,000
100.0
Source: NSF, unpublished data.
engineers indirectly, through contract funding. At the level of
prime contractor, the federal government supports an additional 24
percent of all U.S. engineers; subcontracting adds another 8
percent to the total (based on estimates provided by Dr. Aaron
Gellman).
Engineering in government is different in a number of
significant ways from private-sector engineering employment. The
primary difference has to do with the nature of the employer.
Because government is noncommercial and nonprofit, many of the
features of work life that predominate in competitive industry are
absent, or at least not as prominent, in government engineering
employment. The number of government engineers who perform design
and development work is relatively small, according to estimates
given to the panel by personnel officers of various mission
agencies. Usually these "engineering" engineers are associated with
testing and standards-setting activities—except in the
military, where a considerable amount of systems development is
done by (usually civilian) engineers in the different services.
Instead, the majority of engineers across all categories of
government are involved to a great extent in the planning and
management of contractor services. Thus, the managing of budgets
and schedules and the competition for fiscal resources form a
considerable and distinctive part of engineering work in
government. This contrast between engineering in government and in
industry stems from a basic difference in the objectives of the
private and public sector organizations: profit-making on the one
hand, and the performance of public functions and services on the
other.
An oft-cited aspect of engineering in government is the
perception that salaries are lower than for comparable positions in
industry. Research and development facilities are also often
believed to be less advanced and less complete than in industry;
office space and support services are another area in which
government engineering work is often considered to compare poorly
with engineering in the private
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sector. Whether true or not, these perceptions contribute to a
prevailing belief among engineers (and other professionals as well)
that government employment is comparatively unattractive. Because
of this image problem, government today has difficulty attracting
large numbers of highly qualified engineers. And because of the
very real inducements of industry employment, it also has trouble
keeping experienced personnel. By and large, there is a
unidirectional flow of engineers out of government and into
industry—particularly in the federal government/military, and
most particularly for those whose work has involved them in
state-of-the-art development projects in electronics, computers,
and other growing fields.
This loss of experience and talent from the government work
force is, in one sense, unfortunate; but it may also be beneficial
in that certain positive values gained in the service of government
are thereby continually being circulated into industry. These
values derive from the third way in which engineering in government
differs from engineering in the private sector; that is, most
engineers in civil service are necessarily more attuned to broad
social needs and concerns relating to their work than are their
counterparts in industry. In many federal agencies they stand to
some extent as intermediaries between economic forces and the
greater public good, through regulation of industries, setting of
safety and quality standards for industrial products and practices,
and enforcement of those standards through testing. At the state
and local level they also represent the more specific interests and
needs of the people in the jurisdictions they serve for the entire
range of government services. As the role of government has
expanded, as regulation of private-sector activities has increased,
and as general public interest in issues such as the environment,
nuclear power, product safety, and government spending has
intensified, this aspect of the government engineer's work has
become proportionately more demanding.
Intensification of Social Issues in
Engineering
As we have seen, an indirect effect of the changes in scope and
scale of engineering activities in the postwar period has been an
increase in the awareness and critical scrutiny of these activities
by the general public. By the 1970s, changing societal attitudes
had given rise to a prevalent mistrust of technology—often
referred to as "antitechnology" sentiment (Florman, 1981). This
change from the sanguine attitudes of earlier periods has been
partly the result of rising educational levels in the population as
a whole since World War II, so that there is less awe of the
engineer, less willingness to trust engineering implicitly and
to
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
postwar period
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accept on faith the value of engineering achievements. After
all, the engineer is just another college graduate. Heightened
critical awareness is also a function of the greatly expanded
capacity of technology for doing harm to individuals, the
environment, and society itself. While popular attitudes toward
technology in general have become considerably more positive in
recent years (Yankelovich, 1984), criticism of particular projects
and programs is still often in evidence.
Although antitechnology sentiment could be detected in the early
part of this century (as in Chaplin's film "Modern Times"), the
growth of social concerns regarding engineering activities in the
present era can probably be traced from the atomic explosions that
ended the war with Japan. Those events, effective as they may have
been in ending the war quickly, were an appalling revelation of the
power of science and engineering working in tandem. The
environmental effects of industrial and auto emissions into air and
water became a major issue during the late 1950s and early 1960s,
made evident by urban smog and dying rivers, and publicized by
books such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Underlying
public concerns about technology and the morality of its purveyors
increased during the Vietnam War, with its televised scenes of
napalmed villages and defoliated jungles. During the same period,
Ralph Nader projected questions about the responsibility of
manufacturers in the design and production of consumer goods into
the public consciousness. Later in the 1970s, Three Mile Island
brought latent fears about the safety of nuclear power to the fore,
further curbing development of that already struggling industry.
