Republic of the Philippines

Tarlac State University

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Tarlac City

B312 – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Prepared by:

Enalyn T. Domingo

June 2020
Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Explain management-related concepts
2. Engage in reflection of self-awareness and career readiness
3. Relate management principles to real-life situations

Activity

Answer Assessment 2 pp 514-515 from the book Management 9th ed by Schermerhorn. Get a
partner and assess one another. Compare your ratings.

Processing

1. Do the results differ with what the assessment of yourself and the assessment of your partner for
you?
2. How well do you know yourself?
3. How will you relate the skill set found in the assessment useful to you to become a manager?
4. Are you ready to be a manager?

The Johari Window is one pathway to self-awareness. It’s a way of comparing what we know about
ourselves with what others know about us. The “open” areas known to ourselves and others are often
small. The “blind spot,” “the unknown,” and the “hidden” areas can be quite large. They challenge our
capacities for self-discovery.

1. Self- Awareness helps us identify our strengths and weaknesses.

2. It keeps us from being biased on how we see ourselves.
3. It lets us take a critical look at your attitudes, behaviors, skills, personal characteristics, and
accomplishments.
4. Self-awareness is a pathway to adaptability, something we need to keep learning and growing in
changing times.
5. True self-awareness means not just knowing your idealized self—the person you want or hope to
be. It also means knowing who you really are in the eyes of others and as defined by your actions.

Abstraction

Working Today

Scholar Lynda Gratton describes the difficult times in which we live and work:

1. “Technology shrinks the world but consumes all of our time,”

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2. “Globalization means we can work anywhere, but must compete with people from
everywhere.”

What does this mean when planning for career entry and advancement? At a minimum there are
few guarantees of long-term employment. Jobs are increasingly earned and re-earned every day through
one’s performance accomplishments. Careers are being redefined along the lines of “flexibility,” “free
agency,” “skill portfolios,” and “entrepreneurship.” Career success requires lots of initiative and self-
awareness, as well as continuous learning.

ISSUES IN WORKING TODAY

Talent
Intellectual capital is the collective brainpower or shared knowledge of a workforce.

Intellectual Capital = Competency x Commitment

A knowledge worker is someone whose mind is a critical asset to employers.

Technology

Tech IQ—a person’s ability to use technology at work and everyday living, and a commitment to
stay informed on the latest technological developments.

Globalization

Globalization is the worldwide interdependence of resource flows, product markets, and

business competition.

Job migration is the shifting of jobs from one country to another.

Ethics
Ethics—a code of moral principles that sets standards for what is “good” and “right” as
opposed to “bad” and “wrong” in the conduct of a person or group.

Diversity
workforce diversity describes the composition of a workforce in terms of such differences as
gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and able-bodiedness.

Prejudice is the display of negative, irrational attitudes toward members of diverse

populations.

Discrimination actively denies minority members the full benefits of organizational

membership

The glass ceiling effect is an invisible barrier limiting career advancement of women and
minorities.

Careers

A shamrock organization operates with a core group of full-time long-term workers supported
by others who work on contracts and part-time.

In a free-agent economy people change jobs more often, and many work on independent
contracts with a shifting mix of employers.

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Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

Self-management is the ability to understand oneself, exercise initiative, accept responsibility,

and learn from experience.

What Is an Organization?
 An organization is a group of people working together in a structured and coordinated fashion to
achieve a set of goals.

Organizations as Systems

An open system transforms resource inputs from the environment into product outputs.

Organizational Performance

Productivity is the quantity and quality of work performance, with resource utilization considered.

Performance effectiveness is an output measure of task or goal accomplishment.

Performance efficiency is an input measure of resource cost associated with goal

accomplishment.

Changing Nature of Organizations

Change is a continuing theme in our society, and organizations are no exception. The following list shows
some of the organizational trends and transitions relevant to the study of management

• Focus on valuing human capital: The premium is on high-involvement work settings that rally
the knowledge, experience, and commitment of all members.
• Demise of “command-and-control”: Traditional top-down “do as I say” bosses are giving way to
participatory bosses who treat people with respect.
• Emphasis on teamwork: Organizations are more horizontal in focus, and driven by teamwork
that pools talents for creative problem solving.
• Preeminence of technology: New developments in computer and information technology
continually change the way organizations operate and how people work.

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Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

• Importance of networking: Organizations and their members are networked for intense, real-
time communication and coordination.
• New workforce expectations: A new generation of workers is less tolerant of hierarchy, more
informal, attentive to performance merit, and concerned for work–life balance.
• Priorities on sustainability: Social values show more attention to preservation of natural
resources for future generations and understanding how work affects human well-being

Management
 Is getting work done through others.
 Requires a set of activities (including planning and decision making, organizing, leading, and
controlling) directed at an organization’s resources (human, financial, physical, and information),
with the aim of achieving organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner.

Engineering
 The profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study,
experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the
materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind. (ABET)

 Engineer: A person applying his/her mathematical and science knowledge properly to solve
practical problems.

Engineering Management

 Engineering management is a process of leading and controlling a technical function/enterprise.

 Engineering management is similar to other definitions of management, but with a slant toward
technical issues.

A manager is a person who supports, activates, and is responsible for the work of others.

Management Functions

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Management Levels and Areas

Basic Managerial Skills

Learning is a change in behavior that results from experience. Lifelong learning is continuous
learning from daily experiences. A skill is the ability to translate knowledge into action that results in
desired performance. A technical skill is the ability to use expertise to perform a task with proficiency.

A human skill or interpersonal skill is the ability to work well in cooperation with other people.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively. A conceptual
skill is the ability to think analytically to diagnose and solve complex problems.

