ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
R. B. Ward.
Lecturer,
School of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Technology, Sydney,
P.O. Box 123, BROADWAY. N.S.W. 2007.
AUSTRALIA.
ABSTRACT
Management has become an integral part of the duties of most
professional engineers. Its inclusion in the curriculum of most
undergraduate engineering programs is appropriate but the
content can be improved not only by remembering the past and
considering the present but also by looking to the future.
INTRODUCTION
This paper is, effectively, about an aspect of the
education engineers need, particularly today and particularly
relevant to the situations we find in the isolated part of the
world in the South Pacific from which the author comes. From
a historical perspective of engineering we will move to what
engineers do today, to the thinking retained in engineers'
management from the past, and finally to what needs to be done
to introduce students to the realities of management.
THE PAST - AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE
When an engineer looks at the past he is inevitably
impressed, even awed, by the technological advances. It's even
more impressive when we consider that the rate of progress in
technology accelerated about two hundred years ago when the
First Industrial Revolution took off, and more engineering feats
have been achieved in those couple of centuries than in the
several thousand years before.
Somewhere in that two hundred years a subtle change
took place in the engineers' work activities. For a long time 'the
engineer' was a 'pure technologist', working alone or with very
few helpers, producing items of hardware, often based on
scientific discoveries, sometimes from sheer inventiveness.
. The subtle change was one of magnitude, from operating
10 a small group to systems of large organisation, and out of that
change carne the need for both scientists and engineers to be
managers, not workers.
. Whi~h presented both groups with a common problem;
thIS paper WIll concentrate on the engineers.
A DEFINITION OF ENGINEERING
Engineering has been defined (Encyc. Brit., 1971) as the
application of scientific principles to design or develop
structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or
works utilising them singly or in combination; or to construct or
operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to
forecast their behaviour under specific operating conditions; all
as respects an intended function, economics of operation and
safety to life and property.
Some engineers feel strongly that the art of engineering -
- ~ ~he ~owledge of actual practice and the skills required for its
~tIhzatlOn ~ - - as well as the application of scientific principles,
IS an essentIal part of engineering.
Clearly, 'engineering' is 'hardware'; the application of
sundry knowledge and skill to produce 'things' for humanity's
use. Unfortunately, the management function isn't included in
that.
A DEFINITION OF MANAGEMENT
Going through the many authors on management we find
the same definition turning up time after time, with only the
slightest of variations (Craggs, 1948):
0-7803-0161-7191$0.300 ©IEEE
96
'Management is getting things done through people. '
It might be better to say 'getting results', referring to
actual ends-after-means, instead of 'getting things done'. But
the sense is generally the same with either wording, so even that
may sound inadequately unspecific. So, how could that be
improved further? We could make a further improvement by
saying:
"Management is achieving objectives through people",
and that is probably a better statement. Just saying 'results',
unspecified, is not sufficiently precise: a determined manager
wouldn't want to achieve any result, he'd want a particular result
which was selected as the preferred one before whatever activity
was involved started, and such a selected result is an intended
and planned result, which we call an objective.
Can we define it by what a manager uses to reach those
results or objectives? Let's consider a manager's resources.
The 'classic resources' used by a manager are men,
money, and materials. An engineer would also include
machines in his management resources, giving four which to
some extent can be substituted one for another, and which are
to some extent, also, extendable and renewable. I believe we
should add 'time' as a resource; it also provides substitution, but
is not renewable: it's finite and limited (Ward, 1990a).
The 'purist engineer' sees the 'technology resources',
materials and machines, as the vital ones. The manager-
engineer sees that management boils down to two only, people
and money, as the really important ones he uses to achieve his
objectives.
So just what is management? The answer to that simple,
straight-forward, question depends on whom you ask.
An economist would say: 'A factor of production',
because he would observe that the group under the
management system produced something, and the overall
function of 'management' contributed.
