Engineers as Executives: An International Perspective by William Aspray

Abstract

360 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE factories: increasing production means increasing losses even more. So the firms limp along with underutilized production, performing dismally. The idea of importing flexible specialization may sound attractive, but as Bagchi concludes, it is not likely to succeed without a supporting telecommunications infrastructure, a network of firms capable of supplying one another’s needs, freedom from misguided central control and unnecessary regulation, and a management ca­ pable of seeing new technologies as a means of producing wealth instead of beating down labor. Bryan Pfaffenberger Dr. Pfaffenberger is associate professor of technology, culture, and communica­ tion at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia. Engineers as Executives: An InternationalPerspective. By William Aspray. New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1995. Pp. xiii+309; illustrations. (No price given.) Engineers, as well as students of the engineering profession, have long been fascinated by the role of engineers in management. Run­ ning through the history of American engineering professionalism, for example, has been a debate aboutwhether engineering expertise is a crucial ingredient in the management of technology-intensive enterprises. With the rise of international competition, and the United States’ fall from unchallenged economic dominance, has come a growing comparative perspective on this question. Ameri­ cans have begun to wonder whether someone else may have got it right. Maybe the ways in which other countries incorporate technical expertise into the management ofenterprises accounts for their abil­ ity to surpass American business in many sectors of the international economy. William Aspray directed the IEEE Center for the History ofElectri­ cal Engineering when he conducted a set of interviews with leading engineer-managers from the United States, Germany, and Japan and collected them in this volume. His intent was to learn from his conversations with actual engineer-managers about the role of engi­ neering in the management of technical enterprises and about inter­ national differences in how engineering is incorporated into man­ agement. The twelve interviews (apparently reported verbatim) in this volume (four from each country) cover managers from a wide variety of enterprises (from newer high-technology producers such as Ascii and Dataproducts to industrial giants such as Motorola, NEC, and Grundig). Although some interviews are insubstantial and a few interviewees tend to respond in managerial clichés, many interesting moments are sprinkled throughout the interviews. The reader will learn much TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 361 about the history of individual firms and industries, how specific companies recruit and train engineers, how they encourage research and innovation, and the nature of competition and cooperation among technical companies. Among the more interesting interviews are ones with Ernst Denert, one of the heads of sd&m, a German software development company; with Takashi Sugayama and Ta­ kashi Yamanaka of Yokagawa Electric Corporation, a leading pro­ ducer of electric measuring instruments and process control; with Arthur P. Stern of Magnavox; and with Mitchell Kapor of Lotus. Denert provides interesting comments on the role of the 1968 German student protest era in preparing engineers for the “open” world of software development; he is also astutely skeptical of exag­ gerated claims regarding the prospects for mass-produced software. Sugayama and Yamanaka describe the relationship between a Japa­ nese company and its much larger American partners (GE, HewlettPackard ) and indicate the degree to which the American firm tends to dominate and even to Americanize smaller Japanese companies like their own. Stern, a veteran manager of a major defense contrac­ tor, praises the military’s role in stimulating technical innovation but admits that he preferred working in the commercial side of the business because he found the competitive environment more excit­ ing. Kapor describes the meteoric rise of Lotus with the develop­ ment of Lotus 1-2-3, emphasizing the degree to which the com­ pany’s success was a matter of luck and arguing that it is virtually impossible to plan for this kind of “hypergrowth.” Despite the interesting materials contained in the interviews, the book is ultimately unsuccessful in addressing the basic questions it poses. Part of the difficulty is that Aspray provides only the barest of introductions. There is no extended introductory essay to provide a background discussion of the debate over engineering...