Management Roles

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Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

Types of Managers

Line managers directly contribute to producing the organization’s goods or services.

Staff managers use special technical expertise to advise and support line workers.

Functional managers are responsible for one area, such as finance, marketing, production,
personnel, accounting, or sales.

General managers are responsible for complex, multifunctional units.

An administrator is a manager in a public or nonprofit organization.

Managerial Performance

Accountability is the requirement to show performance results to a supervisor.

Corporate governance occurs when a board of directors holds top management accountable for
organizational performance.

An effective manager helps others achieve high performance and satisfaction at work.

Quality of work life is the overall quality of human experiences in the workplace.

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Changing Nature of Managerial Work

The upside-down pyramid view of organizations shows customers at the top being served by
workers who are supported by managers.

Managerial Agendas and Networks

Agenda setting develops action priorities for accomplishing goals and plans.
Networking is the process of creating positive relationships with people who can help advance
agendas. Social capital is a capacity to get things done with the support and help of others.

Characteristics of an Effective Engineering Manager

Engineering managers have engineering training and specific technical knowledge and experience, and
are accountable for the results of the unit, section, or department they head up.

Generally speaking, an engineering manager needs to be:

1. motivated to acquire knowledge (e.g., roles, functions, and vocabulary) and skills;
2. prepared mentally (job outlook, management orientation, personality traits, and flexibility); and
be
3. determined to diligently practice the principles of engineering management.

Many skills of engineering management are learnable. The effective engineering manager is someone
who has a clear vision to lead his or her unit, is a rational and organized individual, devotes attention
to focus on what customers are looking for (e.g., quality, convenience, flexibility, speed of service, and
friendliness in interactions), and practices a high standard with respect to ethics, fairness, and honor.
As a rule, managers decide what should be done (strategic), and technical contributors determine
how things are to be done (tactical). As an engineering manager rises in an Engineering Management
organization, his or her daily decisions will become more strategic. The CEO of a company makes
strategic decisions only.

Nature of Work by Engineering Managers

The work of engineering managers is four dimensional. Engineering managers need to interface
with and manage the interactions with subordinates, as well as coordinate their own management actions

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Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

with those of other managers and peer groups. They manage their own time and efforts. They also
attempt to anticipate the requirements of their superiors by making recommendations for future courses
of action.
The figure below illustrates this four-dimensional nature of work. Engineering managers plan,
organize, lead, and control people, teams, money, technology, facilities, and other resources to achieve
the business objectives of the company. To ensure company operations for the short term, they pay
attention to problem solving and conflict resolution. As a rule, engineering managers do not perform the
technical work themselves. Instead, they work through people. Their job is to decide what the unit,
department, or company should be doing to advance the objectives of the company and then assign
resources to implement their decisions. An illustration of managerial concern is an issue related to product
development. Some companies initiate new product development on a market-driven basis. First, they
use market surveys and customer feedback to define product concepts of potential interest to customers.
Then they secure resources to develop the product concepts, manufacture the prototypes, conduct tests
of a prototype to further improve design details, and offer customer services to market the products
involved. Doing so allows them a high probability of achieving commercial success. Other companies
adopt a technology-driven approach. They first invent and develop new technology, and then they
incorporate the resulting inventions and innovations in products that they hope to sell to the marketplace.
Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages. Surveys show that both approaches have
yielded successes and failures. Another example is the potential difference in opinion between
departments when deciding on “buy versus build” options and on setting task priorities. Still another area
of potential disagreement is the choice about the level of standardization in product design that reduces
cost while allowing a sufficient level of innovation to enhance competitiveness. In general, enforcing a
high level of standardization with strict rules and guidelines tends to impede creativity and innovation.
Managers are expected to constantly interact and work closely with other managers to resolve
such differences. For those engineers who elect to become managers, there are skills that can be readily
learned to make them more efficient and effective. These include time management, work habits, people-
related skills (such as team building, communications, and motivation), and use of decision support tools
(e.g., multicriteria decision-making [Triantaphyllou 2010], what-if analysis by modeling, risk analysis,
Monte Carlo simulation, forecasting, statistics, regression, linear programming, optimization, and office
technologies).

Assessment Tasks

1. Discuss the importance of ethics in the relationship between managers and the people they
supervise.
2. Explain how “accountability” operates in the relationship between (a) a team leader and her
team members, and (b) the same team leader and her boss.
3. Explain how the “glass ceiling effect” may disadvantage newly hired African American college
graduates in a large corporation.
4. What is globalization, and what are its implications for working in the new economy?

References:

Bullinger, H. (2013), Challenges for the Future – Engineering Management, Faculty of Technical Sciences
(Novi Sad, Serbia), Fraunhofer IAO (Stuttgart, Germany) and DAAAM International (Vienna, Austria)

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Engineering Management Chapter 1: Introduction to Management Principles

Chang, C.M. (2016), Engineering Management: Meeting the Global Challenges – 2nd ed., CRC Press,
Florida

Daft, R. (2010), Management – 9th ed., Sout-Western Cengage Learning, USA.

Eisner, H. (2002), Essentials of Project and Systmes Engineering Management – 2nd ed, John Wiley and
Sons, Inc, New York.

Schermerhorn, John R. (2013), Management — 12th ed. , John Wiley and Sons, Inc, USA.

ten Haaf, W. et al. (2002), Fundamentals of Business Engineering and Management: A systems approach
to people and organizations, VSSD, Netherlands.

Engineering Management Principles and Economics: Custom Edition for Corcordia University (2013),
Pearson Learning Solutions, Massachusetts

Zairi, M. (1991), Total Quality Management for Engineers Woodland Publishing Ltd., England

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