Impact of cultural differences among engineering managers on assessing competencies of engineering graduates – a case study

• Autores: Martin Jaeger, Gang Yu, Desmond Adair
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 36, no. 1 (Parte A), 2020, págs. 117-129
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Globalization has increased the frequency of interactions between engineers from different cultural backgrounds. The purpose ofthis study is to identify the perspectives of Arab and Chinese managers of engineers on the relative importance of engineeringcompetencies and the satisfaction with these competencies exhibited by early career engineers in their organizations. Questionnairebased interviews are carried out with 95 Arab managers of engineers and 52 Chinese managers of engineers, all involved withengineering projects in Kuwait. Descriptive and inferential statistics (Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney U test) have been carried out.The results show that managers from both groups largely agreed on the relative importance of the competencies, with thecompetenciesknowledge of contextual factorsandorderly management of selfbeing considered by Chinese managers to be moreimportant than by Arab managers. Chinese managers were less satisfied with the competencies,knowledge of contextual factors, in depth understanding of specialist knowledge areasand theapplication of established engineering practice. Arab managers perceivedtheir overall satisfaction of the competencies significantly lower than the importance of these competencies. These findings, andfurther details presented in this paper, support engineering educators and engineering educational institutions to prepare engineersfor cross cultural work within a globalised world by showing that students need more opportunities to increase awareness andpractice ethical conduct and team work, develop their understanding of specialist knowledge areas and accountabilities, and beexposed to cross-cultural project scenarios. For Chinese institutions of engineering education it is recommended to include in theirengineering curricula contextual factors of the most relevant contexts overseas, and, to investigate further the low satisfaction ofChinese managers with graduates’ level of theory based understanding and conceptual understanding of mathematics.