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THE PRESENT ERA: MANAGING CHANGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE 46 it is an attempt to represent the profession accurately to the voters and taxpayers whose support for engineering and for technological advancement in general is important to the profession. A fifth function of the societies is related to this concern for image, although it predates it considerably: The professional societies are active in the continuing process of establishing and adjusting professional ethics. The historical basis for this concern is the duality of the engineer's role as both professional and employee (Florman, 1981). The issue has intensified in the present era as the potential harmfulness of many engineering products has increased (particularly in the chemical and nuclear engineering fields), and as public attention to these matters has grown accordingly. The Engineer as Employee Engineer as Corporate Employee. In the postwar period the rapid growth of big business has led to major changes in the way that most engineers work. A growing emphasis on the science of business administration from the late 1950s on has strongly affected the role of engineers in the corporate world; indeed, many top engineers nowadays acquire management training to enhance their professional status and abilities. Panel members now see indications that, with increased international competition in recent years, the emphasis in management style within many companies is shifting toward the integration of technical knowledge with management skills. The more competitive and international environment of engineering today has multiple impacts on the engineer as a corporate employee. A variety of new business management approaches have come into use in engineering-oriented companies during the last 10â15 years. One of these is the "matrix management" structure for organizing project work. Under this system, engineers, scientists, and technicians are assigned as needed from functional departments for the duration of a project; when the project is concluded, the project team is broken up and dispersed to other projects. While this approach permits efficient allocation of human resources, in many cases it minimizes the cohesiveness of the team because members do not work together on a permanent basis (of course the length of association depends on the size of the project). Such project teams also usually include a large number of engineers, so that specialization of individual roles is emphasized. This may again detract from an individual's sense of professionalism and commitment to the project. Rapid developments in technology and the changing competitive fortunes of companies create a sense of turbulence in some engineering