A sociologist would say: 'A class and status system',
because he would find that a management organisation formed
a 'structured' group, with 'higher' level classes in the structure
having more social prestige than 'lower' level classes.
An administration and organisation expert would say: 'A
system of power and authority', because he would notice that the
fitting-together of the people in their group results in a 'pecking
order' being established, a class and status system, in which
some have more power and/or authority than others. The
sociologist would agree with him on that.
A management theoretician could express it in 'process'
terms, such as (Donnelly et al, 1987):
'Management is the process undertaken by one or more
individuals to coordinate the activities of others to achieve
results not achievable by one individual acting alone. '
Other 'experts' would probably give variations of all
those, all different answers.
All these different answers suggest that 'management'
has different meanings to different people. Clearly, the
definition depends on the viewpoint of who's talking and who's
listening.
THE INHERITED MYTHOLOGY
So we can see a divergence of opinion: the 'purist
engineer' lives in a world of precision of thought, word and
action, seeking and obtaining tangible results. The 'manager
engineer' is confronted with an entirely different and very
imprecise world.
But much of the thinking of the engineers of two
centuries ago still clings in the minds of those who move up the
organisation chart to management positions. We must ask: .why
is it so? The answer is: it is a 'cultural factor'.
Every human group develops a 'culture'. Make no
mistake, both engineering and management have, like any social
grouping, a 'culture.' It's only in these last few years that this
has been openly discussed and appearing in the literature, but
it's existed for a long time.
And cultures develop myths. Since the days of primitive
tribes (and even today: certainly in politics) every social,
hunting, and even working, group has had its mythology.· Some
of the myths of any group may be child-frightening bogey-man
stories, and others may be some form of wisdom (so-called)
passed down from one tribal elder to another.
Most of the myths of management are in that second
category - - -
Behind every myth, however, there's a form of reality.
Some of those realities are the background reasoning behind the
myth; others show that the myth has only been a smokescreen
behind which those cunning tribal elders can politically out-
manoeuvre their more ingenuous fellow-tribespeople.
The problem is that these 'cultural myths' have endured
and are hung over the young engineers we try to educate. It's a
serious problem because young engineers in our countries are
called upon to move into supervision roles very early, and after
they've been marinated in advancing, intricate, technology for
several years they don't know what to do when facing
management problems which demand age-old fundamantal,
simple, solutions.
The simplest way of stating this is by setting out some of
the 'Myths of Engineering Management'.
Let's have a look at a few (Ward, 1990a).
THE MYTHS OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
I. The first of these is that engineering management
deals with inanimate resources, their allocation and their
utilisation. Machines, materials, and, of course, money. Those
resources go where they're told to go, do what the manager
decrees, and are utilised in accordance with his directions.
The reality, as the young engineer discovers, is that a
manager deals, for a large part of his time, not only with
inanimate and predictable materials and machines but also with
highly animated and variable people, their allocation and, rather
than with their utilisation, with their manipulation (which, in
polite company, we call motivation).
2. Ah! (Here's the second myth.) As an engineering
manager I will also have to manage people! All right, then, that
simply adds another resource to the other two, and because
those people must be rationally-minded individuals (being in the
rational and materialistic engineering environment) they'll do
what they've been told because they can see it's the right action
to be taken.
But that doesn't happen, like that. The truth is that the
manager finds he gets agreement and ready acquiescence
sometimes but at other times is opposed by those working for
him.
What's worst about that is the opposition may not be
open, overt; it can be hidden, covert, even almost undetectable
until too late to do anything about it. He therefore can't be
consistent in dealing with his people resource but has to use
different methods at different times on different people.
3. Because 'engineering' problems, 'technology'
problems, are neat and tidy, with quantified data presented and
a precise answer resulting (precise both in a yes/no sense and in
numbers), young engineers tend, unless some effort is made to
show them otherwise, to think that management problems are
similar, if not the same.
