How to improve French Engineers’ collaborative skills ? by Alexis Kummetat

CONSULTING AND COACHING FOR CHANGE 2011 - 2013 HEC Paris – Oxford Saïd Business School

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the HEC Paris degree of Executive Specialised Master in Consulting and Coaching for Change

How to improve French Engineers’ collaborative skills?

Author: Alexis KUMMETAT February 2013

CONSULTING AND COACHING FOR CHANGE Class of 2011-2013

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I hereby declare that the content of this dissertation is wholly my own work and written by myself specifically for the HEC Executive Specialised Master in Consulting and Coaching for Change, except where stated and properly referencedâ&#x20AC;?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Research question : how to improve French Engineers’ collaborative skills? 9 1.1 What is « collaboration » .......................................................................................... 9 1.2 A skill ? .................................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Collaborative work : focusing on engineers ........................................................ 10 1.4 What is an “engineer” ? ......................................................................................... 11 1.5 Who are the “French Engineers” ? ....................................................................... 11

2 Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : why is it important? .................. 12 2.1 According to my personal observations .............................................................. 13 2.1.1 When men meet processes… ............................................................................ 13 2.1.2 When processes prevail on men… .................................................................... 14 2.1.3 Accept other rationalities? .................................................................................. 15 2.1.4 And uncertainty? ................................................................................................ 16 2.2 According to the international literature .............................................................. 17 2.2.1 The influence of educational institutions ............................................................ 19 2.2.2 To match companies’ needs .............................................................................. 22 2.2.3 For social responsibility and diversity ? ............................................................. 23 2.2.4 For engineers themselves .................................................................................. 24 2.3 According to the French literature : to reach the engineer’s “new faces” ? .... 26

3 How to improve engineers’ collaborative skills : literature review and gaps 28 3.1 Improving the engineers’ collaboration : the scientific approach ..................... 28 3.1.1 A scientific analysis of the challenge ................................................................. 28 3.1.2 From scientific analysis to scientific control ? .................................................... 31 3.1.3 From scientific control to tools solutions ............................................................ 32 3.2 Improving the collaboration : the inter-organisational approach ...................... 33 3.3 Engineers’ collaborative skills : victims of their “personality” and “culture” ?36 3.3.1 Do have engineers a specific “culture” ? ............................................................ 36 3.3.2 Do engineers have emotions ? .......................................................................... 39 3.3.3 There are engineers… and engineers ............................................................... 41

3.4 Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : the educational way ....................... 41 3.4.1 Cooperative learning .......................................................................................... 43 3.4.2 Go past the « disciplinary egocentrism » ........................................................... 43 3.4.3 Discover the complexity ..................................................................................... 45 3.4.4 Deal with the language barrier, to improve collaboration ................................... 45 3.4.5 Are these initiatives effective ? .......................................................................... 45 3.5 Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : other good practices and insights 48 3.5.1 Improve engineers’ collaborative skills through communication ........................ 49 3.5.2 Improving collaboration through « objects » ...................................................... 50 3.5.3 Improving collaboration with « boundary spanners » ......................................... 52 3.5.4 Improving collaboration with « models » ............................................................ 52 3.5.5 Are leaders and managers more collaborative engineers ? .............................. 52 3.6 How to improve engineers’ collaborative skills in the French literature : “is anyone there” ?................................................................................................................ 54 3.6.1 Flashback on the French engineers’ specificities .............................................. 56 3.6.2 A shared review on collaborative weaknesses ? ............................................... 58 3.6.3 French Engineers’ Schools and the human sciences ........................................ 62 3.6.4 French Engineers’ Schools and social skills : intent or action ? ........................ 64 3.6.5 Double diplomas : opening or double specialization ? ....................................... 65 3.6.6 Apprenticeship ................................................................................................... 66 3.6.7 Other good practices and educational innovations ? ......................................... 67 3.7 The French context : a difficult environment for collaborative studies ............ 69 3.7.1 The French mistrust ........................................................................................... 69 3.7.2 The French elitism.............................................................................................. 69 3.7.3 The « logic of honour » and other “cultural” approaches ................................... 72 3.7.4 The scientist dream ? ......................................................................................... 75 3.7.5 And the drift of French social sciences .............................................................. 78

4 Research approach and hypotheses ............................................................... 80 4.1 An “adaptive” research, with “piecemeal” hypotheses ...................................... 80 4.2 Before confronting experiences and ideas to declarative evaluations: intermediate hypothesis.................................................................................................. 82

5 The survey: « Collaboration in companies and organizations » ................... 84 5.1 Some words about the survey ............................................................................... 84 5.2 Some words about the sample having answered ................................................ 84 5.2.1 Their age ............................................................................................................ 84 5.2.2 Their geographic origin ...................................................................................... 85

5.2.3 Their job ............................................................................................................. 85 5.2.4 Their education .................................................................................................. 86 5.3 Data analysis ........................................................................................................... 86 5.3.1 Simple indexes ................................................................................................... 87 5.3.2 A “collaborative mark” ........................................................................................ 87 5.3.3 “Hell is other people” index ................................................................................ 87 5.3.4 An “interactional index” ...................................................................................... 88 5.3.5 Correlations to validate the answers .................................................................. 88 5.4 Some general considerations ................................................................................ 89 5.4.1 Management and collaborative skills ................................................................. 89 5.4.2 The “Executives” and the “Elite” ......................................................................... 91 5.4.3 The French Factor.............................................................................................. 93 5.5 Focus on engineers ................................................................................................ 96 5.5.1 General results ................................................................................................... 96 5.5.2 Are engineers sensitive to “collaborative quality”? ............................................. 98 5.5.3 Education’s influence ......................................................................................... 99 5.5.4 Where do engineers learn to collaborate? ....................................................... 100 5.5.5 And what kind of actions do they propose ? .................................................... 101 5.5.6 Are French engineers “worse” than the others? .............................................. 102

6 Results and conclusions ................................................................................ 103 6.1 Is it necessary to improve French engineers’ collaborative skills ? ............... 104 6.1.1 H1 : a real need for improvement ? ................................................................. 104 6.1.2 H2 : a skill ?...................................................................................................... 104 6.1.3 H3 : too rational ? ............................................................................................. 106 6.1.4 H4 : Are “hard sciences” superior to “soft sciences” ? ..................................... 106 6.1.5 H5 : “Things have to be done”… ...................................................................... 107 6.1.6 H6 : The uncertainty’s factor ............................................................................ 108 6.1.7 H7 : Organizational obstacles .......................................................................... 108 6.1.8 H8 : The Elite vs. collaboration ........................................................................ 109 6.1.9 H9 : Skilled managers ? ................................................................................... 109 6.1.10 H10 : The time factor ..................................................................................... 110 6.1.11 H11 : Collaborative objects ............................................................................ 110 6.2 Some ideas and practices to improve French engineers’ collaborative skills 111 6.2.1 Develop their “soft skills” .................................................................................. 111 6.2.2 Improve their team working experiences ......................................................... 112

7 Limitations of the research, options for future research ............................. 113 7.1 Survey: some words on the quality of the answers .......................................... 113 7.2 On the survey : broaden the sample ................................................................... 114 7.3 On French practices : the lack of literature may be not the lack of good practices ......................................................................................................................... 114 7.4 The reluctance toward collaborating : a mechanism of defence ? .................. 115 7.5 A further “research in action” : use the results to generate reactions, confidences, proposals… and change. ....................................................................... 115

8 References ....................................................................................................... 116 9 Appendices ...................................................................................................... 136 9.1 Appendix 1 : list of interviews ............................................................................. 136 9.2 Appendix 2 : the questionnaire ........................................................................... 137 9.3 Appendix 3 : technical choices for indexes and correlations .......................... 144 9.4 Appendix 4 : focus on “Engineers plus” ............................................................ 146

Abstract

Engineers’ collaborative skills are internationally recognized as an issue for professional efficiency and development. Educational organizations, as ABET in the US and abroad, consider that these skills are essential for engineers, and companies agree on that statement. And researchers identify some “good practices” for improving collaborative efficiency, in engineer’s companies and organizations. The French situation is somehow different. Even if French companies and engineers are involved in multinational organizations and markets, this issue is not addressed by many researches, articles or books. Nevertheless, some voices begin to mention that point as a very important one, especially in the current context of international competition, and with the need for innovative practices and products. This lack of publications seems to be more due to a general context in France – the lack of recognition of “social skills”’ efficiency - than to a less awareness of French engineers compared to their international colleagues. And therefore it will be easy to develop, if they agree to, their collaborative skills, with the benefit of the international experiences.

Research question : how to improve French Engineers’ collaborative skills?

As I began my research, I asked several seniors engineers I knew as clients or friends, for an interview related to the engineers’ ability to collaborate with others. With French Engineers, I had the slight feeling that, when they accepted the interview, it was more for me than for the interest they had to the question. Maybe was it a question of definitions…

1.1

What is « collaboration »

As we will see in the questionnaire I organized, speaking arbour “collaboration at work” is like talking about the weather… “so, what… ?” Everyone knows, or at least, has a point about it. But is it the same word for everyone ? For example, what is the difference between collaboration and cooperation ? I will use Bedwell & al.’s (2012) article to set the first definition. Collabora(on)

For them, improving the ways of “working together” is Coordina(on)

impossible as long as people don’t agree with the definition of “collaboration”.

Teamwork)

As the sketch adapted from the article shows, Coopera(on)

“collaboration”

not

exactly

coordination,

nor

cooperation, nor teamwork. Collaboration is not an outcome, it is a mean, a way of working together on a same production (as the old Latin says, cum – laborare). The teamwork is a way of “collaborating”, and coordination or cooperation are a part of it, as they can describe of working together, on related projects (interconnected or in the same time period) but not on the same one. According to them, it’s a mean, and therefore it’s also a process, involving time. They also insist on the fact that collaboration is mutual.

Lu and al. (2007) propose another view on the differences between coordination, cooperation and collaboration : Stakeholder

Resource

Goal

Task Structure Pre-defined,

Coordination

Large community

Limited and

Multiple and

same layer

exchanged

compelling

hierarchy, uni-direction Pre-defined,

Cooperation

Mid-size group

Limited and

Multiple and

across layers in

shared

private

hierarchy, bi-direction

Collaboration

Small team

Limited, shared,

Single and

complementary

common

Undefined, non hierarchical, multi-direction

This definition of “collaboration” describes well the situations I met in my professional experience.

1.2

A skill ?

The second definition in question is the “skill”. Is “collaboration” a posture, an ability, a skill,… ? Is it just a professional stance, a natural ability, more due to the personality, or a skill – that mean more or less easy to acquire and develop ? As we will see with our study, the opinions are diverse. And in the literature, if the concept is widely used with an educational sense, and related to “skills” (social, soft…), it is also absent in other approaches – even educational ones. And that may be the sign that, after all, it’s less a skill than something else… But for Tomek (2011), a team unites people with knowledge, skills, and attitudes… Collaboration may also involve these three dimensions.

1.3

Collaborative work : focusing on engineers

Collaborating in professional organisations – or between them – is a wide topic. I limited the research to the engineers as individuals, and to organisation mainly driven and operated by engineers. But in my questionnaire as well as in the literature,

I will look sometimes at other populations, at least to identify the differences and specificities of these professional populations.

1.4

What is an “engineer” ?

« To the optimist, the glass is half-full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be ». (Vitaliev, 2012) Is the engineer an applied scientist ? According to Vinck (2005), the engineer did not choose the scientific research, the pleasure of the ideas : « he thinks as a man of action, he is practical, the feet on the earth, and he wants to make useful things – and even some business ». According to the French professional engineers’ organization (IESF, 2011), « an engineer may be defined as someone how owns a real know-how (the « tool box ») based on scientific and technical knowledges, and who, moreover, develops in concrete situations a specific approach, combining rationalism and pragmatism. One submit him problems, and the engineers proves his ability to propose realistic solutions by designing, building, creating ». According to Shapira and Griffith (1990), engineering is an applied science. Therefore, it is both science and management. And engineers share more values with managers than with production people. But on another hand, an engineer in a company is, according to Hatchuel, Le Masson and Weil (2005), always an engineer because he applies his specific skills to new challenges : « the engineer detached from the figure of the architect and the artist, inventing the shape of collective action ».

1.5

Who are the “French Engineers” ?

As we will see below, speaking of an engineer in France is quite different than in another countries… As Philippe d’Iribarne (2005) explains in a humorous way : « The French have another idiosyncrasy : the graduate general engineer. He is an athlete of noble descent who knows a little about everything ». This specificity is an important part of our study. But, as we will see, this is not the only answer to our interrogations. 11

Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : why is it important?

The idea of this research came from my personal professional experience. For more than ten years now, I have helped companies and their teams to success in their transformation projects, by increasing the acceptability of these changes. Some resistances are individual. But the majority are collective, because the changes of organization, trade, practices, always induce the need for “better working together”, during the transition period, and in the final organization, or in the “target” working modes. I had the opportunity to meet and help some teams in very diverse professional universes: industry, services, distribution, and in the private sector as in the public sector and parapublic (government-held companies). Everywhere, we encountered various difficulties and resistances, specific to each project, to each context, to each team. But I felt that the most difficult projects, in terms of collaborative achievements (how to work better together to face and go on within a changing environment), were in manufacturing and industrial companies, where people in charge were mainly engineers. This flavour was that of the difficulty of “better working together”, of accepting the contradiction or even the point of view of the other - and even sometimes only considering it. And as I thought about my previous professional experiences, this feeling sounded also familiar in that way. This intuition was not enough, and I began to ask some of my clients and friends engineers about this question… I encountered, during these contacts with them, a strange feeling. It was obviously not a point of concern, but their reactions were as I had asked an “unquestionable question”. I obviously opened a thought, based on real observations and stakes, but not really explored. Some of my external contacts, less based on personal relationship were quite less empathetic… My question sounded as a criticism, or an accusation. Not as a simple and solved topic. That was the sign that it was, after all, a real interesting topic of research… And I founded in the literature other signs that this was not only a personal point of interest, or of intellectual distortion.

