Reviewing a decade of research on Engineering Leadership

Abstract

– Academics, industry professionals, and policy makers across North America have shown increasing interest in the topic of engineering leadership. The demand from industries for engineers with diversified skills in a hypercompetitive market as well as the need to produce engineers attuned to the challenges of globalization are pushing universities to invest in engineering leadership education programs. In this context, this article engages with the following two questions: How have scholars addressed the concept of engineering leadership over the past decade? And how could the field of engineering leadership be constructively pursued in the future? The goal of this article is to map the structure of this nascent field by analyzing its scope, geography of application, methodology, relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature. By doing so, we explore reasons for the field’s structural particularities while also considering new avenues for future studies. We offer some tentative conclusions: articles predominantly presented the results of a pilot program or the outcomes of integration of leadership topics into current courses but in the process the concept of engineering leadership is seldom understood in a situated manner within wider shifts in economy and society. This points to a potential avenue for further research that incorporates a macro level of analysis that adopts a multi-dimensional view of leadership engineering.

Mapping Engineering Leadership Research through an AI-enabled Systematic Literature Review

“…Engineering leadership development research on Organizational Context encompasses eleven clusters and 148 papers. Similarly noted by Yousefdehi et al [11], much of this research focuses on the array of EL programs that have been developed over the years. These Academic and Cocurricular Programs include those emphasizing collaboration with industry partners, particular disciplines (e.g., Civil Engineering [30] or Manufacturing [36]), student level (e.g., graduate teaching assistants [33] or general EL development), and program type (e.g., academies, scholarships [32]).…”

“…The documentation of the discipline's growth and evolution to date is characterized by broad looks at program development, definitions of the concept, and synthesizing literature reviews. As noted by Yousefdehi et al in their literature review of EL research, much of the research has focused on educational dimensions with little work situated outside academia [11]. Case studies of programs highlighting best practices in program structure and curriculum [12], teaching [13], and delivery methods [1] help to provide an understanding of the growth and change in program development across engineering academic institutions.…”

Wisdom through Adversity: Situated Leadership Learning of Engineering Leaders

“…It has been a decade and a half since the engineering profession first brought attention to the gap between the need for engineering leaders in a competitive globalized world, and the readiness of new engineering graduates to take on that leadership challenge [2]- [4]. Given the gap, much of the primary research on engineering leadership over the same period has focused on the design and outcome of university curricular and co-curricular leadership programming [5]. Where studies have involved industry directly, they aimed mostly to identify the desirable skills/competencies, traits, or dimensions of leadership that are deemed essential for graduating engineers, from the perspectives of industry recruiters and managers [6]- [9].…”