The reality is that an engineering manager finds that
many of the problems coming to him - - - not to him as an
engineer but to him under his management hat - - - are
'situation' problems, with no precise, neat, answers. They often
97
have several answers, all equally possible and all equally cOrrect
(in the sense of all being workable) but all equally unpalatable,
with probably none of them totally desirable.
Instead of being solved by objective calculations they
have to be solved by judgement.
Which involves a logical absurdity, as will be revealed in
the following.
4. A myth associated with that is that 'management
judgement' can be learned, like any skill, by training, as in the
classroom. This is a particularly tempting piece of dogma for
engineers, because we learn in the classroom that so much of
design is 'by eye'. We are taught to recognise what 'looks right';
we learn to know what's 'good engineering'. Surely there's
something similar in management?
Well, there is, but management judgement cannot easily
be taught in such a purely classroom manner way. There are too
many random variables (which makes it fiendishly interesting).
Management judgement comes from experience. And
experience is gained by making mistakes. But mistakes are
made by exercising poor judgement, which can only be improved
by extended experience, which comes by making mistakes, which
are made by - - -
The best way to learn 'management judgement', without
a doubt, is in a large organisation, understudying someone who
has made many mistakes and isn't afraid of making a few more.
Not in a classroom. All that can be learned there are some of
the very fundamental basics, worth having, but only as a
foundation.
The lucky ones get their share of the judgement factor by
gaining experience from other people's mistakes.
Most developing managers are sufficiently ingenious to
devise their own unique and innovative mistakes.
5. Although anyone 'engineering problem' is quite often
one component of a large jig-saw collection of to-be-assembled
parts, most 'engineering' problems have 'ends', are 'closed'
problems, that is, they have a 'start' point, and more important,
they have a 'stop' point. From working through tasks involving
problems like that the young engineer tends to think that
management problems are like that, too.
The reality is that a manager finds, very often, that
'today's' management problem, thought to be thoroughly killed
off and cleared away by the end of the day, is found to have
given birth to a new problem overnight. One problem is
succeeded by another, related.
The myth is, unfortunately, supported by the usual type
of case study problem found in most of the management texts:
these start in the middle of nowhere, go along, and stop, with no
hint that follow-on problems are possible (and more likely,
likely).
6. The sixth myth. Management is 'new' and 'fresh',
changing with the world around us, with new ideas and notions
being introduced all the time.
The reality is: this is absolute nonsense, there has been
nothing new in management for hundreds, if not thousands, of
years. The last 'invention', which was in accounting, was
double-entry book- keeping, by an Italian in the twelve or
thirteen hundreds: the bean-counters have been around for a
long time. Quasi-management items such as the creative
accounting behind the 'bottom of the harbour scheme' are more
illegal trickery than 'new management'.
I'm prepared to put a quid on a bet that the problems
faced and solved by today's managers are in essence the same as
those experienced by managers in the reign of Queen Vic, which
were the same as in the time of Elizabeth 1, which were the
same as outlined by that Italian· master Nicola Macciavelli,
which were the same as in the time of the Roman Empire, which
were the same as managers faced in Egypt of the Pharoahs - - -
and which are the same as will be experienced in principle in
one hundred, two hundred, and so on, and so on, years from
now.
The reason why new ideas seem to be coming forth is
simply that perspicacious writers are re-seeing old truths and re-
stating them in new phrasing, turning old cliches into new ones,
which eventually become old cliches.
 Human nature being what it has been and still is, if we
look into the future we can see the meek will still be devoutly
expecting to inherit the earth, and the greedy will be pushing to
the front of the queue, usually successfully, to get their share
first, for a long time ahead. Maybe forever.
7. The next myth must be phrased somewhat differently.
It concerns our engineering education system, which generally
teaches engineers (and, I'm inclined to assume, others) by using
the past as a training ground. Thus, engineers being educated
today are trained in 'yesterday's' technology. By extension, they
will be trained to manage yesterday's technology. The myth is
that this is adequate.
