H aving more employees capable of managing engineering ventures-from specific projects to business units-is becoming increasingly urgent for high-tech businesses, according to speakers at the recent Portland International Conference on Managing Engineering and Technology. This demand is placing pressure on educational systems around the world to change not only their curricula, but their basic teaching philosophies.

"Today, team-based organizations are becoming the norm, especially for major companies which have to compete in world markets. This flattening of organizations means that more and more people throughout the organization require the same knowledge and skills formerly in the purview of managers," according to E. Ray Ladd and Hal Rumsey, both of the engineering-management program at Washington State University (Spokane).

"In other words," Ladd and Rumsey maintain, "engineering management is no longer just for managers; all engineers need this knowledge to be effective in their new roles."

Needed is what they call the "Renaissance engineer"-a "skillful and ingenious master of science, economics and human motivation."

The catch-phrase for the approach that corporations want to see their new employees adopt is "holistic thinking." Students should learn processes that can be used to solve any problem, as opposed to learning the specific solutions to a set of specific problems. The contrast is often cast as "breadth" in education vs. "depth," with the former now preferred.

"The challenge," said Robert M. Spencer, of the engineering faculty at the University of Technology (Sydney, Australia), "is to provide a broader education with improved communication, team and lifelong-learning skills, with little trade-off in technical coverage, all achieved with reduced student workload in tighter economic circumstances."

Hardly a simple task, yet more and more academic institutions are bending to it. There were fewer than 30 engineering-management programs in 1976; now there are nearly 200 worldwide, mostl y graduate programs, according to Dundar F. Kocaoglu, director of the engineering-management program at Portland State University.

The problem is that you can't just graft a few courses about managing technology to the requirements for an MBA.

"Unfortunately, a number of business schools have taken a 'mix-and-stir' approach to addressing the prospective employers' changing needs, essentially adding or substituting specific courses (e.g., ethics, operations, international business, etc.) as degree requirements for business-school students," according to William Gruver and Stephen C. Stamos Jr., Bucknell University.

In response to this situation, Bucknell has set up the Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management, which presently provides a summer program in engineering management.

Under ILTM, students view "organizational problems not unidimensionally as simply a marketing, engineering-design or finance issue, but as complex problems with multiple dimensions that need to be ad dressed in an integrative way," Gruver and Stamos said.

Most of these new programs assume students have a technical background. If they don't, they are usually compelled to gain one in parallel with their management studies.

In addition, "courses in strategic management of technology should include education on strategies to enhance the innovative capabilities of the enterprise, the evolution of technologies and the management of core technological competencies. Government policies on technology may also be included in the curriculum," according to Herman de V. Steyn, from the Department of Engineering and Technology Management at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Also recommended are internships, long-term projects, working in teams on these projects and working on real assignments (such as evaluating market opportunities) from corporations.

While the high-tech community generally agrees with this prescription, there is a great deal of inertia in changing curricula, compounded by the reticence of educational traditionalists.

"We're supposed to be very liberal in academia, but when it comes to our own business, we're pretty conservative," said Henry McGee, founding dean of Virginia Commonwealth University's new school of engineering, which is looking to act on many of these recommendations.

The issue of education in management of technology is extremely important, however, and not just because of the imperative to train students to be effective employees. It also affects the bottom line.

"It should be made clear that it is not the technology itself that creates wealth, rather it is the appropriate and effective use of such technology. It is when technology is applied to add value to resources and provide marketable products and services that wealth is incremented," argued Tarek Khalil and Javier Garcia-Arreola of the University of Miami Graduate School.

"Management of Technology (MOT) is not an easy task. It combines a variety of technical fields with busine ss insight, requiring a wide perspective of both engineering and business issues. Such perspective is not provided by current MBA or engineering programs," they said.

Most education is still built around a factory model, which is fine in a stable environment but inadequate in treating technological change.

Khalil and Garcia-Arreola describe MOT as the point of intersection for engineering,science, business and corporate practice. "Only by combining all these factors can real wealth be created."

"Accepted accounting and financial procedures [are] greatly biased against technology," they said, specifically in regard to capital budgeting and investing in innovation. The common theme in MOT education, then, is to justify technology. MOT should be the basis of engineering and business curricula, they contend.

The changes that are now being made in education systems are taking place in response to corporate needs. At the same time, corporations will have to respond to the needs of the new e mployees that the educational system will turn out.

The educational system provides the first, most prevalent and often the only programming of organizational values and expectations. The move to teams and the flattening of management hierarchy make it essential that schools stress direct access and remote learning, an integrated curriculum and the collaborative learning process. Also, many companies are projecting a shortage of skilled labor, noted Billy Jones from Waste Management Hanford, John Fish and Steven McConaghy from Lockheed Martin Services, and Darwin Perkins from Lockheed Martin Hanford.

"The major implication for management of these trends will be the increase in value of the well-prepared and capable individuals. To attract and retain these individuals, management must create an environment that meets the expectations that are now being subconsciously ingrained through the education system. They will not be content to change the organization slowly as they ascend to leadership posit ions. They will be able to demand, due to scarcity of talent, that the organization change now to fit their expectations," said Jones, et al.

"This early programming will influence the learning style and expectations of the workers of the future. They will expect a reply on direct contact with experts for consultation on projects, tasks and duties. They will require direct access to the best possible information and training. These resources will enable them to perform at superior levels on tasks and projects."

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