The Engineering-Business Nexus

Fascinating and compelling in equal measure this volume presents a critical examination of the multilayered relationships between engineering and business. In so doing the study also stimulates ethical reflection on how these relationships either enhance or inhibit strategies to address vital issues of our time. In the context of  geopolitical, economic, and environmental tendencies the authors explore the world that we should want to create and the role of the engineer and the business manager in this endeavor. 

Throughout this volume the authors identify periods of alignment and periods of tension between engineering and business. They look at focal points of the engineering-business nexus related to the development of capitalism.  The book explores past and present movements to reshape, reform, or reject this nexus.

The volume is informed by questions of  importance for industry as well as for higher education. These are: What kinds of conflict arise for engineers in their attempts to straddle both professional and organizational commitments? How should professionals be managed to avoid a clash of managerial and professional cultures? How do engineers create value in firms and corporations? What kinds of tension exist between higher education and industry? What challenges does the neoliberal entrepreneurial university pose for management, faculty, students, society, and industry? Should engineering graduates be ready for work, and can they possibly be? What kinds of business issues are reflected in engineering education curricula, and for what purpose? Is there a limit to the degree of business hybridization in engineering degree programs, and if so, what would be the criterion for its definition?  Is there a place in engineering education curricula for reflective critique of assumptions related to business and economic thinking? 

One ideal of managementand control comes to the fore as the Anthropocene - the world transformed into an engineered artefact  which includes human existence. The volume raises the question as to how engineering and business together should be considered, given the fact that the current engineering-business nexus remains embedded within an economic model of continual growth. By addressing macro-level issues such as  energy policy, sustainable development, globalization, and social justice this study will both help create awareness and stimulate development of self-knowledge among practitioners, educators, and students thereby ultimately addressing  the need for better informed citizens to safeguard planet Earth as a human life supporting system.

General Introduction. The Nature, History and Context of the Engineering-Business Nexus (Steen Hyldgaard Christensen).- Part I. Engineering and Business Value Systems.- Introduction (Christelle Didier).- Chapter 1. Engineering and Management: The Odd Couple (Michael Davis).- Chapter 2. Engineering and Business Ethics: Deconstructing Higher Aims of Professionalism (Christelle Didier).- Chapter 3. Prisoners of the Capitalist Machine: Captivity and the Corporate Engineer (Edward Conlon).- Chapter 4. Educating Engineer-Managers about Corporate Social Responsibility following the Montreal School's Perspective (Lovasoa Ramboarisata).- Chapter 5. Actualization of Engineers' Professional Ideal in Quebec: Analysis of the Barriers (Luc Begin).- Part II. Engineering and Business Ideologies Past and Present.- Introduction (Steen Hyldgaard Christensen).- Chapter 6. Industry versus Business: Thorstein Veblen’s Deconstruction of the Engineering-Business Nexus (Steen Hyldgaard Christensen).- Chapter 7. The Sons of Martha vs. the Sons of Mary: Forging Iron and Finding Gold in Engineering and Business Ideologies (Janis Langins).- Chapter 8. The Engineer, Entrepreneur and Economist in 1980s’ Chinese Economic System Transformation (Li Bocong).- Chapter 9. Influence of Environmental Discourses in Engineering Education for Sustainability (Charles McMahon).- Chapter 10. Sustainability Management or Management Sustainability? (Martin Meganck).- Chapter 11. The Maker Movement as Democratizing Innovation in China: Entrepreneurial Engineers at the Nexus of Technological Resourcefulness and Pragmatic Politics (Qin Zhu).- Part III. The Practices of Business and Engineering.- Introduction (Mike Murphy).- Chapter 12. Situating the Engineering-Business Nexus within an overall Societal Context: Engineering a challenging and challenged Profession (William Grimson).- Chapter 13. Learning to practice Engineering in the World beyond School: The Experiences of newly hired Engineers in Business (Russell Korte).- Chapter 14. Toward Lifelong Excellence: Navigating the Engineering-Business Space (Glen Miller).- Chapter 15. Spending other People’s Money: Creating Value in the Engineering Enterprise (Bill Williams).- Chapter 16. Valuation and Market Creation: The Economic Dynamics of Socio-Material Change (Ulrik Jørgensen).- Chapter 17. Technology and the Practice of Engineering (Erik W. Aslaksen).- Chapter 18. Engineering Business: Inventing Problems for Technical Solutions - The Co-production of Institutions, Skills and Engineering Challenges (Anders Buch).- Chapter 19. Business Benchmarking of Global Operations: The Case of Water and Energy Consumption in the Brewery Industry (Alan C. Brent).- Part IV. Engineering and Business Education.

Introduction (Bill Williams).- Chapter 20. Industry and the Development of a New System of Higher Technological Education in the UK 1955-66: A shared Responsibility? (John Heywood).- Chapter 21. Tensions between Industry and Academia: Policy Making and Curriculum Development (John Heywood).- Chapter 22. Business in Engineering Education: Issues, Hybrids, Identities and Limits? (Mike Murphy).- Chapter 23. To what Ends: Engineering, Technology, and Business Program Perspectives as to their Key Purposes with Regard to the Society Housing Them (Michael J. Dyrenfurth).- Chapter 24. Employability in Engineering Education: Are Engineering Students ready for Work? (Anette Kolmos).