When students enter the workforce, they must make a transition from an academic to a professional role. This study, based on interviews with professional engineers in supervisory roles, suggests that many basic skills required in the workplace, including the ability to work on a team and to communicate with one's peers and supervisors, are missing or insufficiently developed in recent college graduates. Many employers have programs to overcome these deficiencies, but we should also consider what we as educators can do to better prepare students for their future roles, and what students themselves can do to ease the transition.
Theories of organizational power explain how an entry-level employee in a hierarchically structured organization was able to have a significant impact on her workplace. These theories tell us that one way to gain power is by demonstrating some type of expertise that is valued within the organization. This case study of an auditor who was an expert writer will demonstrate how her expertise led to changes within the organization. As a young woman at the lowest professional level in a male-dominated bureaucratic organization, she would not have been expected to gain power. However, her rhetorical expertise-her awareness of the importance of audience and purpose, and her knowledge of what to say and how to say itgave her the power to revise the processes by which her organization did its work, to rewrite the job descriptions of the managers within the organization, and to create a unique role for herself within the workgroup.hen we think about newcomers entering an organization, we think Wabout how much they have to learn, the socialization process they will have to go through, the possibilities for advancement that may be open to them, the treatment they will receive at the hands of their colleagues and supervisors, and, perhaps, how they might go about gaining some power for themselves. We don't, however, have a great deal of research to rely on for answers to our questions in these areas.Part of the problem is that it isn't easy to gain access to organizational sites. For this-reason, much of the research that we do have about newcomers focuses on the experiences of student interns or cooperative education students (see, for example,
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