Week 1 Courseware
Week 1 Courseware
Week 1 Courseware
COURSEWARE
ES034: ENGINEERING
MANAGEMENT
WEEK 1
Adopted by:
Second Semester
A.Y 2021-2022
Welcome to the exciting world of management!
A rapidly accelerating trend in recent years has seen management become a significant part of
everyone’s job duties, from front-line employees serving customers to the executives who are at
the top of the organization hierarchy. The increasing competitive pressures on companies to
make decisions rapidly and to delegate more responsibilities to employees closest to
customers, along with wide accessibility of massive amounts of information provided by the
Internet, have given rise to a need for everyone to develop management skills—individuals and
teams as well as managers. At minimum, employees now have responsibilities for managing
information in addition to managing their relationships with customers both internal and external
to the organization and with organizational peers, subordinates, and managers. How well
employees can manage these relationships and the information for which they are responsible
will have a critical impact on their success or failure.
For this week, we will discover the world of management including organization and its
components. This will also provide you an overview of the four functions of management:
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. These functions are what the work of
management is about.
Introduction
Management Process and Functions
Management Ethics & Social Responsibility
Watch this video before starting the module and answer the discussion questions found in the courseware
requirement:
“Engineering Manager job description” by ExpediaGroup
INTRODUCTORY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ09zx7nTSo
VIDEO
INTRODUCTION
Engineering is a profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural science gained by study,
experience, and practice is applied with judgement to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials
and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind (1979, US. Engineering societies).
Management is the process of working with and through others to achieve organizational objectives in a
changing environment. Central to this process is the effective and efficient use of limited resources.1
ENGINEER MANAGER
Build, test and oversee the production of Develop plans and schedules for reaching
structures, machines and devices technical goals, such as new product
development.
Technology centered People centered
Depends solely on his technical skills Depends on the skills of his team of people
Concentrates on the task at hand Looks at a task from the point of view of the
value it adds, and the interest of stake
holders.
Functions of the Engineer
1. Research – where the engineer is engaged in the process of learning about nature and codifying
this knowledge into usable theories.
2. Design and development — where the engineer undertakes the activity of turning a product concept
to a finished physical item. Design for manufacturability and value engineering teams (a feature of
some companies) are charged with improvement of designs and specifications at the research,
development, design, and production stages of product development.
3. Testing — where the engineer works in a unit where new products or parts are tested for workability.
4. Manufacturing — where the engineer is directly in charge of production personnel or assumes
responsibility for the product.
5. Construction — this is where the construction engineer (a civil engineer) is either directly in charge
of the construction personnel or may have responsibility for the quality of the construction
6. Sales — where the engineer assists the company's customers to meet their needs, especially those
that require technical expertise.
7. Consulting — where the engineer works as consultant of any individual or organization requiring
his services.
8. Government — where the engineer may find employment in the government performing any of the
various tasks in regulating, monitoring, and controlling the activities of various institutions, public or
private.
9. Teaching — where the engineer gets employment in a school and is assigned as a teacher of
engineering courses. Some of them later become deans, vice presidents, and presidents.
10. Management — where the engineer is assigned to manage groups of people performing specific
tasks.
The Engineering in Various Types of Organization
Engineering management refers to the activity combining "technical knowledge with the ability to organize
and coordinate worker power, materials, machinery, and money."' When the engineer is assigned to
supervise the work of even a few people, he is already engaged in the first phase of engineering
management. His main responsibility is to lead his group into producing a certain output consistent with the
required specifications. The top position an engineer manager may hope to occupy is the general
presidency of any firm, large or small. As he scales the management ladder, he finds that the higher he
goes up, the less technical activities he performs, and the more management tasks he accepts. In this case,
it is but proper that the management functions taught in pure management courses be well understood by
the engineer manager.
ORGANIZATIONS
Before knowing more about management and all its aspect, it is important to start with understanding the
what are organizations and how they create value in order to understand how essential is management to
the organization.
What is an Organization?
All organizations are open systems that interact with their environments. They do so in a continual process
of obtaining resource inputs—people, information, resources, and capital—and transforming them into
outputs in the form of finished goods and services for customers. Organizations create value when they
use resources well to produce good products and take care of their customers. When operations add value
to the original cost of resource inputs, then (1) a business organization can earn a profit—that is, sell a
product for more than the costs of making it—or (2) a nonprofit organization can add wealth to society—
that is, provide a public service like fi re protection that is worth more than its cost.
In an article entitled “Putting People First for Organizational Success,” Jeffrey Pfeffer and John F. Veiga
argue forcefully that organizations perform better when they treat their members better.39 Managers in
these high-performing organizations don’t treat people as costs to be controlled; they treat them as valuable
strategic assets to be carefully nurtured and developed. So, who are today’s managers and just what do
they do?
Who are the managers?
You find them in all organizations and with a wide variety of job titles—team leader, department head,
supervisor, project manager, president, administrator, and more. We call them managers, people in
organizations who directly support, supervise, and help activate the work efforts and performance
accomplishments of others.
Levels of Managers
Management Defined
As mentioned previously, management is the process of working with and through others to achieve
organizational objectives in a changing environment. Central to this process is the effective and efficient
use of limited resources.1
Five components of this definition require closer examination: (1) working with and through others, (2)
achieving organizational objectives, (3) balancing effectiveness and efficiency, (4) making the most of
limited resources, and (5) coping with a changing environment.
ORGANIZING. Structural considerations such as the chain of command, division of labor, and assignment
of responsibility are part of the organizing function. Careful organizing helps ensure the efficient use of
human resources.
LEADING. Managers become inspiring leaders by serving as role models and adapting their management
style to the demands of the situation. The idea of visionary leadership is popular today.
