Organizing Engineering Work - A Comparative-Analysis

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work ; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without internal contradiction because of the ambiguous “intermediate” position of engineers.