2.1

According to my personal observations

Four situations come back to my mind when I think about these issues. 2.1.1 When men meet processes… The first was in an industrial company dedicated to the energy production. This company recruits among the best schools of French engineers. My mission consisted in helping the leadership team (about ten people) and management team (about thirty people) of a regional production entity, to improve the relationship quality between the territorial structures of production and maintenance and the central services, and between the central services themselves. The official title of the mission was to “improve the interfaces”. The “system of management” of the entity was organized in eleven “processes” (to produce energy, to maintain the inheritance, to preserve the environment, to develop the teams…). The animation of these “processes” was the pivot of the entity’s management, and the “management handbook” made clear that many interactions between the processes might generate possible hazards, which were advisable to control. The former creation of the “experts” central services, a couple of years before, has been lived by a major change in the distribution of the roles between these “central” actors and the territorial units. Several audits identified the difficulties of “cooperation” between these two levels, and also between the central services themselves. And for the new Director, the resolution of these tensions was a priority. For him, some of these tensions were due to the interpersonal relationships, and he wished to reinforce with external elements of appreciation the decisions of professional mobility he considered for some of his collaborators. My mission was to identify the factors of blocking, must they be organisational, functional or human…, and to propose tracks of improvement. I keep many professional good memories of this mission. One of them is particularly important for me, when I want to describe my professional contribution. In the interviews I carried out, the possible interpersonal difficulties were not directly evoked. But my interlocutors easily spoke about the conflicts between the “processes”. 13

The interactions between the process “to produce” and the process “to maintain” are intuitively comprehensible: when one wishes to maintain an installation, one must stop the production, and when one produces, one uses the materials without being able to maintain them thoroughly. When one deposits his car in the garage, one cannot use it any more… and when it is used, one uses the parts of it… During a discussion with one of the leadership team’s member, an engineers of the highest technical level, as his colleagues also were, we referred to the tensions between the actors in charge, on the one hand, of the production and those, on the other hand, in charge of maintenance. He came back to the conflicts between the two processes and, whereas I asked him how one could solve these conflicts, he proposes to create another one: a kind of “decisional machine” which would solve “rationally” all the differences. With the Director of the entity, we agreed that it was more effective to set up the conditions of a more effective listening and dialog between the various stakeholders, to resolve these conflicts…

2.1.2 When processes prevail on men… The second memory is that of a commercial approach, with two directors of a French large company of telecommunications, committed in a deep transformation process, which should lead it in particular toward a culture of services. Despite these context and goal, the industrial culture was present, in particular through methodologies Kaizen and Six Sigma, which were used to structure and go with the dynamic of transformation. And the engineers’ culture was revealed in particular by the organization of all the company’s production into processes, in order to address and resolve all the challenges. I was received by the Director in charge of transformation and performance, and by his colleague in charge of the “management systems”. They planned to provide an external support to the implementation of a part of the transformation, in a local unit. The resistances to change were, as it was in all the company, strong, and generate dysfunctions, impacting the quality of service. An EFQM approach was deployed to identify the “errors” and to solve them. Taking into consideration the encountered difficulties, I proposed to work directly with the

local employees and teams, in order to identify their difficulties, their resistances and to support their appropriation of the expected changes. This proposition was rejected: my interlocutors’ concerns were “more linked with the methodology of collection of the dysfunctions, the analysis of the loops of improvement and the search of solutions”. The choice was made, one more time, of working more on the process that on the human aspects. In the weeks that followed our final meeting, several suicides on the workplace, strongly popularized through the media, caused, six months later, the departure of the company’s CEO, and that of the team who led the transformation project. During the time of this research, I had the opportunity to have a quick exchange with a member of the executive team of that company, during that time. And to my question, I had that answer : “that director was a former consultant”… I was not convinced, because I could not forget that he was also a member of an executive team (mainly engineers, and engineer himself)…

2.1.3 Accept other rationalities? A third professional experience also led me to think about the specificity of the change projects lived in and by engineers’ companies. During several years, I worked for a company of rail transportation, with projects of internal transformation as well as “external” projects, which associated other stakeholders : public communities, private companies, and actors of the “socioeconomical” world. Its culture was mainly industrial - it “produced” trains -, and it is engaged since years in a deep “services’ revolution”. In the case of the “external” projects that I quoted, the goal was to create, around existing or future transportation services, some “Clubs” associating the external stakeholders, voluntary to engage themselves in a partnership dynamic, in order to anticipate and improve the service offerings, and to adapt them, as much as possible, to the users’ expectations, while taking account of the technical and economical constraints of the company. And even if owners coming from various formations and professional universes managed these projects globally, the teams directly in charge of the project were generally engineers’ led. These projects were indeed complex, at least technically. 15

I made several times the following statement : -

team members coming from various intellectual universes were often very opened to interactions with external stakeholders;

on the contrary, leaders issued from the engineers’ cultures were mainly very reluctant to taking into account the “non-specialists” proposals. These people were suspected of “not understanding”, or to express “irrelevant (if not silly) proposals”. And what was also interesting was that this reluctance was also shared by their entourages - including those were not from an engineering education.

It was therefore for the latter difficult to seize the opportunity of really “working together” (to “collaborate”) : at the very best, they could be politely listened to, and associate to promote “ready-to-communicate” messages.

2.1.4 And uncertainty? Lastly, another mission with another company drew my attention to other possible specificities of the difficulties of staffs – or the structures – of this company with the collaborative issues. The mission, short in time, consisted in identifying « flows » of staffs, by category, in order to rebuild careers. The specificity of the context was an important reduction in progress, and which was going to continue, of some activities of the company, with the impossibility to lay them off. It was thus necessary to identify the volume and qualities of the concerned people in order to consider their transfer to other activities. One of the difficulties with which we were confronted was the acquisition of data – reliable, as much as possible. With the people in charge of these data, we sought to identify the reasons for which they did not provide them. I drew aside the competitions between activities, since they were not concurrent entities. Some were committed in a decrease, and the others could help them with this deflation by proposing stations with their staffs. The main reason emerging from those interviews was the uncertainty of the available figures. Multiple factors increased, in fact, the uncertainty of the data, in the short and medium term, and the persons in charge of the reducing entity refused to provide figures, which they could not guarantee to 100%.

Finally, I obtained these figures with theDiscussion following reasoning: it is better to give Table 3. Team Rating—Project Performance League Table Rank Project ID Team rating (x) Project performance (y) analysis linking team working with rather project performance figures with 20 or 30% of uncertainty, and Empirical to share this uncertainty, than giving is always going to be contentious. The argument is innately 1st

Project C/1

80% (rank 1st)

70% (rank 2nd)

complex and in common with most research, much depends on Project D/4 (rank 2nd) 74% (rank 1st) no2nd figures at all,79% and thus letting a 100% uncertainty… the definitions, assumptions, limitations, and methods adopted 3rd Project C/2 77% (rank 3rd) 59% (rank 5th)

(Green 2002). Although this does not fully reflect the diversity of

4th D/2 77% (rank 3rd) (rank 10th) internal processes may impact Since, IProject regularly ask myself42% this question:external whysurroundings didn't and they want tothatgive the posfigures? 5th Project D/3 76% (rank 5th) 63% (rank 3rd) 6th

Project B/5

74% (rank 6th)

61% (rank 4th)

8th

Project D/1

72% (rank 7th)

40% (rank 11th)

10th

Project B/4

70% (rank 9th)

43% (rank 9th)

itively or negatively on site management team working and project

performance, the resultant correlation remains marked. The followDuring a time, I 72% thought it was 7th Project B/1 (rank 7th) that 54% (rank 7th)a consequence of the “culture of security” of this ing discussion relates to team management capacity and four key findings in particular; team member compatibility, building trust,

9th Projectthe D/5 security 70% (rank 9th) (rank 5th) company: of the 59% travellers is an absolute priority, and no chance is taken communication barriers, and organizational contradictions. Project C/3Consequently, 69% (rank 11th) 39% (rank in 11th that field. did that12th)“culture” prevent my interlocutors from accepting 12th

Project B/2

68% (rank 12th)

48% (rank 8th) 29% (rank 13th)

Project B/3 62% (rank 13th) an13thuncertainty?

Group Compatibility and Diversity

At a microlevel of team investigation the category “group compatibility and diversity” was notable for its strength of community. Two of the four team variables in this category, interdependency and team dynamics, rated highly across the majority of project case studies. An outcome that conveys a measure of social contact that extends beyond an arms-length working relationship. Functional leadership, small group numbers, and clearly defined professional responsibilities allied with the contextual parameters of a projectbased industry appear to provide a favorable backdrop for team cohesion. Although group unity was consistently strong, team member responses did reveal some interesting detail.

Another assumption, of the first, was that it was the result of the correlation coefficient was calculatednonexclusive at þ0:70, although marginally less than the Pearson’s value, the outcome does support the

initial finding. Aculture, Kendall tau rank coefficient of concordance also engineers’ since they feel reluctant to live in uncertainty. produced a marked level of agreement (þ0:60), corroborating earlier findings. Table 2 highlights three exact matches, Project (s) B/1, B/4, and B/3 are ranked 7th, 10th, and 13th, respectively. Three projects are in one position out of synchronization, namely Project(s) C/1, D/4, and C/3 are ranked 1st, 2nd, and 11th, respectively. The top two team ratings align closely with their project performance ranking, and two of the bottom three team ratings align in a similar fashion with their associated project performance position. Four of the top five team ratings all align within two places of their corresponding project performance ranking. A scattergram (Fig. 1) illustrates the degree of association between “team rating” and “project performance” results. The scattergram shows that in response to an increase in team rating (x) there is a resultant increase in the project performance (y). The Spearman rank correlation coefficient (rs) was used to test the null hypothesis, H o : x and y are independent variables against H A : x and y are positively correlated. For a sample size of 13 and α ¼ 0:05, H o would be rejected if the calculation produced a value of rs ≥ 0:480 (obtained from Spearman rank-correlation coefficient tables). The calculation shows that rs ¼ 0:692 ≥ 0:480 and therefore the null hypothesis is rejected in favor of H A . To summarize, team rating (x) and project performance (y) are positively correlated with a 95% level of confidence. Construction site management teams and good project performance are related; it is unlikely to have one without the other.

2.2

According to the international literature

Team Member Compatibility Team member compatibility is a vital consideration for improved team performance (Gabriel 1991; Belbin 1981). Traditionally, the composition of construction site management teams is determined by functional or status considerations to attain the correct level of expertise and experience. This approach fails to reflect on the potential benefits diverse behavioral qualities bring to the team building process. In the United Kingdom, the best known model of behavioral profiling in a team setting is Belbin’s team role theory (Hardingham 1997; Fisher et al. 2000). Belbin’s Team Role Self Perception Inventory (BTRSPI) is used extensively in team building workshops (Sommerville and Dalziel 1998; Prichard and Stanton 1999) and can help overcome performance obstacle by encouraging members to better understand one another. Construction site team members participating in the survey widely acknowledged the need for a blend of professional and behavioral attributes to enrich the team dynamic. In response to the team member questionnaire, it was evident that the majority of participants had never undertaken any form of personality profiling. It would suggest that construction companies place little merit on team role profiling, regardless of the widespread accessibility and validation of team psychometric testing (Hardingham 1997). The appraisal of humanistic characteristics in the team context is for the most part ignored (Tennant 2001). Management mindset continues to focus upon individual professional competence rather than their collective ability to integrate and work together effectively (Baiden et al. 2006). Team profiling that includes multisource feedback (360° appraisal) would assist colleagues to recognize team strengths and potential weaknesses. The disclosure of individual persona would also place management in an informed position to make sound judgment on future group composition and training needs. A pertinent and often undervalued upshot of psychometric profiling is its capacity to instill trust (Lencioni 2002).

The research in the international academic databases with the two associated words « collaboration » and « engineer » produced a lot of answers… Apparently, the topic was indeed a subject of interest.

The benefits of a good collaboration in an engineers’ world are diverse, and we choose some papers to illustrate the importance of this question in the engineering world.

According to Tennant and al. (2011), who

PROJECT PERFORMANCE (y)

100

studied 13 projects in the construction

sector with « score cards » dedicated to

60 40

the

20 0 0

TEAM RATING (x)

Fig. 1. Team rating and project performance scattergram

100

team

variables

(interdependency,

dynamics, diversity, trust, intent, culture…) and to the « traditional » KPIs (cost, time, service, product, employee satisfaction,

224 / JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING © ASCE / OCTOBER 2011

working hours, training), the relationships quality is linked to the projects performance. As we have seen in the introduction, the team quality is only a part of the collaborative dynamics. But it is a good beginning, and especially regarding some other insights of their research, which reveal that companies do not consider the personality profiling (they recruit technical experts, whether or not they encourage team functioning and trust), nor the team building’s stakes, and that they often put in 17

place organizational communication barriers and organizational contradictions – for example, collective objectives, and individual rewards… Tomek (2011) reminds that, for civil engineering projects, the failure of the collective work may lead to million dollars’ losses, when not to the team’s death. And for Hansen and Nohria (2004), there is a need to « build collaborative advantage », and overcoming four types of boundaries : -‐

Unwillingness to seek input and learn from others (outside knowledge is rejected)

-‐

Inability to seek and find expertise (needle in a haystack expertise)

-‐

Unwillingness to help (hoarding of expertise, or competition between subsidiaries)

-‐

Inability to work together and transfer knowledge (« stranger problem »)

As Lu and al. (2007) plead, beside these measurable impacts, they are two kinds of “paybacks” for the “collaborative engineering” : -

the team-work paybacks : better communication between team members, possibility

remote

teamwork,

shared

understandings,

collaborative

generation of new ideas, fast turnaround on collective decisions, improved respect and appreciation among team members, and improved employee morale and responsibilities -

the task-work paybacks : shortened development time, improved product innovation, better technology integration and utilization, increased product and process quality, enhanced total value, and lower development and production costs.

If the latter are direct benefits for the project, the former may be considered as longterm benefits – with the meaning that they can be earned many times…

In their article, Fong and all (2007) also encourage the collaborative work in engineering, in order to help implicit knowledges to emerge, Fig. 6. Knowledge creation process in VM teams

Individuals have the opportunity to express and visualize their ideas and exchange tacit knowledge; in this instance, to encourage unconventional ideas. To record all concepts and ideas suggested, flipcharts and adhesive !Post-it, 3M, Minnesota" notes are used in full view of everyone. The latter is very popular with workshop participants as team members can record their ideas as a whole and readily see all the suggestions being made. Facilitation To establish a more readily shared understanding of the problem,

A prerequisite for producing aligned action is that the team must develop a shared understanding. A VM team resembles a football team in that an individual cannot play the game; only players working together as a team, i.e., with a shared understanding of the “goal” are able to play strategically and produce the moves necessary to win. Senge !1990" argued that without shared understanding, a team would carry out its activities in an unaligned way. He suggested that although people within different functions might work very hard, if there is a lack of shared understanding of other functions, important knowledge sharing might not take place. The consequence of this would be that the

and then to be used by the others. Following the arrow, the emerging steps from tacit to explicit knowledge (and from individual team member to « value management team ») are : individual experience + discipline knowledge ; team constellation ; creating shared awareness ; developing shared understanding ; producing aligned action ; achieving value objectives through knowledge creation). Ng and al.’s (2007) paper is dedicated to construction projects. Its topic is not collaboration, but conflict management. But one may easily agree that the two themes are really interconnected. And they propose a typology of sources of conflicts, resuming insights from several authors, organized into two themes : the organization, and the uncertainty. Organizational issues Structure : Internal/external organizational structure, delivery systems, inappropriate contract type, contract documents, contract terms, and law Process : Performance, quality, tendering pressures, payment, delays, disruption, acceleration, administration, formal communication channels, information sharing, reports and poor communication People :

Misunderstandings,

unrealistic

expectations,

culture,

language,

communications, incompatible objectives, management, negligence, work habits, and lack of team spirit Uncertainty External : Change, variations, environmental concerns, social impacts, economics, political risks, weather, regulations, and unforeseen site conditions Internal : Incomplete scope definition, errors in design, construction methods, and workmanship

2.2.1 The influence of educational institutions In the United States, the certification of engineering educational programs is mainly ruled by the ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). For ABET (2006), the collaborative engineering seems to be a priority for educational programs, as to give their students « an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams and an ability to communicate effectively ».

A former President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Patricia Galloway (2011) presents the 2010-2011 ABET outcomes’ referential (which is an only slight evolution of the 1996’s criterias). In 2009, as well as in 1996, 6 of the 11 skills which has to be acquired by engineering students are « soft skills », or « professional skills » : -

ability to work in multidisciplinary teams;

understanding of professional and ethical responsibility;

ability to communicate effectively;

broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context;

ability to recognize the need for and to engage in lifelong learning; and

knowledge of contemporary issues.