CONTROLLING. When managers compare desired results with actual results and take the necessary
corrective action, they are keeping things on track through the control function. Deviations from past
plans should be considered when formulating new plans.
Managerial Skills and Competences
A skill is the ability to translate knowledge into action that results in desired performance. Harvard scholar
Robert L. Katz described the essential, or baseline, skills of managers in three categories: technical,
human, and conceptual.
Technical Skills is the ability to use a special proficiency or expertise to perform particular tasks.
Accountants, engineers, market researchers, financial planners, and systems analysts, for
example, possess technical skills within their areas of expertise. Figure 1.4 shows that technical
skills are very important at job entry and early career levels.
Human and Interpersonal Skills is the ability to work well in cooperation with other people.
Recruiters today put a lot of weight on a job candidate’s “soft” skills—things like ability to
communicate, collaborate, and network, and to engage others with a spirit of trust, enthusiasm,
and positive impact. As pointed out in Figure 1.4, the interpersonal nature of managerial work
makes human skills consistently important across all levels of managerial responsibility.
Conceptual and Analytical Skills ability to think critically and analytically. It involves the capacity
to break problems into smaller parts, see the relations between the parts, and recognize the
implications of any one problem for others. Figure 1.4 shows that conceptual skills gain in
importance as one moves from lower to higher levels of management.
The real test of ethics occurs when individuals encounter a situation that challenges their personal values
and standards. Often ambiguous and unexpected, these ethical challenges are inevitable. Everyone has to
be prepared to deal with them, even students.
Ethical Dilemmas
An ethical dilemma is a situation that requires a choice regarding a possible course of action that, although
offering the potential for personal or organizational benefit, or both, may be considered unethical. It is often
a situation in which action must be taken but for which there is no clear consensus on what is “right” and
“wrong.” Here are some common examples of situations that present managers with ethical dilemmas.
Discrimination—Your boss suggests that it would be a mistake to hire a qualified job candidate because
she wears a headscarf for religious purposes. The boss believes your traditional customers might be
uncomfortable with her appearance.
Sexual harassment—A female subordinate asks you to discipline a coworker that she claims is making
her feel uncomfortable with inappropriate sexual remarks. The coworker, your friend, says that he was
just kidding around and asks you not to take any action that would harm his career.
Conflicts of interest—You are working in another country and are offered an expensive gift in return for
making a decision favorable to the gift giver. You know that such exchanges are common practice in
this culture and that several of your colleagues have accepted similar gifts in the past.
Product safety—Your company is struggling financially and can make one of its major products more
cheaply by purchasing lower-quality materials, although doing so would slightly increase the risk of
consumer injury.
Use of organizational resources—You bring an office laptop computer home so that you can work after
hours. Your wife likes this computer better than hers, and asks if she can use it for her online business
during the weekends.
Although it may seem surprising, Carroll suggests that most managers act amorally. Though well
intentioned, they remain mostly uninformed or undisciplined in considering the ethical aspects of our
behavior. The moral manager, by contrast, is an ethics leader who always serves as a positive role model.
Ethics Training
Ethics training is one way to try to instill ethical behavior in an organization. It takes the form of structured
programs to help participants understand the ethical aspects of decision making and better integrate high
ethical standards into their daily behaviors. Ethics training seeks to help people understand the ethical
aspects of decision making and to incorporate high ethical standards into their daily behavior.
Whistleblower Protection
Picture this: (1) Dave, a student, reports to that their teacher is not attending the class on time; and (2)
Anna, a teacher, complained to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) that they are underpaid.
These two people come from different organization settings and are linked to different issues. But, they
share two important things in common. First, each was a whistleblower who exposed misdeeds in their
organizations in order to preserve ethical standards and protect against further wasteful, harmful, or illegal
acts. Second, each was punished for such action – the teacher failed Dave in their class and Ann was fired
from her job, respectively.
Research by the Ethics Resource Center has found that some 44% of workers in the United States fail to
blow the whistle to report wrongdoings they observe at work. The top reasons are “(1) the belief that no
corrective action would be taken and (2) the fear that reports would not be kept confidential.”
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND GOVERNANCE
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) describes the obligation of an organization to act in ways that
serve both its own interests and the interests of society at large. Consider these brief examples.
Trish Karter co-founded the Dancing Deer Bakery in Boston with a winning recipe for social
responsibility. She hires people who lack skills, trains them, and provides them with a financial stake in
the company. She also donates 35% of company proceeds to fund action programs to end family
homelessness.
Deborah Sardone owns a housekeeping service in Texas. Noticing that clients with cancer really
struggled with chores, she started Cleaning for a Reason. The nonprofit organization networks with
cleaning firms around the country to provide free home cleaning to cancer patients.
Corporate social responsibility comes to life in day-to-day management through stewardship, the notion
that managers at all levels should act in ways that respect and protect the interests of society. A good
steward, for example, supports and displays sustainable practices; a poor steward could care less.
Corporate Governance
Corporate governance refers to the active oversight of management decisions and company actions by
boards of directors. Businesses are required by law to have boards of directors that are elected by
stockholders to represent their interests. The governance exercised by these boards most typically involves
hiring, firing, and compensating the CEO and top management; assessing strategy; and verifying financial
records. The expectation is that board members will hold management accountable for ethical and socially
responsible leadership.
When corporate failures and controversies occur, weak governance often gets blamed. And when it does,
you will sometimes see government stepping in to try to correct things for the future. Even as one talks
about corporate governance and top management accountability, it is important to remember that all
managers must accept personal responsibility for doing the “right” things. It is not enough to fulfill one’s
performance accountabilities; it must be fulfilled in an ethical and socially responsible manner which is
referred as the ethics self-governance.
END OF WEEK 1