Currently, the effect of automation on employment in large
manufacturing industries is becoming a major social issue.1
The other side of the antitechnology coin is that with greater
public awareness of the power of technology to shape society has
come a new set of demands for technology to improve life. There are
constantly rising expectations for better performance, reliability,
and safety of products. We demand economic growth but expect
technology to maintain a clean environment. We look to technology
for the means to minimize the danger of war: inspection techniques,
warning systems, etc. We want engineers to make us
invulnerable—that is, to ensure that we can win any
war—and at the same time we require that they provide
1 A lawsuit in
the California courts as of the time of writing is a case in point.
The suit challenges the right of California state universities to
pursue research in automation, on the grounds that public funds are
being used to further corporate interests to the detriment of
workers—the "public." The suit charges that such activity is
in basic conflict with the intent of the Morrill Act.
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the technical means to prevent war. We expect medical benefits
from biotechnology and new or extended energy sources from chemical
and petroleum engineers.
And, in fact, engineers and the engineering-related industries
meet nearly all of these expectations. It is undeniable that
without the technological advances made and implemented just since
World War II, Americans would not be as well off as they are today.
Without all the technology that supports our large population and
modern service-oriented economy, the standard of living and the
quality of life in the United States would both be lower. People
would generally have less mobility, less leisure time, less
entertainment, less time for education, less enjoyment, a less
reliable food supply, a dirtier environment, and shorter lives. Yet
with many technological advances comes a backlash. Effective
detergents containing phosphates turn out to produce ''bloom'' on
ponds. Cleaned up and lengthened industrial smokestacks turn out to
cause acid rain. Engineering is required to solve these problems,
too (and, ironically, is held partly to blame for them).
What are the implications of these social concerns for the
practicing engineer today? Antitechnology tides have ebbed and
flowed throughout the twentieth century, but it is likely that
engineering and technology will continue to be scrutinized and
criticized on the one hand, and, on the other, asked to perform
miracles. Engineers will have to learn, at least to some extent,
how to operate in a fishbowl. Government engineers have for some
time been aware of how intense this pressure can be. The panel
suggests, then, that one new requirement may be for engineering
education to prepare engineers to conduct their professional
activities with a greater awareness of their social
responsibilities. They should be trained to view their work in
light of anticipated criticism—not just from a technical
standpoint, but on a social basis as well.
There are obvious problems inherent in this—beginning with
the fact that, in industry, individual engineers have rarely had
control over whether or not a given line of development is to be
pursued. Once a decision has been made, usually the engineer's
choices are regrettably well defined: participate or leave. But if
more engineers move into corporate management, their influence in
such matters will grow. In addition, if the majority of young
engineers become sensitized to the social ramifications of their
work during the course of their education, their collective
viewpoints may come to represent a formidable force within their
respective industries. This would indeed be a powerful
demonstration of the exercise of professionalism and professional
responsibility in the modern engineering context.
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The engineering profession as a whole has tended to be wary of
becoming involved in broad social questions relating to engineering
work (see Christiansen, 1984). For one thing, such issues are often
highly charged politically and emotionally, and full of ambiguity.
As such, they are not very compatible with the rational, pragmatic
style of mind that characterizes the engineer. For another thing,
such issues tend by their nature to threaten the stability and
security of the corporate and commercial world in which most
engineers work. But concerns of this kind are increasingly
impinging on the professional ethics of engineering. And, as was
just pointed out, they may do so increasingly in the future.
The panel believes that it is entirely appropriate for engineers
and the engineering profession to formulate reasonable views on
these matters—in fact, professional responsibility requires
it. Armed with the pertinent facts and a broad view of the world
around them, engineers should find that they can apply the
engineering problem-solving approach effectively even to
nonengineering problems. Certainly the professional societies,
which have long grappled with ethical questions, can be
instrumental in informing engineers and addressing large political
and social issues on behalf of the profession. One logical
mechanism for accomplishing this could be an umbrella organization
like the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES),
working in concert with the various professional and technical
societies. Whatever the best means to meet it, the need for the
profession to acknowledge and respond to social issues will
continue to grow stronger.
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