And for the coming 2013 ABET’s symposium’s Keynote Speaker, Dr. Mike North, the « millennial engineer » has to « engage in cross-disciplinary, even cross-national, collaborations to ensure that the technical solutions they propose have optimal impact (…) (and) function on multi-disciplinary teams, with the ability to work across disciplines, time zones, cultures, geopolitical boundaries ». As we will see in the « educational chapter », many research papers refer to the ABET directions, and for most of them the « collaborative skills » are described as « non-engineerial skills », « professional skills » or « soft skills ». The « collaboration » theme is not only developed by the ABET, and it is important to insist that ABET’ certification is not only US-American, but also recognized internationally, even in Europe where there are specific institutions (but not in France). For example, the 2013’s conference of the World Federation of Engineers Organizations (WFEO), dedicated to the Young Engineers/Future Leaders, will propose the « soft skills development » issue. The Spine (Successful Practices in International Engineering Education) study, Bodmer C. & al., (2002), stresses also on the impact of the engineers’ academic education, in the US and in Europe, in the acquisition of collaborative skills. « Although these skills are not essential for engineering studies, they become very important later on for engineers in business careers, particularly at executive and 20

management levels. They include universal, widely applicable competences such as social skills, communication skills, leadership skills, project management, teamwork abilities, presentation skills, ability to develop a broad general education, as well as 102

specific non-technical know-how such as in marketing, finance, management of SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

business processes and administration, law, English and other language skills ». rated as very important (averaging 5 to 6), those being widely applicable compe-

Astences wesuchcan see inskills, the figures, the topics as communication English language skills, teamwork abilities, related to collaborative work (team working presentation skills and leadership skills. Non-technical competences such as in marketing, finance and other language skills were rated as rather unimportant (avand social arebyevaluated asleastimportant by engineers and teachers, but seem to eraging below 4); skills) law was regarded all three groups as the important competence (average rating about 3). Medium importance was assigned to items

social skills, ability to maintain and develop a broad general education, besuch anas progress’ axis in terms of academic development. and management of business processes and administration.

SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

109

Figure 92: Gaps between importance and assessment of general professional competences (engineers‘ view)

Figure 82: Importance of general professional competences (professors‘, engineers‘ and managers‘ view)

Mean: 3.7 Mean: 4.7

Communication skills*

Communication skills

English language skills

Teamwork abilities*

Teamwork abilities

Presentation skills*

Presentation skills

Leadership skills

Project management*

Project management

Ability to develop a broad general education*

Ability to develop a broad general education

Social skills*

Social skills

Management of business processes+admin.*

Management of business processes and admin.

Other language skills*

Other language skills

Finance

Marketing

Law*

Law

1 2 unimportant

Professors

Engineers

5 6 very important

1 low

Managers

Importance

6 high

Assessment

* Significance at the 1% level

Differences between engineers/professors/managers: The comparison between US and European graduates is also interesting, regarding Although very consistent results were returned by all groups, differences were found in rating: presentation skills, and other language skills. Notably, presentation

skills are professional rated less important by managers than by:professors/engineers. these skills regardingParticuthe teamwork abilities and social skills, the lar importance is attached by managers to teamwork abilities.

differences Differences between are USA andvery Europe: slight, even if US students consider that they are better prepared US and European professors and engineers largely agree with their criteria impor-

ratings. Differences are, however, apparent with some presentation in tance terms of teamwork than theitems: European ones, and on the contrary regarding the skills/leadership skills are regarded as more important by professors at US universities than by their European colleagues, while other language skills, finance, mar-

social skills. keting and law have a higher importance rating in Europe than in the USA. Among

SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

engineers, the only difference between the USA and Europe concerns other language skills, to which US engineers assign an importance rating of only 3.

SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

Figure 83: Importance of general professional competences (European engineers and US engineers)

103

project management) higher than European engineers, who give a higher rating to lingual and social competences (other language skills, English skills, social skills). Non-technical competences such as in law, marketing and finance are rated about equally. Figure 86: Assessment of general professional competences (European and US engineers' view; normalized averages graph)

Communication skills

higher assessment in US higher assessment in Eu.

English language skills

Leadership skills

Teamwork abilities

Presentation skills

Presentation skills Leadership skills*

Project management

Communication skills

Ability to develop a broad general education

Management of business processes + admin.

Social skills

Teamwork abilities

Management of business processes + admin.

Marketing

Other language skills*

Finance

Law

Marketing

Ability to develop a broad general education

Law

Social skills 1 2 unimportant

Europe

5 6 very important

Other language skills English language skills

USA

0.6

Significance at the 1% level

Differences between universities: Assessment of general professional competences Question:

Communication skills are rated by most professors from 4 to 5, while engineers rate their communication skills rather lower at 4.1 on average. Ratings at the ETHZ (3.9 resp. 3.3) are somewhat lower than at other universities, where Imperial College is the highest.

Another organization of the sector, the International Engineering Alliance (2009) "Please assess the general professional competences of graduates…" Professors: "…from your own department" Engineers: "…from your university/alma mater"

makes references to its “graduates attributes” (engineering knowledge, problem Highest/lowest competence ratings: It is notable that professors rate all general professional competences at their own universities higher than engineers. For both groups, the best implemented competences are English language skills and ability to develop a broad general education. The lowest ratings (<3) are assigned to finance, marketing and law. These competences were, however, rated unimportant in reply to the previous question. Differences between professors and engineers: As previously mentioned, professors and engineers assign different values: all items are rated slightly higher by professors than by engineers. The greatest differ-

105

analysis, design/development of solutions, investigation, modern tool usage, the engineer and society, environment and sustainability, ethics, individual and team work, communication, project management and finance, life long learning), very similar to ABET’s ones, and to the Agreements of Washington, in 2001 and of Sydney and Dublin, in 2003, which stress on the ability of engineers to “Function effectively as an individual, and as a member or leader in diverse technical (or multidisciplinary) team ». And according to Judson King (2011), ABET’s dynamics is not the only one in the educational world : in Europe, too, things are moving, especially with the Bologna Process, which is “working toward a uniform structure of a three-year first-cycle, or bachelor’s, degree, which can then be followed by a two-year, second-cycle master’s degree. » But the six Programme Outcomes of accredited engineering degree programmes of EUR – ACE (European Accreditation of Engineering Programmes) (2008) do not mention explicitly the « professional skills » or « social skills » : Knowledge and Understanding;

Engineering

Analysis;

Engineering

Design;

Investigations;

Engineering Practice; Transferable Skills. And according to Augusti (2007), the European dynamic is more focused on a homogenization of the contents, in order to collaborate or confront with the American ABET and the Washington Accord, than on an evolution of these contents.

2.2.2 To match companies’ needs If the academic institutions are interested in the « social skills », including the ability to collaborative work, one cannot consider it as an obsession of « educationalists »… Many papers shows that there are also required by the engineers’ companies. As Ahn and al. (2012) article’s figure shows, the collaborative skills are one of the first competencies required by US recruiters in the construction sector (in which one can find many engineers).

Key competency

Mean

Regrouped in a group described by the authors

Ethical issues

4.52

name as « affective competencies », the leadership,

Problem solving skills

4.46

Interpersonal skills

4.45

Leadership

4.30

Adaptability

4.29

competencies » and far above the « technical » and

Collaborative skills

4.29

« general » competencies.

Safety issues

4.09

Interdisciplinary application

4.04

Practical awareness

3.96

Technical skills

3.80

Computer skills

3.77

Estimating/scheduling skills

3.68

professional software professionals : « in modern

Communication

3.32

organizations,

Environmental awareness

3.00

professional is characterized not only by high

collaborative skills and interpersonal skills come at the first place (mean 4.28), with the « cognitive

And even if they call it « cooperation », Sonnentag and Lange (2002) study shows that cooperation and performance

« co-occur » the

work

engineers

situation

and many

cognitive but also by high cooperation requirements ». For Long (2008), it is especially important for engineers, project leaders and manager in charge of technology-driven change projects, to know how to work with many « non-technical » employees. For Tither (1994), collaboration is also useful for technological transfer. And even if Ferlie and al.(2005) research is applied to the healthcare sector, one can easily transpose the results – description of inter- and intra-professional boundaries (social and cognitive, or epistemological) – in the engineerial domain. Performance, change programs, technological transfer, and innovation : these are at least, for companies, four reasons for developing the collaborative skills of their engineers.

2.2.3 For social responsibility and diversity ? Some research present their results as a speech for « soft skills », in order to promote social responsibility (as we have seen in the ABET’s criterias), but also diversity, and especially men-women equality. For Lappalainen (2011), the Bar-On indicators (IE, IQ) assess the social competencies of the people, and at the same time their « social responsibility ». And Faulkner (2007) shows in an interesting way that the social skills development may be a leverage to promote the women’s representation in the engineers’ world. 23

Her study describes how women adopt the « manly » behaviours of the engineers, despite their widely believed higher competencies in the « people skills », and choose, more than the men, what they perceive as « hard » science. There is a dualism in living the engineerial practice : a « hard » one (« technicist ») and a « soft » one (« heterogeneous » or « sociotechnical »). « Hard is associated with being effective commercially, with the ‘nuts and bolts’ of engineering and with ‘being able to deliver’; soft is associated with ‘aesthetics’, with the people aspects of design and, perhaps, with idealism in relation to sustainability ». And when it comes to « power », women seem to stick to the technical expertise (the hard side) while men take the management positions (the soft side) : as she tells, « women engineers who’ve become managers are more likely to stop calling themselves engineers than are men who have made the same move ». Developing the « soft » could therefore be a way of helping the engineers women to accept a « soft » evolution, while keeping their engineerial identity.

2.2.4 For engineers themselves Collaboration seems to be an important challenge for companies and academic actors, for the society issues also. It is also a benefit for the individuals, as some research show. Park and al. (2008) describe how Korean engineers are motivated by the collaboration, for developing their own individual skills. They study how engineers behave when they have to face complex tasks, which they cannot achieve alone. And in these cases, the “cost of collaboration” does not decrease the satisfaction of facing a complex challenge. And more than that, they show that the complexity generated by the teamwork itself is a source of satisfaction for the engineers. This study of « emotional benefits » is more developed by Norbert Alter (Alter ,2009, 2010) and his gift/counter gift approach. For him, cooperation (and that means for sure even more for « collaboration ») is not only rational, because it comes from emotions, and generates emotions : gratitude, complicity, sympathy, trust, pleasure, and also treason, unfaithfulness… This approach is interesting to understand the mechanisms of collaboration, and also to improve it. It is indeed powerful to take into account the interactions between the « ancestral » logics of gift and the company, which sometimes encourages them, and 24

also may forbid them. In the first case, you have to create some « ceremonial » frames ; in the second one, to imagine walk-arounds. The waste of time, a rational investment (Alter, 1999) Transformation’s theme

Time investment nature

« Returns on Investment »

Knowledge

Learnings and discoveries

Competence

Conflicts

Blockades,

Peace treaty and negotiation

uncertainties,

disorders Values

« Rationalisation »’ process

Identity

Legitimacy

Negotiations, mutual recognition

Regulation

Efficiency

New objectives’ definition

Organizational efficiency

Javernick-Will (2012) is focusing, for her side, on the knowledge management in the construction sector. And she shows that, in the total motivations, the « social » ones are the main ones : Relative frequency of response knowledge sharing motivations Resources (time)

17.2

Altruistic intentions (enjoy the sharing)

10.7

Extrinsic global incentives

11.5

Social motivations

60.7

The first of these « social motivations » are the « conformity to corporate culture » and « reciprocity ».

2.3

According to the French literature : to reach the engineer’s “new faces” ?

Finding researches dedicated to engineers and collaboration was quite successful in the international databases. But it was really different when this research was limited to French titles, or even, in the international literature, to the French situation. Exploring the databases, I felt the same feeling that I had when interviewing my direct contacts : the conviction to approach a sort of taboo. Nevertheless, some recent interviews in the professional newspapers and magazines reinforced me in my research. To the question “is the training level of French engineers adapted to the companies’ needs”, Thierry Pilenko, CEO of Technip (a large engineering company) answers : “French engineers are brilliant in the academic skills. The scientific education is very good in France. In the non-scientific matters, like foreign languages, finance or marketing, I think that it could be still improved. Other aspects as teamwork, communication, practical application and multiculturalism could also be reinforced in the education” (Pilenko, 2012) His colleague Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of Suez Environment, says it in a very similar way : “Our “grandes écoles” education is of a good quality. It is theoretical but our young graduates adapt themselves rapidly. The keypoint is that we have to educate them to the technologies, but also to management, team animation, and to develop a large vision to the stakes of our era” (L’Usine Nouvelle, 2012)

ENSEIGNEMENT SUPÉRIEUR

Les nouveaux visages de l’ingénieur

e l’ingénieur, on croit tout savoir, ou presque : sa formation, son métier, sa place dans la société… A y regarder de plus près, force est pourtant de constater qu’en quelques années son « univers » a changé du tout au tout avec l’essor des technologies numériques, la mondialisation ou les nouvelles préoccupations liées à l’environnement, au climat, à la maîtrise de l’énergie, à la responsabilité sociale… Naguère chargé de « piloter » les technologies, il se voit désormais investi de missions toujours plus larges – et parfois contradictoires. Résultat, ses certitudes du passé sont ébranlées, et les questions s’accumulent. Tel est le constat qui a poussé, il y a quelques mois, le réseau des Ecoles centrales (Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille et Nantes) à organiser au Brésil, avec l’Ecole polytechnique de l’université de São Paulo (USP), un colloque intitulé « Quels ingénieurs pour le XXIe siècle ? », qui vient de faire l’objet d’un riche rapport de synthèse. Sur la même question, Centrale Lyon et l’Université de tous les savoirs ont également organisé il y a peu une série de conférences. C’est dire si le thème fait débat dans les écoles. Voici un aperçu des principes clefs retenus par le colloque franco-brésilien pour dessiner le portrait de l’ingénieur d’aujourd’hui, même s’il est bien sûr impossible de concilier toutes ces compétences et ces aptitudes en un seul individu

Des bases scientifiques solides En dépit de son apparente évidence, ce point n’a rien d’anodin : ici et là, la tentation existe de mettre l’accent sur l’acquisition de compétences dans le manage-

ment, voire dans les sciences du comportement – au détriment des connaissances dans les sciences « dures », comme les maths ou la physique. Dans une période où les disciplines scientifiques en général sont perçues comme arides et difficiles, certains peuvent en outre être tentés « d’adoucir » la formation en y injectant davantage de matières jugées plus « digestes ». Or ce sont les sciences « dures » qui constituent le fondement de la légitimité de l’ingénieur…

DIMITRI CHAMPAIN

Accélération des technologies, environnement, questions « sociétales » : l’ingénieur se retrouve aux prises avec des enjeux de plus en plus importants et des contraintes toujours plus nombreuses, qui le poussent à repenser son métier et sa place dans le monde.

Gérer le complexe et l’incertain Traditionnellement, on demande à l’ingénieur de trouver « la » solution à un problème bien identifié et clairement posé. Mais aujourd’hui, l’ingénieur doit répondre à des questions de plus en plus complexes, qui comportent une multitude d’aspects – non seulement techniques, mais aussi humains, environnementaux, sociaux, politiques… L’approche des problèmes devient imprévisible,

sables des problèmes qu’ils soulèvent », estime de son côté Matthieu Calame, vice-président de la Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer. Allant plus loin, le rapport suggère même que des ingénieurs « pourraient s’impliquer comme acteurs politiques ». Une enquête récente de la CTI montrait d’ailleurs que, pour 36 % des ingénieurs, la sensibilisation aux valeurs sociétales était importante.

and dedicated to the « XXIe century engineer », and 7 especially one, in Brazil (Franca Brasil Conference Culture générale et humanisme Pas de vraie responsabilité, pas d’attitude « citoyenne » sans un minimum de hauteur de vue de sens de l’humain, voire d’humanisme. En outre, observe le rapport, « il existe une demande de réflexion de l’ingénieur sur luimême et sur le monde ». La culture générale, parfois négligée au détriment de l’apprentissage des technologies, effectue ainsi un retour en force dans le « bagage » indispensable de l’ingénieur.