The reality is that they should be trained in managing
tomorrow's technology because they are going to be tomorrow's
managers. (To do that we have to try to guess what tomorrow's
technology will be, because it doesn't exist yet, so we don't
know, now, what tomorrow's technology will be. But we can
have a lot of fun guessing.)
8. The final myth I bring to your attention is that there is
something holy about the study of management as a profession.
This myth holds that when we teach management as a
professional line of study (or, from the students' viewpoint, learn
it) we should have at least a semi-reverent attitude. This can be
read in the minds and hearts (and probably in the brains, too) of
the gurus who preach the conventional management theories in
the conventional text books. Once again, I mean nothing
against those books or writers; I simply plead for more of the
unsanitary side of management in the texts.
Management, in many of those texts, has religeous over-
and-undertones. Both ends of the classroom, lecturers and
students, are expected to genuflect obsequiously before the
conventional management concepts. (My attitude is, I feel
certain, at least agnostic and sometimes - - - often? - - - close to
heretical.)
The reality of management is that being a manager is a
bastard of a position to be in.
This is literally true because a professional manager must
remain reasonably well skilled in his basic, original, discipline
(this applies, equally, to a doctor who becomes medical
superintendent of a hospital, and to an accountant who moves
up to managing partner in an accounting practice), and must in
addition learn and use many 'management skills'.
The usual result of this partly personally-induced, partly
resulting from externally-applied brainwashing, but both-ways-
deliberate schizophrenia, is that he concentrates on the skills he
learned in his original discipline, the most likely reasons being
that they were learned first and he's therefore probably more
attached to them.
(That 'he' reminds me how I'd like to do, sometime, a
male/female comparison of belief in these myths. I wouldn't be
at all surprised to find women are more resistant to them.)
Anyway, the point here is that the management skills are
laid on top of the technical skills and usually have difficulty in
overcoming the early interest in those technical skills.
It's also figuratively true because a manager almost
inevitably finds himself in a position where he has to satisfy
those above and those below him. That involves a double
compromise; external to himself, and also internal within
himself, and as usual with a compromise, this doesn't work; he
doesn't totally satisfy either those above or those below. Or
himself. Splitting his personality not only two-ways, but three.
I regret that its also necessary to remark that practicing
management, being in the management hot-seat, is far from
being a 'holy' profession in another sense; it can be very dirty.
'Nice' people have become managers and have had
circumstance force them to act in ways opposite to their
personal morality or ethics, which can hurt such a person.
Unfortunately, the opposite type, 'nasty' people in management
positions can be overcome by the power they can exert on
others, and being drunk with it behave in the manner described
so effectively by Rudyard Kipling.
Nevertheless, those who move to management jobs aver
they wouldn't have been without the experience. It can be a
foretaste of hell, but it's good for the soul.
98
WHAT LAWS CAN WE FIND TO GUIDE THE
MANAGER-ENGINEER?
SO much for what clings to engineering management
from the past. What can we do about the future?
As a debunking of the above mythology I now offer five
'Laws of Management' which have been around for a long time.
Managers come to recognise them, even if they've never heard
them stated. Though not 'laws' in the scientific sense, they are
supported by a background of empirical observation and
consistency.
The first of those must, of course, be Murphy's Law
(Bloch, 1979):
If anything can go wrong, it will.
There are many variations and corrolaries. And .the
message in it can be put in many ways, such as the question:
'What have you forgotten?'
The second, almost as old, is Parkinson's Law
(Parkinson, 1957):
Work expands to fill the time available.
The third I quote rather confirms Parkinson's; it is
Cheop's Law (also credited to Possony and Poumelle) (possony
and Poumelle, 1970):
Everything takes longer and costs more.
In both we have immediate reference to two of the
management resources, money and time. Engineers will see this
is similar to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which limits
efficiency; we battle against it, improving as much as we can,
and we may become very effective, but at the end we have to
give up in exhaustion and accept it as limiting efficiency.
