Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 2242

An Integrated Model For Management and Economics Instruction for Engineersl

Sanford Bordman, Iftekhar Hasan New Jersey Institute of Technology

In today’s global economy, the engineering function is more complex and multifaceted than conventional or traditional forms of organization. The organizations are continuously trying to adapt to changes not only in technology but also to changes in markets, regulations, financial innovations, changes in socioeconomic factors, and diverse work force (internally as well as externally). The computer and telecommunication revolution place technocrats in direct and closer contacts with internal workers, suppliers, competitors, and clients. Moreover, recent statistics show a significant shift of U. S. companies towards a more service-oriented global network and all these changing scenarios demand engineers with multiple roles of technology experts with efficient management skills. However, the technology education institutions have not focused on the need of educational training for our engineering or technology scientists to cope with their emerging role.

In a broader theme, this article is an attempt to project some thoughts on how educational background can be re-organized in order to better prepare today’s engineering and technology scientists. More specifically, the article concentrates primarily on the combined effort of the School of Industrial Management and College of Science and Liberal Arts at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in re- designing the basic economics and management courses for our new technological and global society. The re-design is an attempt to develop joint curriculum for both courses with an emphasis on applications.

The paper proceeds in the following ways. First, we discuss the growing literature on the roles and required skills for engineers followed by the integrated management and economics instruction as part of integrating engineering and management education. In the third section, the paper discusses our experience of evaluating student knowledge in the fields of economics and management after taking the integrated course for one semester. Section four concludes the discussion.

II. Engineers and Skills in the Changing Environment

The role of today’s engineers is significantly influenced by the business environment faced by manufacturing firms. The integration of a variety of business functions into multidisciplinary corporate units are crucial in order to survive in the global competitive market place. Moreover, technological advances, changing organization structure, and rising competition from newly industrialized countries [Porter (1986)] in markets also affected the career directions and expectations of many engineers. Increased concentration in cost efficiency and product differentiation may be the key to the new

1 We thank Bruce Kirchhoff for helpful comments. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors. {hi&’ 1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings > ‘.

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Bordman, S., & Hasan, I. (1996, June), An Integrated Model For Management And Economics Instruction For Engineers Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6117