« Quels ingénieurs pour le XXIe siècle ? Quelles

L’ouverture aux disciplines du management Le passage progressif, après quelques années d’expérience, à la direction d’équipe et aux tâches managériales est une évolution de carrière classique pour nombre d’ingénieurs. Ce qui est plus nouveau, c’est que l’ingénieur doit intégrer de plus en plus tôt dans son travail la vision marketing, RH ou management d’équipe. Or cette vision ne s’improvise pas. Elle doit être préparée dès l’école, par la formation, et se renforcer par une pratique progressive, sur le terrain.

In the educational world, some conferences were held

rence et la compétition. Autant d’éléments qui exigent un comportement et des aptitudes spécifiques : sens du dialogue, respect d’autrui, capacité de communication (un des points faibles traditionnels des ingénieurs). « L’apprentissage de la relation aux autres, sous des formes très variées, devient une nécessité pour l’ingénieur », souligne José Luiz Alqueres, président de Light SA, entreprise brésilienne de distribution d’électricité.

formations ? » - “Which engineers for the 21th century ?

Un nouveau rapport au temps P l u s e n c o re q u e d’autres acteurs, l’ingénieur est prisonnier du court terme, voire de l’urgence en situation de crise – la marée noire de Louisiane en fournit un bon exemple. Il doit donc être capable de réagir très vite, et de s’adapter aussi au rythme très rapide des changements technologiques. Mais il lui faut également inscrire son action dans une perspective de long terme : l’ingénieur doit, souligne le rapport, « réfléchir aux conséquences de son action pour les générations à venir ». Entre ces deux exigences, il doit naviguer, et donc inventer « un autre rapport au temps ».

JEAN-CLAUDE LEWANDOWSKI

i Le rapport du colloque « Quels ingénieurs pour le XXIe siècle » www.lesechos.fr/document

What education ?”), reported in the « Les Echos » newspaper as dedicated to « the engineer’s new faces »

incertaine, floue. Conséquence, l’ingénieur ne peut se contenter de dérouler des solutions toutes prêtes. « Il doit désormais être à la fois spécialiste de son domaine et capable d’appréhender la complexité », résume Bernard Remaud, président de la Commission des titres d’ingénieur (CTI).

(Lewandowski, 2010).

doit de plus en plus travailler en équipe, autour de projets souvent d’envergure. Ce qui l’amène à multiplier les échanges avec ses subordonnés, mais aussi avec des acteurs d’autres domaines et d’autres « cultures » : commerciaux, contrôleurs de gestion, spécialistes du marketing, designers… Et ce, tant en interne qu’à l’extérieur de son entreprise – y compris à l’international. Tout cela n’excluant pas, au contraire, la concur-

Some of the themes6 of the conference are directly linked to our research, and Un citoyen responsable L’ingénieur se doit, note le rapport, de « participer au débat public » sur les finalités et les conséquences de son action. « Il devient une force de proposition et un acteur dans la vie de la cité », constate Patrick Obertelli, professeur à Centrale Paris. « Les ingénieurs sont comptables des actions qu’ils rendent possibles et respon-

4 especially « the new fundamentals in the engineer’s attitude and in his education » : Savoir coopérer Fini le temps où l’ingénieur opérait le plus souvent en solo, que ce soit en bureau d’études ou sur les chantiers. Aujourd’hui, il

cooperation’s learning, uncertainty management, and time thinking. 26

Some books also exist, written by consultants, sign of the companies’ interest for those issues, as I can also testify myself. But in the more « academic » field, they are only a few papers dedicated to that topic. Pierre Veltz, who managed one of the most known French « Grande Ecole », is one of the rare authors to be identified on these topics. As an example of his papers, « L’efficacité par la coopération ouverte » (Efficiency through open cooperation), he states that « the efficiency now depends on what happens between individual and groups at work » (in Minguet and Thuderoz, 2005).

How to improve engineers’ collaborative skills : literature review and gaps

Due to the lack of papers dedicated to the French engineers situation, I will mainly report the insights proposed for international engineers, and then explore the possible reasons of the French academic shortage on this topic.

3.1

Improving the engineers’ collaboration : the scientific approach

In the engineer’s world, the most natural approach is a scientific one. And when the collaboration is considered as a performance factor, it can also be seen as a science – or, for some engineers, something that a machine can deal with… 3.1.1 A scientific analysis of the challenge Patel and all. (2012) propose a well-documented analysis of the collaborative stakes for engineers, with the analysis of the European cooperation project, « CoSpaces », intended to develop practical solutions for collaborative innovation. Their goal is to propose a framework for engineerial systems, and for information systems. They thus described many factors, and sub factors, and quote many articles (sources and keypoints) related to each topic, and completed by interviews many engineers working in various industrial sectors (automotive, aeronautical, construction…). Their initial table, describing the factors of collaborative work is very useful to clarify the approach.

Context

Culture Environment

Business

Organisational

climate

structure Training

Support

Tools

Networks

Resources

Tasks

Type

Structure

Demands

Interaction processes

Learning

Coordination Communication

Shared Teams

Roles

Relationships

awareness / knowledge

Individuals Overarching

factors

Skills Trust

Psychological

factors Conflicts

Team

Knowledge

Error

Building

management

Decision making Common

Group

ground

processes

Composition

Wellbeing Experience

Goals

Incentives Constraints

Management

Performance

Time

But when it comes to the identification of « potential barriers to collaborative working », the barriers’ list is the following : -

non-supportive organisation

inadequate supply chain and partnering arrangements

weak management

poorly conceived, planned or managed projects

technology orientation

inadequate knowledge management

unacceptable costs

And we missed cruelly the more « irrational » or simply « human » ones, which were voluntarily excluded from this final list: « we have excluded from Table 11 those barriers found at the individual and team levels. The reasons why people may not collaborate and get involved, effectively or at all, and why teams can fail, are well known from the literature in many fields including participation, implementation of change and team working. Also, the roots of many of the individual- and team-level barriers lie in problems at the context, support, task and interaction process levels ». Taking another scientific stance on the same issues, Lu and al. (2007) describe the « collaborative engineering » as a « black art practiced by the few ». Therefore, they seek to identify and share its « scientific foundation », in order to allow the engineers to become productive « collaborative leaders ». For them, the « collaborative engineering » is the « the practical application of collaboration sciences to the engineering domain ». The$Social$Dimension$

Interac(on*

WHO$

The$Technical$Dimension$

Among them, following a « classical » scientific approach, they look for the

(Stakeholder)*

constituents Undestanding*

Agreement*

(Goal)*

(Decision)*

WHAT$

Teamwork$

HOW$

Preference*

Taskwork$

WHY$

(Ra(onale)*

A*socio=technical*framework*for*collabora(ve*engineering*

this

« collaborative

science ». For them, the most important disciplines

are

the

organizational

science, the social cognition, the social choice and the decision science. The organization science’s aim is to

approach, as much as possible, the rationality : with incentives, in order to stimulate individuals and groups to act collaboratively. 29

The social cognition looks « inside » the individual minds ; the social choice looks for the collective decision-making ; and the decision science studies how individuals make « optimal » decisions. According to a definition they propose, « collaborative engineering is a humancentred socio-technical activity, consisting of a dynamic co-construction process to maximize the synergy between the technical task-work by individuals and the social teamwork by groups ». This scientific approach has at least one interest : it formalizes the complementarity between the « technical » domain, and the « social » one, which structure both the « socio-technical » environment of the « collaborative engineering », or the world of collaboration for engineers… And they also propose four steps for achieving this « collaborative engineering » (ECN model, or « Engineering collaboration via negociation »), which allow to identify different fields– from « social », to groups, to individuals -, and levers for action (« scientific » disciplines). ECN collaborative engineering process and

Required models

Constituting

Traditional

and techniques

discipline

approach

Collaborative Engineering Approach

stage 1. Manage

Collaborative

Organizational

interaction

Behavior

Science

2. Construct

Social

understanding

construction

3. Discourse preference

Team inclination

4. Attain

Collaborative

agreement

negociation

Economic Man operates in open large groups Sel-interested full

Social Psychology

rationality with static perspective

Social Choice

man operates in small teams with incentives Social construction theory wuth dynamic evolving perspective

Ordinal ranking

Cardinal rating

with discrete

with spatial

social choice

continuous social

modes

choice model

Classic decision Decision Science

Organizational

analysis, game theory approach

Collaborative winwin negociation framework and analysis

3.1.2 From scientific analysis to scientific control ? Applying a scientific approach to the question is apparently efficient, in order to identify segments and steps of response. But when it comes to look for « scientific » responses to « social » (or « soft ») issues, the human complexity seems unreachable to « hard sciences » approaches. One example, chosen only by the chance of Internet research and not with any judgement on the quality of this work, is a thesis from the famous French engineers’ « Ecole nationale supérieure des mines de Paris » (Doctorate School « Engineers’ Profession Sciences ») (Imoussaten (2011)). The topic is « the management of risk activities » and the link with our study is the concern on collaboration processes between engineers. One of the authors’ goal – or hopes – is to reduce the impacts of the human decision, with a concept described as « cognitive automation ». Behind this quest appears the conviction that, if there is a « scientific » (in the sense of hard sciences) response to human conflicts, there will be no reason, not to collaborate. In this approach, there are four levers for optimizing the industrial security through collaboration : reduce the entropy, reach a consensus, be efficient and be relevant. The first point links with ideas related to legitimacy, conflicts’ reduction, seniority, expertise… all concepts which are also described as possible sources of major failures and disasters by Morel (2002 and 2012), and other authors of « High Reliability Organizations ». And when the author makes the parallel between an industrial process and a military organization, I think interesting to refer to General Vincent Desportes (2011), who shows that, to face the uncertainty of the war, the best answer is not to look for « science » but to rely on human decision, which is based on training, experience, and, in the end, intuition… Another interesting point emerging from this research is also the application to the disagreements between « experts » : who is considered as an « expert », or who is not ? But there are no evocations of this question in the thesis. Building a « decision machine » seems finally an impossible task to go beyond human factors, for example when it appears that « the social influence of an actor may be considered as a disturbance in the deliberation process ».

In the end, it seems that the key is to accept the influence of human people, especially when this research shows that an « optimistic attitude » and a « pessimistic attitude » toward collaboration do not have the same result. Indeed, as we will see in our specific research, the collaborative stance has a real impact on the results of the collaborative stake. Another « scientific » temptation, but less complex that one described just above is the building of « control panels ». The matrix proposed by Sosa and al. (2007) is such an attempt to monitor the « unpredictable ». But if the intent is laudable, it is a based on the belief that the failures in cooperation only happen when the project is not carefully planned. We believe indeed that, even if interfaces are identified and planned, the human factor takes its place, and bring with it a non-negligible amount of unpredictability, even in a predictable time and place.

3.1.3 From scientific control to tools solutions Even « lower » in the complexity of collaboration issues come also the « material responses » to the collaborative failures. And as Nicol and al. (2005) propose, the use of shared workspaces and wireless laptops is a useful lever to improve the collaborative work between engineering students. Group collaboration in an engineering project class : issues and solutions :

Issues

Solutions

Organising and sharing large quantities of information (technical, process, images, reports)

Project group folders located on the electronic data repository (shared workspace)

Ensuring that all project group members can easily access project resources

Web access from any internet terminal Radio access with laptops at any location (table or desk) in the department

Students not always being able to attend project group meetings

All information kept in one location so even if a student cannot attend a meeting his/her work can be accessed by others

Sharing resources across project groups (i.e. between the project groups and the control group in this study)

Management group folders (i.e. class folders) on BSCW website accessible to all students Information uploaded by project group representative on management group committee

Students keeping track of the progress being made by their own project group and course director keeping track of progress of numerous project groups

Being able to discuss project issues while having access to all project information and resources

3.2

Project group folders on BSCW site make it easier for students and the course director to check progress

Wireless laptops make it easy to access resources and to sit and discuss the project at any location within range of base station

Improving the collaboration : the inter-organisational approach

When looking for cooperation issues, one finds easily some inter-organisational approaches. And if engineers are not an “organisation” by them-selves, some organisations may be influenced by an engineers’ dominance, if we follow the “integration” or even “differentiation” perspectives on corporate culture described by Martin (1992). Going on further with these approaches, we may then identify some factors of resistance to collaborative issues, and also some insights for improving the situation, transposable to individuals. Cropper and al. (2008)’s book presents a large panel of papers dedicated to interorganizational relations – IOR - (or relationships, IORs), of which many are familiar to the “individual” researches. One find “directly connected” subjects (how a relationship is made and evolve) -

trust (Bachmann and Zaheer);

power (Huxham and Beech);

learning (Noteboom);

transaction costs (Hennart);

contracts (Ring)

… 33

or “indirectly connected” topics (how others’ actions or relationships have an influence on the relationship) -

social psychology (Schruijer);

social capital (Nahapiet);

…

The “competitive poles” (some kind of innovation clusters) are some interesting “object” of inter-organizational collaboration in France, because they present many aspects of our research : engineers and administrative people, power issues (big companies and little ones), private and public organizations… Calamel and al (2009, 2012) dedicated some papers to the “Minalogic” pole. “Far from being a natural fact, collaboration inside the competitive poles and their projects is to build and foster” (Calamel, 2009). As they state, “if one can find easily on the Internet many project management handbooks, there is no book dedicated on collaborative project management”… And when they propose the resistance factors they met, or they identified in the literature, this topics are most shared with the collaborative issues between individuals : -

“cultural” compatibility (share the skills, the definitions…);

social process between people;

selection of “technical” skills;

agreement on the objectives;

respect;

time;

trust;

learning stance.

Even if they describe the factors encountered by organizations, it seems that they are really “human” factors. In the same domain (Research and Development), Davenport et al. (1999)’s analysis focuses on trust between institutions. As their research shows, trust is perceived as the first factor to make the R&D projects successful :

Collaborative success factors

Mean

Mutual respect and trust among partners

4.45

Top managerial commitments from all parties

4.43

Clear understanding of each partners’ responsibilities and tasks

4.40

Selecting the « right » collaborative R&D partner

4.35

Common goals with no hidden agenda

4.30

Good project management

4.25

Good communication and regular contract between partners

4.18

Clear and honest understanding of each other abilities

4.15

Active participation on project teams by both organizations

4.00

Monitoring project’s progress against agreed milestones

4.00

One agreed project leader with required authority

3.80

Agreed procedure for resolving problems

3.63

Resolving areas of dispute at the beginning of the project

3.60

Long term perspective of partnership commitment

3.45

Knowledge of partner prior to start of collaboration

3.43

Comparable levels of management competency

3.38

And for them, there are three types of trust : « Contractual trust relates to adherence to agreements and promises. Competence trust involves expectations of ability and performance. Goodwill trust embodies a mutual commitment to the partners in the relationship ». And these kinds of trust does not involve only organizations… Another example of research dedicated to collaboration between organizations in the R&D sector provides other links between the two approaches (inter-organizational and inter-individual). As Mothe and Quelin (2000)’s research presents, there are many results of a successful collaboration, and many are valuable for organizations as well for individuals, especially for what they call “intangible results” : Tangible results : improvement of product ; new products ; improvement of process ; new

processes ;

prototypes ;

patents ;

licenses ;

standards ;

doctorates ;

publications. Intangible results : Improvement of know-how ; increase in scientific knowledge ; increase in technical knowledge ; personnel qualification

Another example of the interactions between organizations’ collaboration and individuals’ collaboration is the “relation contracting” promoted, for instance, by Australian Construction Engineers (Rahman et Kumaraswamy (2008) and Australian Constructors Association (1999)). What is interesting in that example is that the collaboration between organizations is formalized, but rest on human factors, such as « teambuilding » or « hierarchical support to teams ».