The fourth is the Pareto Law (Starr, 1971):
Ninety percent of the problems are caused by
ten percent of what you have, or are doing.
Different people like to vary those numbers, some to
eighty-twenty, for example. The result is much the same. If a
manager can identify and fix the few prominent problems, the
rest will almost always be found to be trivial.
The fifth is very similar, it's Sturgeon's Law (Bloch,
1979):
Ninety percent of everything is crud.
Again, different people will express this in different
terms. Indeed, under stressful conditions it may be expressed
very forcibly, even crudely. But the truth, from experience, is
still there: ninety percent of a manager's work is composed of
the most awful, though necessary, trivia. If one's lucky, ten
percent is interesting and maybe exciting.
THE EDUCATION PROBLEM
The above has outlined the observed problem in detail.
We have conflict between the myths and the laws of
management. What way can we find to overcome this, to
manage the future, particularly of engineering, better?
Summing up, it amounts to getting the students to accept
the five Laws of Management, and getting them to see the
realities instead of perpetuation of the myths.
THE SOLUTION OF THE EDUCATION PROBLEM
Thus, there's two steps in the problem, but they have
been solved in one, by use of an unusual style of problems given
to the students, a 'senes of series' of case study problems (Ward,
1990b). All set in the same general scenario, in a hypothetical
future, they have progressed from an idea of a project being
presented and developed, through building the pf(~iect, and then
to some five years later. All in the one ci>mpany,- with the same
people continuing through.
Each individual problem contains three components, and
each series has an overlaying problem, so there are four levels in
the case study:
(a) one component is of an 'engineering nature', really not to be
answered as part of the assignment, but part of the general
scenario to give the whole a background of technology,
(b) one component is the obvious and immediate management
core problem, the one which has to be solved and answered as
the 'real' assignment question in the management scenario,
(c) the third component is within the local management
scenario, and is a problem such as a manager might have to
resolve in the real world, within his own territory,
(d) and the fourth, the overlaying problem, is of also of a
management nature, but external to (though impinging on) the
'local' scenario.
The last two of those are not expressed overtly and
hence are only solved by those who perceive them. Many don't.
Why IS it so? Simply: it mirrors the real world of the
young engmeering manager. Most young engineers going into
management positions become deeply involved in attending to,
and enjoying, the day-to-day management problems (type [b]
above) with the familiar background of their beloved technology
(as [a] above). So they are likely to neglect what's going on
within their group, close around them, and very probably what's
in the background outside their group (as [c]), and are totally
unaware that bigger issues surround them (such as [d]). Thus
their overall decision-making is inadequate, maybe non-survival.
The student feedback has shown that this approach is
successfully debunking the Myths and enforcing the Laws,
preparing students for their future as engineering managers.
CONCLUSION - - - AND INIO THE FUTURE
We have little idea of the 'technology future' in which
our 'next-and-Iater generations' of en~ineering managers will be
working. All we can sure sure of IS that it will be different,
somehow, from today. The engineering may well be more
complex.
However, I believe that the management problems those
engineers meet will be similar in nature, in their lack of a
99
simple, precise answer, to those we see today and in the past.
Hence I believe the solution of those problems will be found in
the application of very old management methods.
By exposing the 'next generation' of engineering
managers to some basic, broad, aspects of management, by
stating old problems in a possible-future setting, and by forcing
them to make management decisions by using 'management
judgement', they are better prepared for situations they may
meet in the future.
Of course, Murphy's Law dictates that no matter what
problems are produced from a mixture of observation, memory,
and imagination, the future will present something different in
detail. But successful management of that future will be based
on the same principles as have been around for a long time.
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Donnelly, J.H. jnr., Gibson, J.L., Ivancevich, J.M. 1987.
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Texas.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1971.
Parkinson, C. N. 1958. Parkinson's Law or the Pursuit of
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Possony, S.J. and Pournelle, J.E. 1970. The Strategy of
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