3.3

Engineers’ collaborative skills : victims of their “personality” and “culture” ?

« How can you tell an introverted engineer? He looks at his shoes when he’s talking to you. How can you tell an extroverted engineer? He looks at your shoes while he’s talking to you. » (Vitaliev, 2012) Are engineers similar to others – beside their professional activity -, before they have been “formed” by their education and experiences ? Or do they succeed to become engineers because they have specific “natural” skills and behaviours ? It is not the topic of this research to explore the eternal debate between innate and learned, but let us nevertheless explore some ideas about an “engineers specificity”.

3.3.1 Do have engineers a specific “culture” ? According to Van der Molen and al. (2007), Dutch engineers present some characteristics, which are also found in other cultures. They state that engineers « are generally more conscientious and goal-driven, and somewhat less oriented towards other people ». And the results of Van der Molen and al.’s research propose that : -‐

engineers are more extraverted than the population as a whole (they like to chat but, at the same time, keep at a distance from others)

-‐

they are less agreeable (they respect others’ feelings but impose their will on others)

-‐

they are more conscientious

-‐

they more emotionally stable (they can take their mind off their problems, but invent problems for their selves) 36

-‐

they are more autonomous

In conclusion, they state that « the movie typecast of the introverted engineers has no reality » but that « engineers should be more agreeable in professional communication ( or « interpersonal skills ») ». Regarding the « goal orientation », Rogers and Spitzmuller (2009), studied engineers to identify whether they were goal or learning oriented (the topic of the study was to improve the organizational training). It seems that the results for these variables are diverse. Regarding informal contacts (chatting), Eraut et al. (2003) show engineers, more than other students, need to learn through informal conversations, on the day to day basis, with different partners (mentors, managers, team members et « happy-tohelp » people). But Jian and al (2010) compared Taiwanese and Norwegians engineering students. And they found important differences, especially in the working motivations (Taiwanese students aspire to jobs that will provide flexibility and freedom and the ability to travel, whereas Norwegians aspire to jobs that are interesting and fun), and also

the

modes

professional

recommendation

(chatting

formal

recommendation). About their professional conscience, Coates (2008) confirms that engineers are more focus on the work itself rather than on external rewards. For example, sales people rewards (person of the Month, clerk of the Month…) are non-effective with engineers. And, coming back to Van der Molen’s observation about the « less agreeable » engineers, Coates observes that, due to their scientific trainings, they see very quickly the faults in a project, and may be considered by others as « fault finders » or « naysayers ». To go further on with these specificities, let us explore a little more papers dedicated to the conflicts between engineers and marketers. Keaveney (2008) presents her results about the « blame game » between these two populations, proposing them to identify some « personal attributions » and « situational attributions », sources of conflicts. For engineers, the « personal attributions » of marketers are sources of conflicts, and mainly their « personality traits » : arrogant, exaggerate, not detail-oriented, too 37

emotional, no sense of urgency. In a second order of importance, they also see as a source of conflict that they « don’t understand technology ». Marketers agree partly on the role of their « personality traits », but they consider more the role of « situational attributions » in conflicts (they think that they are mainly too demanding, sensitive to power issues, « perks and pay » (they spend money), and overpromise to customers). On these topics, they share the engineers’ judgement on unrealistic demands, perks and pay and overpromise to customers. But engineers say also that « marketing doesn’t add value »… On the other side of the mirror, marketers consider only personal attributions as sources of conflicts with them : engineers are not customer-focused, their personality traits create conflicts (rigid, no respect for others, too technical, not creative, no social skills), and they don’t understand the business and are unresponsive to requests. Seeing themselves in this mirror, engineers find that their personality traits are the main reasons of conflicts (too technical, don’t respect others, geeks), and also that they are unresponsive to request and not customer focused and too product focused. Some other results are also very interesting. It seems that engineers take the conflicts very personally. When the design of their project is discussed, they may quite easily misinterpret that criticism as a « personal insult ». Is this the sign of a very high sensitiveness (we will see that point just below), or, more indirectly, a kind of mechanism of « social defence » (Amado and Vansina (2005), Vansina and Vansina (2008)), due to the evolution of their role in the companies (especially the high technology ones), where their leadership of the Taylorian era as shifted to the commercial/marketing ? Another point is that they disdain marketing as a « soft science », and therefore « subjective, undisciplined, without rules »… We will also see that conflict between hard and soft sciences later… A major difference between the two populations – and therefore a kind of specificity of engineers – is the way they see the conflict sources. When marketers identify « personal » reasons (personality, attitudes…), engineers are eager to rationalize the conflict by identifying « situational reasons ». On the same topic (engineers/marketers conflicts), Shaw and Shaw (2003) had also shown that, in order to reduce the conflicts, engineers were willing to gain knowledge on marketing. But, as their results also stated, « In spite of this more positive attitude, 38

engineers with marketing training do not exhibit any significant differences in their view of the engineering-marketing relationship when compared to those without training »… But before these two articles, Buch (1999) stated that engineers were already « embedded on two cultures. The organizational culture stresses commercial aspects, but engineers are often more deeply committed to their technical communities ». As Martin (1992) has stated, the « fragmented approaches » of the cultures in organizations propose that the individual cultures are made of many influences. And for engineers, it may be also true… Especially when, as Buch illustrates, newcomers try to be, with many difficulties, some « bridges » between the « engineerial culture » of their elders, and the « corporate » one.

3.3.2 Do engineers have emotions ? Among the social skills, Rasoal et al. (2012) have looked into engineers “hearts”, to measure their “empathy”. Two categories of their studied population are engineering students (applied physics and computer engineering). After a correction to take account of the gender differences (it seems that women have higher levels of empathy), the results are the following : Fantasy

Perspective

Empathic

Personal

taking

concern

distress

Nursing

3.65

3.57

4.08

2.69

Medicine

3.56

3.63

4.11

2.91

Psychology

3.73

3.80

4.25

2.83

Social work

3.74

3.77

4.24

2.96

Applied physics

3.32

3.53

4.08

2.93

Computer engineering

3.72

3.62

4.19

3.22

The engineering students don not show weaknesses in terms of empathy but, as the authors remarks, the populations studied were at the beginning of their education.

And while the four non-engineering educations develop empathy on purpose, it doesn’t seem a priority for engineers. Even if ABET requirements (ABET, 2006) emphasize the “social skills” as well as the ethical ones. And if Roeser (2010) doesn’t give evaluations of engineers’ sensitiveness, she underlines the importance of developing the ethical sensibility of engineers, especially when they work on “risky” technologies. And for her, this kind of education ought to be acquired by some of introspection work, or sensible self-reflection. Exploring the « emotive side » of engineers leads to the Emotional Intelligence concept developed by Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman. In France, the only mark of this approach in the engineerial sector is a « Emotional Intelligence Club », in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), animated by an external consultant. In the Anglo-Saxon world, many publications in the specialized engineers’ literature (magazines or more academic papers) develop theses concepts. For example, Sunindijo and al. (2007) relate EI and management style (according to Mintzberg’s criterias), observing project managers and construction engineers in Thailand. Et they notice positive correlations among : -‐

delegating and self awareness ;

-‐

sharing/open communication and social awareness ;

-‐

proactivity and self-management.

Delegating, sharing, communicating, proactivity : four levers of allowing an effective collaboration… In the construction sector too, Butler and Chinowsky (2006) use the Bar-On EQ test on leaders (who may very probably be engineers), and reveal that their strength are stress tolerance, independence and optimism (classical « leaders » skills) while their weaknesses are noticed for « interpersonal skills » : empathy, interpersonal relationship and social responsibility. And with the same idea, Feldt and al. (2010) suggest to evaluate the engineers’ personality with a MBTI-like test (IPIP), on the basis of the « work performance model » of Blumberg and Pringle (Capacity, Willingness, Opportunity)

3.3.3 There are engineers… and engineers « Four engineers are travelling in a car which breaks down. “Sounds to me as if the pistons have seized, and we’ll have to strip down the engine,” says a mechanical engineer. “Well,” says the chemical engineer, “the fuel must be contaminated, so we should clear the fuel system.” “I think it might be a faulty plug lead,” says the electrical engineer. They all then ask the computer engineer what he thinks they should do. “um... perhaps if we all get out of the car and then get back in again? ” » (Vitaliev, 2012) As we have seen above, “engineers’ culture” is apparently not overwhelming the personal differences between the individuals, even if it is possible to identify some common features. But when observing the engineers’ population, it appears that engineers present also “sub-categories” ! For Dickhout (1997), it is not appropriate to compare a « mechanical engineer » and a « civil engineer », when considering their ability to deal with « irrational » factors. And Dickhout states that most management papers are written by civil engineers (who are working on fixed systems), while mechanical engineers are able to deal with change, on the basis of their knowledge of the scientific mind… « Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets. » (Vitaliev, 2012)

3.4

Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : the educational way

Among the literature dedicated to the development of collaborative skills, the most numerous concern studies on engineers’ education. As we saw above, the influence of certification’s organisation is crucial on educational programs, and the goal is clear : develop the “social skills”, in order to prepare the students to their professional challenges. If this goal is widely shared, the ways chosen by engineering schools and universities are diverse. On one edge, there are conferences and courses. On the other edge, there are collaborative programs. And between these two ways, there are many mixed ones. 41

As Hassan (2011) pleads, an “integrated learning method” and also for Knobb and Grayson (2012), who propose to use the “multiple intelligence” theory (Gardner) and EI (Goleman), an efficient method may mix the cognitive approach, social and collective factors, and behavioural triggers. The program described by Knobb and Grayson is most interesting by many ways. The first interest, in order to be efficient with engineers, is that it was inspired by the teaching methods for developing “soft skills” in another “hard” culture (or usually perceived as such) : the US Army officers at West Point. The second is the mix between three approaches (as Hassan’s proposal) : -‐

being (self-knowledge)

-‐

knowing (discipline knowledge)

-‐

doing (application of knowledge within a social context).

Many other programs are proposing “knowing” actions, some are using “doing” approaches, but a few appeal to the “being” knowledge. The “collaborative skills” can be developed through diverse actions, but two main categories seem to emerge : -‐

the communication skills

-‐

the social skills (individual and collective – such as teamwork skill)

Shuman and al (2005) make out two different educational ways, to develop these two kinds of “professional skills” : The « process skills » are « communication, functioning on multidisciplinary teams, understanding professional and ethical responsibilities » ; The « awareness skills » are « broad education to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context

and knowledge of

contemporary issues ; a recognition of the need for and the ability to engage in lifelong learning » To develop the first, they propose a dedicating learning process. But for the second, they prefer to use problem-solving approaches, in which the students discover the importance of these skills.

Another way for the latter ones could be, according to the author, international mobility programs or professional training experiences in global organisations (companies, NGOs…)

3.4.1 Cooperative learning Maceiras (2011) reminds the principle of collaborative learning, as proposed by Felder and Brent (2007) : -‐

positive interdependence;

-‐

individual accountability;

-‐

face-to-face promoting interaction;

-‐

appropriate use of collaborative skills;

-‐

group processing.

And observes that team learning has, beside the acquisition of knowledge and reasoning skills, also « collateral » benefits, such as social skills development. Some examples may be found in the literature, such as the one quoted by Soibelman and al (2011)

- a global program for construction management students, with

courses, lectures, group meetings, group discussions, collaborative projects…- or Becerik-Gerber and al. (2012), also for construction engineers, based on virtual teamwork, problem oriented and project based learning, and role based learning. Abdulaal and al. (2011) and Olidaran (2011) make direct references to the ABET’s recommendations, in which collaboration is encouraged and developed by actions of « learning by doing ». The Olidaran work presents also secondary benefits to that kind of programs, such as the improvement of decision’s quality, productivity and creativity. Another interesting point is the emergence of conflicts, during the programs, and then the necessity of giving the students some inputs on conflicts’ resolution methods.

3.4.2 Go past the « disciplinary egocentrism » As we have seen, there are engineers…and engineers. « Three engineering students are discussing the possible designers of the human body. one says: “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.” another 43

says: “No, it was an electrical engineer – look at the nervous system, with many thousands of electrical connections”. The last one says: “actually, it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?” » Vitaliev (2012) In engineers’ world, interdisciplinary work is often the first step to make… As other authors, Richter and Paretti (2009) plead for the necessity of getting past the « disciplinary egocentrism ». And when approaching these shores, it may be interesting to make the difference with the multidisciplinary work : the interdisciplinary work lie on an interaction, which can lead to a new discipline, or a new field of knowledge… It is much as different as cooperation and collaboration… But one may consider the cooperation (or multidisciplinary work) as a first step to collaboration (or interdisciplinary work). Nevertheless, the organization of educational programs doesn’t always allow these kind of « crossovers ». It is probably the reason why some educational institutions propose complementary initiatives, such as the « summer school » for multidisciplinary opening, studied by Larsen and al. (2009), or the special course for « interdisciplinarity » opened to graduated engineers described by Harrison and al. (2007). One of the most interesting initiatives, for our point of view, is the ones of the Imperial College, London (Faculty of Engineers), promoted by Alpay and al. (2011). In order to support the development of broader and inter-professional skills, the University organises transversal projects, common courses but also a « flexible Friday » which allows each student to discover a large variety of courses, in literature, human sciences, business… This kind of initiatives seems very interesting because it allows complementary actions : open the skills’ range, and put the students in interactive situations, for a better knowledge of the others, and for achieving common goals. But this can only be organized within large Colleges, able to offer many different courses at the same time, in the same place.

3.4.3 Discover the complexity Another identified barrier to collaborative work is the complexity : the complexity of the world, beginning with the complexity generated by the interaction with others. As Henri Poincaré (1889) showed, if the behaviour of a two objects – system may be described and forecasted, unpredictability already begins with a third one. The collaboration within a team therefore induces some complexity… Some educational programs are designed to prepare engineers to deal with that issues, such as the « studios » quoted by Gattie (2011) or the simulation programs of human factors studied by Jaeger and Adair (2010).

3.4.4 Deal with the language barrier, to improve collaboration If the language differences may be real barriers to collaboration within multinational teams, Lappaleinen (2010) shows that educational programs intended to deal with that issue have also a « collateral » benefit. In this example, the engineering students already hold a level « that can be considered adequate for industrial communities ». But with this program, as the focus on language education is shifted toward application, build-up of communication skills and contextual English language usage, students have also access to self-leadership themes.

3.4.5 Are these initiatives effective ? When looking at educational programs, it is necessary to evaluate the efficiency of these initiatives. As we saw before, ABET has an important role in the promotion of collaborative skills. As their initiative began in 1999, their later study (ABET, 2006) also considered the first results of their politics. According to their results, « the largest differences between 1994 and 2004 graduates are in five areas: Awareness of societal and global issues that can affect (or be affected by) engineering decisions (effect size = +.80 of a standard deviation), applying engineering skills (+.47 sd), group skills (+.47 sd), and awareness of issues relating to ethics and professionalism (+.46 sd). The smallest difference is in graduates’ abilities to apply mathematics and sciences (+.07 sd) ». 45

Figure 5. Differences in Graduates' Reports of Engineering Skills: Project Skills Cluster 5.00

implementation of EC2000 is not

4.00

Adjusted Mean Score

« The evidence suggests that

3.89 ***

3.67

3.74

4.22 ***

3.97 ***

3.83

only having a positive impact on engineering

3.00

education,

but,

overall, that gains are being

2.00

made at no expense to the 1.00

*** p<.001

Design and ProblemSolving Skills (Criterion 3.c, e)

Group Skills (Criterion 3.d)

Communication Skills (Criterion 3.g)

1994 Graduates (Pre -)

teaching of basic science, math, and engineering science skills ».

2004 Graduates (Post -)

Let us now have a look at the students’ evaluation. For theFigure Becerik-Gerber andReports al (2012) example, most of the students recognize the 6. Differences in Graduates' of Engineering Skills: Contexts and Professional Skills Cluster

value of engaging in a teamwork, even if, at the end of the program, 10% of the 5.00

students are still convinced that « collaboration is unnecessary as long as everyone 4.00

Adjusted Mean Score

4.04 *** works hard on a team individually ». 3.65 *** 3.66 3.00

3.40

3.49 ***

2.95

Looking 2.00 for other learning teams, Fong (2010) shares the like and dislikes expressed by the 1.00 engineers students, after these kind of experiences : Societal and Global Issues (Criterion 3.h, j)

*** p<.001

Ethics and Professionalism (Criterion 3.f)

Sharing workload/complementary 1994 Graduates (Pre -)

145

Life-long Learning (Criterion 3.i)

2004 Graduates (Post -)

Dislike

Time-consuming discussion/ hard to

110

manage time / hard to schedule time for meetings

-8-

Engineering Change

Affective dimension

Unfair workload distribution / free

rider Skills improved

Conflicts / incompatible ideas

Diversity/creativity

« Groupthink » / divergent opinions

not encouraged / leader ignores members Discussion/interaction

Ineffective

team

process

poor

outcomes 1+1>2

Team spirit / encouragement from

Lack of staff support or guidance

members

To my observation, it is important to see that, for these students, the worst « dislike » is the use of time. They will have to learn later, in their professional experience, that this « spending » may also be considered as an investment… 46

Our second observation is related to the nature of the « likes » : even for « rational » engineers, many of these benefits are « irrational » ones. Nevertheless, these good results, also from the students’ point of view, may be mitigated by the evaluation of students of their educational years. As Nilsson (2010) shows, engineering students think that there is a real gap between the educational competence base (considered as static) and the professional competence base (considered as changing). And they mainly consider these years as an entrance ticket to the professional world… A model of the relationship between higher education and professional practice for engineers Static

Changing

Professional competence base

Educational competence base

Organisation and workplace-specific knowledge, eg methods, tools, concepts Generic competence Socio-communicative competence Leadership abilities

Math, general and specific computer knowledge, eg programming Generic competence such as problem solving, analytic skills, flexibility and adaptability

Symbolic ritual The exchange value of education 101 (January 2012) 1

Journal of Engineering Education 5

Mean Importance Rating

Overall means (n = 2115 recent engineering alumni, revised wording) 4

And finally, to complete this question,

Notes

Ratings

5 = "extremely important" 4 = "quite important" 3 = "somewhat important" 2 = "slightly important" 1 = "not at all important"

Passow (2012) shows that, if ABET ‘s

themes are important for educational and

All competencies in this study have mean ratings greater than "somewhat important".

managers, there are also important

Tie lines show 6 statistically distinct

levels of importance (studywise α = 0.05). Horizontal "tie lines" above the data "tie together" competencies whose ratings are not significantly different. (Specifically, each respondent's ratings were ranked from 1 (highest rating) to 12 and differences were tested between the mean rank for each competency over all respondents.)

points for graduates involved in the

h) impact

b1) experiments

j) contemporary issues

k) engineering tools

c) design

f) ethics

a) math, science & engineering

i) life-long learning

g) communication

e) problem solving

b2) data analysis

d) teams

professional life for less than 10 years :

ABET Competencies a-k

FIGURE 3. Importance ratings for the ABET competencies, revised wording. The survey question was: “Please rate how important the following competencies and attitudes have been to you in your professional experience.” Verbatim competencies are in Table 1. Significance of Differences in Importance Ratings

For

them,

« teams » (ability

function

team)

and

« communication » (communication skills) come out with the highest results. But « impact » (understanding of the social, economic and environmental impact of my work) and « contemporary issues » come out in the lower cluster. This may be the sign that engineers are convinced that they have to collaborate for the success of their projects (an utilitarian view), but only with experts like them… When it comes to interact with « final users », it may be more difficult to deal with their approaches. Anyway, when engineers are engaged in an educational programme, they are basically good students. As Watanabe and al (2011) show, engineers find in themselves the motivation (« intrinsic motivation ») to continuous education. On the contrary to, for this example, car salespeople, it is unnecessary (or even counterproductive) to put in place some extrinsic motivation.

3.5

Improving engineers’ collaborative skills : other good practices and insights

Even if it is maybe the most documented chapter, the education years are not the only moment and way of improving the engineers’ collaborative skills Bedwell and al. (2012) propose an analytical work, which presents to human resources managers five levers : -‐

the planification and organization of the project, with the external factors, the exchanges and alliances’ structuration ;

-‐

the team’s staffing, with considerations on KSAO (knowledge, skills, abilities and… other characteristics) ;

-‐

training and development ;

-‐

collaborative behaviours’ evaluation, in order to identify and reward them (collectively).

3.5.1 Improve engineers’ collaborative skills through communication Communication between individuals is an important part of the collaborative issue, even if it is not the more complicated. And as we saw above, it is one of the themes identify to develop within the engineers’ education. So, do engineers communicate ? Laufer and al. (2008) studied on-site construction project managers, and demonstrated that they were « great communicators », because they dedicated a huge amount of their time to share or collect informations with a large number of people, through meetings or informal interactions. By their side, Cherry and Robillard (2008) demonstrate that engineers (and especially software engineers, who may be considered as « geeks » and therefore bad communicants, are very efficient at « ad hoc collaboration » : a kind of « just in time learning », through a friendly collaboration within a team. This idea is very well developed, consciously or unconsciously, in EDF (French national energy company), where the engineers’ “management skills” (including working in multi-disciplinary teams is developed through “coaching” programs – with external coaches, but also with internal “mentors”). But, as Lappaleinen (2009) describes, communication is under-valued in the companies’ world, because it is resources’ consuming and non-profitable domain. Beside that, companies mainly value what they can measure, and communication’s effects are difficult to quantify. At last, communication is considered as a « soft value ». Are engineers’ communication skills considered as weaker as they really are ? One possible answer is that they like to communicate with peers (ad hoc collaboration or project management), and not with « other people ». As Reardon (2002) shows, engineers use efficiently their communication skills when « things have to be done », and for example to access to some « informal learning » after a major change (learning new workflows, developing expertise, learning about the process). In that way, they develop an « ad-hoc collaboration », but in a very utilitarian way (they only learn what they need to do their job), and limited to their peer. 49

3.5.2 Improving collaboration through « objects » For Vinck (1999), « intermediary objects » are an efficient way of helping engineers to collaborate together. These « objects » may be boards, newspapers, data tables, or « productions » (he quotes the example of a neutron’s ray with therapeutic use, object of collaboration between scientists and physicians). For him, these objects materialize the interactions between the actors and become an « order system », around which the interactions evolve. His hypothesis is to consider that engineers are putting something more than the object in itself, and what is more important is their ability to add, or take something – to modify this object. More than an object, this becomes, even for « rational » engineers, a symbol, or a mediatory. Barley and al. (2012) also foster the benefits of these « engineering objects ». For them, engineers use these « objects » with two kinds of strategies : ambiguity, which is an efficient way of allowing collaboration, and clarity, which aims to reach the goal. Summary of object production strategies Strategy Ambiguity

Motives

Design Activities

Establish future design direction

Simplify content

Promote compromise

Eliminate unnecessary data

Avoid potential conflict Justify design recommendations against

Use additional data sources

criticism

Add « robust » data

Clarity

Block designs with negative implications

Percentage of Objects

Engineering Objects for Collaboration

W. C. Barley et al.

These objects are efficient for

avoiding conflicts, especially

30 Ambiguous Objects

Clear Objects

when might

« although want

diplomacy,

0 Early

Mid Design Phase

Late

individuals opt

for

managerial

decisions that place constraints

Figure 1 Percentage of Objects Reflecting Strategies of Ambiguity Versus Clarity by Design Phase. Note: The sum of the two columns is not 100% because we identified additional objects in the data that were surrounded by insufficient information to warrant classification in either category.

on people’s actions may encourage them to be confrontational. (…) When free to choose between diplomacy and confrontation (when there were few organizational constraints on their actions), engineers in our study chose the former and employed a strategy of ambiguity. » And even if the study doesn’t apply to an object but to oral exchanges, this equilibrium between ambiguity and clarity is also found in the McDonnel (2012) study, who uses Schön theories to analyse the « conversational strategies » between two software design engineers. Because they both want to reach their common goal, and maintain the quality of their relationship, they « encapsulate » conflicts within words with voluntarily ambiguous meanings (each of them keeps his meaning). In that way, they don’t build a physical « object », but if these words were written on a paper, this sheet could be considered as a real « engineering object », or « intermediary object » (or « transitional » object ?). These both strategies are most interesting because they succeed of way of dealing with a major factor of resistance to complex problems’ solving – and therefore of collaboration issues. As Emison (2011) states, one of the major engineers’ resistance in other approaches’ acceptation is their resistance to ambiguity : « when confronted with complicated problems, human nature frequently seeks to remove ambiguity by simplification. In university settings, I observed a resistance to cross-departmental cooperation on multidisciplinary problems. Rather than reflecting despair for crossdiscipline work, I believe this reflects a larger societal preference for simplification through specialization ». If the collaborative objects allow to make engineers more confortable with ambiguity, to the point that they voluntarily use it, that is a real efficient lever ! And if we follow Vinck describing the « engineerial work « (Vinck, in Minguet and Thuderoz, 2005) as the design and production of socio-technical objects, these « collaborative

objects »

are

not

only

applicable

engineer-with-engineer

collaborative issues, but more widely to all kinds of collaborative stakes for engineers.

3.5.3 Improving collaboration with « boundary spanners » A link may be made between the Di Marco and al. (2010) concept of « boundary spanners » and the « ad-hoc » or informal collaboration estimated by engineers. Their study is dedicated on the « CBS » (collaborative boundary spanners) in the context of cross-cultural engineering projects. Even when the formal organization designates « official » CBS, one observes always that informal CBS emerge. Their contribution : they « provide vital cultural insight and background that the entire network draws on to get its work done ».

3.5.4 Improving collaboration with « models » Are engineers really « rational » when they collaborate ? If so, and because collaboration is useful for the project, a regular collaboration ought to be the « normal mode » in engineers’ organizations. But Beaudry and Schiffauerova (2011) show that a repeated collaboration is less efficient for the quality of innovations than the presence of « star inventors » within the team. Are engineers more sensitive to « stars » that what could be imagined ? Kirschenman (2011) also insists on the necessity of developing the engineering educators, within the academic institutions, because they are « role models » for their students, which are « prepared to be leaders, not just problem solvers and followers ».

3.5.5 Are leaders and managers more collaborative engineers ? The leader and the manager are two major figures of the managerial literature, and many concepts developed above are found in the dedicated literature. Nevertheless, the link is not clearly established between collaboration and leadership, or between collaboration and management. Is it because leadership and management are usually used to describe « vertical » relationships,

while

« collaboration »

usually

intended

for

« horizontal »

relationships ? But management may also be used for « non-hierarchical » relationships, and collaboration may also include some kinds of « vertical » links… 52

What kind of leaders are engineers ? Singh and Jampel (2010) propose five types of leaders : consultative autocrats, complete autocrats, impoverished manager / shareholder, consensus manager, active manager. Consensus Manager (0, 100)

Active Manager

Consultative Autocrat (100,100)

Their study on civil engineers reveal that many engineers are

« impoverished

managers » :

I Score (Percentile)

Group's Information Input to Decision Making

High 100 Group Input

disconnected

from his team…

When this type represents 46% of project engineers and

Low Group Input

Impoverished Manager (0,0)

Complete Autocrat (100,0)

0 50

Solely Group

D Score (Percentile)

Decision Making Authority

100 Solely Leader

70% of resident engineers, it seems that management is a priority to develop for these populations.

Fig. 1. Leadership-teamwork flexibility space !improved from Slevin and Pinto 1988"

cerns shown by team members are not necessarily communicated According to Kirschenmann (2011), theteamtransition to « engineer » to « master to the team leaders, and further, concerns are barely incor-

managers can be coached, trained, motivated/demotivated, encouraged/discouraged, etc., such that they can shift their positions on the flexibility space. Some writers, such as Gunn !2000" claim that it really is difficult to learn leadership and that there are many hurdles to do so. If leadership cannot be learned, it is meaningless to attempt to teach it; however, if leadership can be learned, it does not necessarily mean that it can be taught !Doh 2009". Others emphatically claim that leadership can be taught !Sarner 2007". This argument sounds a lot like whether spiritualism can be taught, because it depends so much on the individual seeker. It is thus probably safe to conclude that leadership values can be acquired by potential leaders in many ways through various opportunities, exposures, and interactions. Thus, the four corners of the flexibility space denote four distinct leadership and teamwork styles. Each distinct characteristic is highlighted and explained below.

porated during the decision-making process. The leader sets his

own agenda, expects others to follow, and aims to fulfill his own builder » has to be done through purposes only. the acquisition of leadership, communication and

team management skills.

Impoverished Manager/Shareholder The engineer will not take any information from the group and

not make any decision by himself/herself. All decisions are Taffinder (2006) makes the will same kind he pleads for developing thus taken by the group inof their statement, random manner without awhen clear flow of information within the group. Here, the team leader is not

aware of what is going on within the team and also does not know the « management leadership » for thethe «teambest engineering leaders ». the direction in which is heading. Substantial chaos and disinterest can ensue in such a situation.

And according to Skipper and Bell (2006) construction project managers claim for Consensus Manager

Consultative Autocrat

The engineer will involve the group in complete decision making leadership training, and the presents ways suggested for and will study then let the group decide by consensus.the While thispreferred can be

The engineer takes information input from all, but does not share decision making. The engineer takes decisions solely on his own while assuring consultation. Team members do have a say in what the leader decides, and the leader affords team members the opportunity for this. Such a team leader may be efficient sometimes, but may not be able to fulfill the concerns shown by individual team members.

acquiring these skills :

Complete Autocrat The engineer will neither take anybody’s input, nor will share decision making with anybody. Under such a situation, the con-

healthy, firm decisions and directions can be missed. There is also the risk of groupthink, where minority views are reluctant to express themselves. On the other hand, reaching a final decision by the group could be a time consuming process. Active Manager The engineer is efficient and capable of fulfilling the work requirements, can exercise independence, but will consult the group whenever necessary. The active manager avoids complete autocratic behavior, but uses high group input. Though it is not nec-

178 / JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING © ASCE / OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 1. Comparison of construction project manager opinions on the development of leadership skills

of this section of the survey was to determine if top performers assigned significantly different values of importance to these potential sources of leadership development than the control group. It was anticipated that the results of the analysis would identify

2004". The relative rankings of the causal influences is illustrated in Fig. 1.

And when they define their needs - establishing direction, aligning people, motivating and inspiring -, these items have a real resonance with some « soft skills » evocated before, when exploring the ways of better collaborating with others…

3.6

How to improve engineers’ collaborative skills in the French literature : “is anyone there” ?

As told in introduction, the main focus of this research is on French engineers. But as I contacted professional organizations and personal relations, the reactions were diverse : most of the time surprised (why are you asking this question ?), sometimes disdainful (engineers know how to collaborate !), and fortunately also benevolent (how can I help you ? please explain the choice of your research…) As shown above, the international literature is quite abundant about the theme of engineers’ collaboration. But it was not the same in the French one. Anyway, considering my personal experience and convinced that France may not be such an exception for collaborative skills, I had to carry on with this investigation… And as d’Iribarne also noticed (d’Iribarne, 2005), studies about « French management » are uncommon: « does French management exist ? There is no book that describes management control à la française. There are a number of random studies such as a dissertation by a professor at the HEC (Hautes Etudes Commerciales) business school comparing management control in France and in England, but general conclusions cannot be drawn from such observations. (…) However, if one looks at what happens, it is clear that a French style of management exists, in particular when the French are dealing with non-French people ». Let us add that the rare books dedicated to management in France are putting the focus on the malfunctionings and sufferings in the companies. For example, some titles of recent books : “The black book of management” (Le livre noir du management, Isabelle Bourboulon, 2011, Bayard), “Lost in management” (Lost in management, François Dupuy, 2011), “When managers rebel” (Quand les cadres se rebellent, David Courpasson et Jean-Claude Thoenig, 2008, Vuibert), “The elites’ 54

weariness” (La fatigue des élites, François Dupuy, 2005, Seuil), “Management’s illusions” and “bad-being in organizations” (Les illusions du management” and “Malêtre dans les organisations”, Jean-Pierre Le Goff, 2000, La Découverte). Besides these kinds of accusatory books, it is difficult to find some analysis considering ways of improving the system, and not changing it radically. Denis Lemaitre’s book (Lemaitre, 2003), is one of the rare books, and very well documented, to be dedicated to “the engineers’ human education”, and to propose a bibliography of the formers studies, as well as a very interesting analysis of the different models and “ideologies” in action. The three models are : -‐

the humanities’ model;

-‐

the personal development’s model;

-‐

the human sciences for engineers’ model.

We will find all this three models in the educational initiatives for promoting “human sciences” in the Engineers’ educational world. And he proposes to use these three models at the same time, passing from their initial logic, which intends to “transform” the individual, to a “post-modern” one, which may adapt him. (adapted from Lemaitre) Individual transformation’s logic Humanity emancipation’s ideal, through

culture

and

Individual adaptation’s logic Humanities’ model

moral

Objective of cultural objects handling,

conscience

local

cultures’

knowledge, with relativism on values

Subject’s fulfilment, autonomy

Personal development’s model

and self realisation’s ideal Human

and

Objective

mastering

the

behavioural tools social

phenomenons’ intelligence ideal

Human sciences for engineer’s

Objective

model

expression

mastering

techniques

and

management tools

3.6.1 Flashback on the French engineers’ specificities If ABET is the educational reference in the US and, indirectly in some other areas of the world, France has a referential organization for engineers : the IESF, for “Ingenieurs et Scientifiques de France” – French Engineers and Scientists. Most studies and publications come out of this association, or from its members – and especially, Claude Maury, who was, until last year and since 1990, the General Delegate of the CEFI (Comité d’étude sur les formations d’ingénieurs – Studying committee on engineers’ education), a part of IESF. For Claude Maury (2012), it is very important, in France, to distinguish the Engineers’ school from the “technical universities” (even if they are also called, nowadays, “engineering schools”. As he directly expressed during our meeting, “you need to distinguish the French “top schools” from the others French engineering schools, which may be compared with European engineering schools, such as the German ones”. This specificity of French engineering schools, and consequently of French engineers is well known, and the review on this “French exception” is mitigated. The AERES report (AERES, 2010) on the engineering education in French universities proposes a comparison of the national specificities with international ones : -‐

the « model 1 » is the « American model », or more generally, the international model. Known as the reference model it is inspired by the German model, imitated by the Asians and South Americans universities. Even if they are called « Engineering schools », these programs take place in colleges of the « complete » US universities, and are focused on specialties (Mechanical, Electrical, Civil Engineering,…), but with opening on other disciplines, as we saw in the ABET’s recommendations ;

-‐

the « model 2 » is a French type of engineering education, similar to the « model 1 », because focusing on the engineering sciences and on the technical speciality. This model is a minority in France ;

-‐

the « model 3 » is typical of French Engineering schools. A strong specificity is the initial selection, after two years of « preparation class », focused on mathematical and general physics (when the model 2 begins with a « normal » 56

engineering education). This model is at the same time criticized (not adapted to the market’s needs for engineers), praised (it « delivers » very high level engineers, very skilled in maths and stress’ resilient) and incompletely understood, especially abroad. -‐

the « model 4 » is the university education in engineering (toward « engineering masters »). Its weaknesses are the lack of human and social sciences education and of professional experience.

The report also proposes a comparison of three referentials for engineers’ education : the American ABET’s, the French CTI (Commission des Titres d’Ingénieurs), and the CDIO (an international gathering of engineering education organizations). ABET

Knowledges

CTI

CDIO

Math. & Basic Sciences

Large field of fundamental sciences

Engineering Sciences Broad Education necessary to understand the impact of Eng.solutions... Knowledge of contemporaries issues

Multidisciplarity

Maths (incl stats), Phys.Chem.Bio Core( and Advanced) Enginering fundamental Knowlege

Cultural opening One or many foreign languages' mastery

Ability to Long Life Learning (LLL)

Personal skills

Abil.to identify,formulate Engineerig problems Abil.to solve Engineerig problems Abiity. to analyse & interpret data Ability to apply Knowledge of Maths, Science & Engineering...

Problems' identification and resolution Datas' collection and interpretation Ability to mobilize ressources in a scientific and technological field Innovation; Competitivity and productivity Ability to work in an international environment

Abil.to use techniques, skills, & modern eng.tools necessary for Eng.practice Abiity.to design & conduct experiments Professional skills & attitudes

Incorporate Engineering standards Abiity.to function in multidisciplinary teams Interpersonal skills : Teamwork & Communicate using writen reports Communication Communicate using oral reports

Experimentation

Respect of societal values, ethics Environnement and sustainable development Information technology tools' use Intellectual property Ability to integrate in an organization, to animate it and make it evolve Team spirit Leadership Written communication Oral communication With specialists and non specialists

Industrial, economical and professional stakes awareness

Engineer's job

Communication in foreign languages Curiosity & Life Long Learning Staying current on Word ofEngineer Engineering reasoning & problem solving Analysis Problem Identification and Formulation Solutions & Recommendations Hypothesis Tests ( Data..) Personal skills & attitudes (Risks, Perseverance, Creativity, Critical, Time & Resources manag.) Cross cultural Communication

Ability to mobilize the technical resources of the specialty

Complex systems : analysis & design Understanding of professional & ethical responsabilities

Awareness of one's personal Knowledge, Skills & attitudes. Contemporaris issues and values Historical & cultural cotext

Abiity.to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints... Project management Quality and Safety procedures mastery

Experimental & Knowledge Discovery -Exp. Inquiry Survey of Print & Electronic Litterature System thinking(Thinking holistically, Systems,...) Professional skills & attitudes : Ethics, Integrity, Responsability & Accountability The Impact of Engineering on the environmental, social,economic systems.. Modeling Teamwork ; Forming effective teams ; Team Operation ; Team growth & Evolution ; Technical teaming Leadership Written communication Oral presentation & communication Communication strategy Debate, Communication structure (Arguments, audience bias, etc). Conception : External & Societl context ; Enterprise& Business Context ; Conceiving & Eng. Systems Design : Process ; phasing & approaches; use of Kn. Diciplinary ; multidisiplinary; multiobjective Implementation ; Process ; Hardware & software process & integration ;Test :Management Operation

Focusing on collaborative issues (interpersonal skills), a difference appears : where ABET and CDIO look for « teamwork », the French CTI only encourages to « team spirit » and to « leadership » skills.

3.6.2 A shared review on collaborative weaknesses ? The “collaborative” skills seem then to be absent from the French referentials. But is it, from the French point of view, a lever of improvement ? According to Claude Maury (2012), there is, in France, a feeling of a “French leadership” regarding the quality of engineering schools (but not of “technical universities”) : “the lasting esteem granted to the “X” (French Polytechnical School), quoted in all Europe as the initial source for inspiration, may explain the belief that prevailed in France, all along the 19th century, to have been the undiscussed pioneers of modern scientific education, and to have little to learn from the others”. The reference to the 19th century is astounding regarding the time of the interview (in the 21th century), but it illustrates, for sure, a “cultural” French reality. And when observing the international rankings of engineers’ schools, the proposed response is more on organizational issues (the rank is due to the size of French schools, which are now regrouping, for example, inside “ParisTech”) than on taught skills. Ranking of European technological schools and universities TIMES-QS 2010 Cambridge Imperial College London ETH Zürich U. Oxford TU Delft U. Manchester EPFL Lausanne École polytechnique Paris TU Munich RWTH Aachen U. Edinburgh TU Berlin Universität Karlsruhe TU Eindhoven U. College London U. Southampton KTH Stockholm Politecnico di Milano DTU Denmark TU Darmstadt KU Leuven Chalmers UT ENS Paris

4 6 8 9 18 25 31 35 36 39 46 48 49 50 51 52 60 63 69 75 76 76 76

SHANGHAI 2010 Cambridge EPFL ETH Lausanne Imperial College London U. Manchester Zürich U. Oxford KU Leuven Chalmers UT DTU Université Paris-VI Politechnico di Torino Denmark

16 20 30 33 43 49 52-75 52-75 52-75 52-75 52-75

Nevertheless, the recent “White Book” of the IESF (Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, 2011), proposes an improvement of engineering education programs, which addresses, quite directly, the collaborative skills : “In the companies, efficiency is always the result of an action designed and implemented by a team. That leads to have another point of view on individual talents. One can address, for example, the quality of cooperations between engineers and other professions”. But these kind of issues ought to be quite new, because the IESF annual study (Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, 2012), do not asks the graduates about their ability in these fields. Among all questions, the nearest to our study is related to the “societal values”. No sign of other “social skills”… How do you rate the importance of these themes of your education, in your professional activity ? (Under 30 years, graduates from the initial education) Important

Not

Neutral

important

Knowledge and comprehension of a large field of fundamental

Ability to mobilize knowledges in our specialty

Mastery of engineer’s methods and tools

Awareness to industrial, economical and professional stakes

Ability to work in a international context

sciences

Ability to integrate an organization, to animate it and to make it evolve

Sensitiveness

societal

values

such

sustainable

development and social relationships Ability to innovate and to lead researches Ability to operate professional choices and to insert the professional life Identify his training skills and have the ability to engage oneself in learnings in autonomy and in a long term

But even if the question are not proposed, the results show nevertheless the weakness points of the French engineering schools : out of the level of preparation in the “engineering field”, only half of the students, in the more optimistic case, evaluate themselves as prepared for their professional life. This is, for sure, a sign of real concern.

How do you qualify the degree of preparation by your engineering education ? (Under 30 years, graduates from the initial education) Good

% Knowledge and comprehension of a large field of fundamental

Pretty bad

Neutral

Ability to mobilize knowledges in our specialty

Mastery of engineer’s methods and tools

Awareness to industrial, economical and professional stakes

Ability to work in a international context

sciences

Ability to integrate an organization, to animate it and to make it evolve

Sensitiveness

societal

values

such

sustainable

As Claude Maury said during our interview : even if the theme of collaboration is important – especially for innovation -, it is not really taken in charge by the Engineers’ schools. And for him, the main reason is that the French system is competitive; and therefore the success is individual. The AERES report (AERES, 2010) is dedicated to the engineers’ education in the universities but also proposes general fields of improvements, and among them some related to the collaborative skills (team working, opening to others’ skills…). “Transversal skills development, such as autonomy, ability to work in teams, and critical thinking, is not considered, and it is a mistake, as an objective as much important as knowledge transmission”. The non-educational activities (clubs, associations…) are often quoted as a lever, as well as professional experience during the academic education, or, more traditionally, human and social sciences courses. Design projects, which are parts of the American education are also recommended. 60

In the cycle of conference of French “All Knowledges University”, dedicated to engineers (“What is an engineer today ? The engineer, the genius, the machine”) (ULTS, 2010), Philippe Depincé, director at “Centrale Nantes” (engineering school), (in “Penser en ingénieur : méthodes de pensée et de travail” – “Thinking as an engineer : methods of thinking and working”) underlines also the importance of the collaborative work, and the emergence of a collective intelligence. And for him, this collaborative skills are developed through team projects, working groups, multidisciplinarity, professional experience and also, above all, the “non-educational” activities, such as sports, arts, students’ associations… Among this context, the more critical point of view comes form the “Montaigne Institute” French think tank, with a report written by three graduates from the French Polytechnical School (Bordier and al., 2011). Three chapters are proposed to “adapt the engineers’ education to the international context” : -‐

develop the innovative practices;

-‐

soft skills and technical education

-‐

mixed approaches for innovation.

What they call “soft skills” are “human and relationships qualities”, and for them, successful companies are the ones, which succeeded in developing their engineers’ skills of innovation and collaboration. If the technical skills of French engineers are recognized, they have weaknesses in all “human” related skills, and this is a handicap in the international context. As told them Jean-Louis Beffa, Honour President of Saint Gobain and Senior Advisor to Banque Lazard, “What is missing to the French engineer is essentially a earlier contact with the professional world, and also with the research. One has to complete that with the human skills development”. Has been these message heard by the educational organizations ? Written some years before, the SPINE study already mentioned above (Bodmer and al., 2002), proposes the auto-evaluation of professors and students on the engineering graduates of the schools, and the results of the French representative – the Ecole Centrale de Paris – does not show any weakness in the “human skills”,

Carnegie Mellon University Georgia Institute of Techn. MIT 1 very poor

Professors

6 very good

Engineers

With social skills there is a clear difference between the opinions of professors (ratings >5) and engineers (<5). The highest ratings are by professors at ECP, compared to their colleagues who, nevertheless, planned some interesting initiatives KTH, Imperial College and TU Delft. In this connection a number of SP can be

to develop these skills (as seen above). 106

SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

Figure 87: Assessment of communication skills (professors‘ and engineers‘ view)

identified (ECP: SP 5.3.4, “Integration of non-core competences and human sciences”, p.150; Imperial College: SP 5.7.3, “Mastery to provide engineers with a more holistic education” p.189; KTH: PVP (2), “Integration of lectures, exercises, and teaching of non-core competences”, p.284; TU Delft: PVP (6), “Good integration of non-core competences in Materials Sciences and Chemical Engineering”, p.294). Figure 90: Assessment of social skills (professors‘ and engineers‘ view)

Ecole Centrale Paris

EPF Lausanne

ETH Zuerich

Imperial College London

KTH Stockholm

KTH Stockholm RWTH Aachen

RWTH Aachen TU Delft

TU Delft

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University Georgia Institute of Techn.

Georgia Institute of Techn.

MIT

MIT 1 very poor

6 very good

SURVEYS PROFESSORS, ENGINEERS, MANAGERS

Professors

Engineers

Figure 89: Assessment of leadership skills (professors‘ and engineers‘ view) English language skills are not rated higher by English-speaking universities than others. This is certainly attributable to a different interpretation of English language Ecole Centrale Paris skills (foreign and mother tongue). English language skills are rated highly at uniEPF Lausanne versities such as RWTH Aachen, TU Delft, KTH and ECP. Particularly high ratings Zuerich are assigned byETH engineers in France and the Netherlands (ECP, TU Delft).

1 very poor

107

Professors

6 very good

Engineers

Department-specific differences: Although the scatter among departmental ratings is relatively low, there are certain differences. For example, nearly all general professional competences are rated

Imperial College London KTH Stockholm

Figure 88: Assessment of English language skills (professors‘ and engineers‘ RWTH Aachen view) TU Delft

Carnegie Mellon University

Ecole Centrale Paris Georgia Institute of Techn. EPF Lausanne MIT ETH Zuerich Imperial College London 1 very poor KTH Stockholm RWTH Aachen

Professors

6 very good

Engineers

TU Delft Carnegie With socialMellon skillsUniversity there is a clear difference between the opinions of professors

(ratings >5) and engineers (<5). The highest ratings are by professors at ECP, Have the French ones been convinced meanwhile of the necessity of any KTH, Imperial College and TU Delft. In this connection a number of SP can be Georgia Institute of Techn.

MIT

identified (ECP: SP 5.3.4, “Integration of non-core competences and human sci1 3 4 5 ences”, p.150; Imperial College: SP 25.7.3, “Mastery to provide engineers with a 6 very poor very good more holistic education” p.189; KTH: PVP (2), “Integration of lectures, exercises, and teaching of non-coreProfessors competences”, p.284; TU Delft: Engineers PVP (6), “Good integration of non-core competences in Materials Sciences and Chemical Engineering”, p.294).

improvement ?

Or are these marks the sign of a “collective repression”, regarding their real Leadership skills ratings differ widely between the Anglo-Saxon and other universi-

weaknesses toward these ties. Engineers and professors MIT,(professors‘ CMU, Georgia Tech andview) Imperial College Figure 90: Assessment of socialatskills andissues. engineers‘

rate their leadership skills between 4 and 5, while ratings at the other European universities are below 4. One exception is ECP, with exceptionally high ratings by Because, asEngineers Claude Maury (2011) “the upward trajectory takes many European comparison. at the two Swiss institutions (ETHZ and EPFL) says, Ecole Centrale Paris

EPF Lausanne

on the other hand assess their leadership skills with very low ratings of 2.7 resp. ETH Zuerich 2.8.

dimensions which were left behind at the beginning : the ability to coordinate teams Imperial College London KTH Stockholm

and to drive co-workers, the ability to manage resources, the easiness in the RWTH Aachen TU Delft

Carnegie Mellon University

relationship with clients and, more widely, with the negotiation. These skills (…) may Georgia Institute of Techn.

MIT

also be considered as requirements difficult to reach. And the young engineer may 1 very poor

Professors

6 very good

Engineers

be tempted by the dream of an all-life long technical work, without having to manage Department-specific differences: people”.

Although the scatter among departmental ratings is relatively low, there are certain differences. For example, nearly all general professional competences are rated

3.6.3 French Engineers’ Schools and the human sciences However, French Engineer’s Schools are sensitive to the “general culture”, and especially to the human and social sciences. As Hervé Biaussier, director of Centrale Paris, one of the most prestigious French “Grandes Ecoles”, testifies (Liaisons Sociales magazine, 2011), “human and social 62

sciences represent around 10% of the educational hours, as much as mathematics. We treat of questions such as teamwork, self-knowledge, company functioning knowledge, cultural openness” And the SPINE study (Bodmer and al., 2002) indeed noticed some years before, among the good practices of engineering schools, four for the “Ecole Centrale”, one of which is the “integration of non-core competences and human sciences” : -‐

Sound scientific and technical knowledge

-‐

Mastering the complexity of technical systems

-‐

Understanding the basics of the corporate world and the engineering profession

-‐

Development of initiative and innovation

-‐

Personal development and cultural learning

-‐

Communication skills (written, oral, and teamwork)

-‐

International knowledge.

The “Ponts et Chaussées” School (another “top school”) presents also on its web site (www.enpc.fr) its “human and social sciences”’ department: “opening to human sciences allows the engineer to better understand the complexity of social relationships, and also to put into perspective in time and space the events, by understanding the other cultures”. And during the IESF’ 2012’ seminar (IESF, 2102), Ambroise Favrie tells that “30% of the engineers’ education programs are dedicated to human sciences. But a very interesting observation about these « human and social sciences » is found the SPINE report (Bodmer and al., 2002) about the barriers encountered : « The main difficulty that still exists is that students are not convinced of the need for social and human sciences when they start at ECP. Their first reaction when presented with the curriculum is that “this is rubbish”. One reason is that the communication of the core competences is very simple (e.g. “know how to communicate”). Students think that they understand, unless they are put in a special situation where they see that they must develop these capabilities. Usually, students change their attitudes as follows: when they arrive, they might even laugh. Then, especially in the second year, they realize that non-core competences help them in their work. Finally, they use them in industry (first during their internship) and know that they really need them. 63

The main barrier was initially cultural. Professors with a scientific background had to be convinced that their students needed additional capabilities in the area of noncore competences and human and social sciences ».

3.6.4 French Engineers’ Schools and social skills : intent or action ? We saw above the “good practices” noticed by the SPINE study (Bodmer and al., 2002) for the French Ecole Centrale, relating some initiatives in “human sciences” and “communication”. But the same study shows, by comparison, some “good practices” of other schools and universities, which are really more oriented toward “social skills”, team working and collaboration. Let us quote, for example : -‐

Carnegie Mellon University : cross-disciplinary approach and team projects ;

-‐

Imperial College London (already mentioned above) : integration of project and teamwork into curriculum ;

-‐

Kungl Tekniska Högskolan Stockholm : integration of lectures, exercises, and teaching of non-core competences ; High level of interdisciplinarity

-‐

Rheinisch - Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen : high number of interdisciplinary activities and research areas 208

Beside that « non-core » courses and, for some of the « Grandes Ecoles », human experiences dedicated to « social awareness », are the French Engineers’ school away from the field of « social skills’ development » ? Some of the French “Grandes Ecoles” seem to be aware of their “elitist” recruitment, and, for years, are very attached to the need of develop the “social awareness” of their students. The most prestigious school, Polytechnique, seems also very proud of this time : the “human training period”. During eight months, the student are experiencing a professional time in a “citizen way” : in the armies, for most of them, or in civilian organizations (police, education, NGOs…)

This period is intended to « awake and develop the polytechnician students’ relationships and human skills, which are essential to their future engineers’ and managers’ responsibilities ». (www.polytechnique.edu) Not judging the interest of this human experience, it may be possible to think that the students may consider these months, not as a “real life” (the life they will have), but an “extra-ordinary” experience. Will therefore this experience be useful to their “collaborative” awareness ? “Ponts et Chaussées” engineers’ education includes projects (individual and collective) and on the field (in research laboratories and in companies). Telecom Paris Tech, another Parisian « Grande Ecole », propose a double action for developing the « human skills ». (http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/enseignement/) The first is the « culture générale » (general education), with 15 hours per year. The second one, voluntarily distinguished from the former, is the « human education ». Its purpose is to develop the personal communication skills in a professional context, to give « comprehension marks » of the working situations and foster the reflection on experience, and to go along with the students in their professional project’s definition… In the thematic of these courses (15 hours per year) :

communication,

cooperation,

leadership,

creativity,

and

professional

orientation. But the most interesting information in that programs are the modes of evaluation for the students : « the active presence to these courses is mandatory – and good enough (…) The grade is 15/20 for an active presence without delay ».

3.6.5 Double diplomas : opening or double specialization ? In a country where the initial education is considered as very important (even at the end of your professional life, your professional biography always begins with the school you were initially graduated from…), another initiative is to be considered, in the field of opening engineering students to other professional cultures : the « double educations ». For some years indeed, French « Grandes Ecoles » are organizing « double education programs » with management schools. For example, there are currently a 65

HEC/Polytechnique and a HEC/Supaero programs (HEC magazine, 2012). As Gilbert Font, training and managerial development at Safran Group explains in the article : « at some level of commercial responsibilities, the technical knowledge is essential, and vice versa ». And Bernard Ramanantsoa explains the difference of these « double educations » and the MBAs and masters : « those who want to develop a professional education after their engineering school will choose a MBA. The masters attract the engineers looking for a managerial specialisation in a specific domain, finance or entrepreneurship, for example. The double diploma is made for a third type of population, which seeks a general and complete education in management, before going on the professional life. » But apart of the diploma ? According to Kaisergruber (2012), France is the country where diplomas are more important for the access to the professional positions. A report shared by Barsoux and Lawrence (Barsoux and Lawrence, 1997 ; Lawrence and Edwards, 2000), some years before and apparently still actual…

3.6.6 Apprenticeship Disregarded for a long time by the educational institutions and reserved to « lower technicians », on the difference of the German system, for example, the apprenticeship is now developing in France, and also in engineering education. The apprenticeship, opening the student to the professional life is, for me, a real lever for developing the professional skills – and among them, the collaborative skills. In 2011, 12% of the 31.000 engineering graduates per year were apprentices. In the next years, they will represent 15% of the total (IESF-CGE-CTI, 2012). Even Daniele Kaisergruber (Kaisergruber, 2012), in her harsh criticism of the French educational system, recognizes that this change begins to be effective (but only on these high level studies, and unfortunately not on the lower ones). But as the title of the conference dedicated by IESF in 2012 tells « Engineer through apprenticeship : an UFO in the engineers’ world ? », it opens many interrogations Some reactions toward these novelties are « technical » (administration and rules, financial plans…), but there is also question of « feelings » (graduates which are eager to « protect the brand » of their school)… 66

As Julien Roitman, president of IESF, remembers, 94 of the 202 French schools, members of the « Grandes Ecoles Conference » organize apprenticeship education. That represents 47% of the total : Total

47%

Engineering schools

42%

Management schools

79%

Other schools

15%

But when observing the particulars, one may see that only one engineering school, with more than 10 sites in France and 9 apprenticeships programs, represents by itself 86% of the apprentice students. More than that, according to the IESF seminar, « the apprenticeship is dedicated to young people with a different kind of intelligence, less conceptual and more practical that their colleagues issued from classical channels. This kind of intelligence is a wealth for companies and it allows graduates through apprenticeship to take with talent and competence engineers positions at every level ». This evaluation is probably fundamentally different of the one that could have a German representative of an engineering educational organization. Indeed, as Claude Maury (Maury, 2012) remembers, « a strength of the German system (and one of the French weaknesses) is that someone may begin with an education of professional worker (Facharbeiter) and access to an engineer’s diploma. That may hinder the emergence of a kind of technician aristocracy ».

3.6.7 Other good practices and educational innovations ? As we have seen in the literature, the most numerous studies are made in the educational sector. And as we saw above, it is the same in France, with less more examples. We will conclude this “French approach” with two last examples, also issued from the educational world. The first is found in the international literature (Hazelton and al., 2009), but dedicated to a French engineering school – the IIWE of Sceaux (near Paris).

The International Institute of Women in Engineering was created by the EPF (Female Polytechnician School) to promote women in engineering, as the number of male students increased in this school. The “good practice” illustrated in the study was original – at least at the time of the research – : the international short course was made of short lectures, breakout discussion sessions, site and industrial visits, apparently to complete the initial education. But if the program was accessible through Internet in 2012, it is now redirected to an Australian link (University of technology, Sydney), without content. And the last IIWE program available on the former EPF site is from 2006… Claude Maury also pointed out the example of ARTEM, in Nancy, during our interview : a shared educational project between the ICN Business School, the Mines’ School of Nancy and the Arts’ School (www.artem-nancy.fr). 20 workshops with a total of 3.000 hours of teaching courses are co-organized by the three schools ; more than 400 speakers intervene on different themes, before mixed students ; and more than 80 transversal projects, with multi-disciplinary teams of students, are supervised by teachers of the three schools. After more than ten years of functioning (it was created in 2000), this could be an interesting case to study. But it will for sure benefit from a special visibility when the architectural project, which will allow all the schools to be installed in the same place, will be finished, in two or three years from now. Another interesting recommendation is made by the AERES study (AERES, 2010) : one way of developing social skills is the education through associative life : « very developed in the American universities and in the Schools (French ones also). It covers cultural, artistic, sport, humanitarian and entrepreneurial activities. And as Nicolas Movio (BNEI) said during the IESF conference (IESF, 2012), dedicated to the “future engineers”, “63% of the engineering students are active in the associative life”. This idea is not developed, by him or by other speakers, but it seems like a powerful indicator in our quest for “social skills” and especially for “collaborative skills”.

3.7

The French context : a difficult environment for collaborative studies

The scarcity of the French literature on collaborative skills and stakes is, from my point of view, due to a specific « cultural context ».

3.7.1 The French mistrust As demonstrated by Algan and Cahuc (2007), French people are more suspicious than citizens from other developed countries. To the question « is it possible to trust the others », France held the 24th rank of the 26 of the OECD, only above Portugal and Turkey. And in a similar study on 82 countries, its rank was 58th, above less poor countries, or some out of armed conflicts. But for the authors, this result is not an historical one, well established in the « culture ». It is only a trend observed since WWII and generated, for them, by etatism and corporatism. « Corporatism », a word well used when people speak about the power conflicts at the head of the French institutions, or national companies (still held or not by the state), as the nomination of Henri Proglio at the head of EDF (French electricity Group), a company (or an institution) long-time held by the « Grands Corps »’ engineers, generated an at least mediatic turmoil… : « EDF was build by a leading team dominated by Polytechnicians out of the « Ponts » (a prestigious civil engineering school, which programs may be followed ab initio or, more prestigiously, after graduating Polytechnique). One exception : the CEO and President of the 70 and 80 years, Marcel Boiteux, who was not an engineer but « normalien » (graduated from the « Ecole Normale Superieure », an also prestigious « Grande Ecole »). His personal qualities and the importance of economical skills at EDF explain that exception » (Beltran, 2009). Even if Beltran forgot Edmond Alphandery, former CEO, but former Ministry of Finances, Industry and Economy, the title of his article « Proglio, a salesman at the Polytechnicians » illustrates well the mistrusts and conflicts in the French companies.

3.7.2 The French elitism The books of Barsoux and Lawrence (Barsoux and Lawrence, 1997 ; Lawrence and Edwards, 2000) were a real trial against French habits and culture, in education and professional life. The sentences of the first book, issued from the well done 69

documentation, were harsh : « Education, les jeux sont faits », or « Careers, la force du destin »… Their judgement was partly based on the Grandes Ecoles influence, and especially the engineering ones (the « top schools » promoted by the IESF research centre). But for Barsoux and Lawrence, the engineers are not guilty, even if « mathematics is the central feature of the French selection methods in education ». For them, the French conservatism comes more from the institutions, because most of the « Grandes Ecoles » are controlled by a ministry or by economical institutions (Chambers of Commerce). These institutional « walls » endure after years, long after the initial education, and for several reasons : -‐

teams involving senior executives and members of the political and administrative elite, issued from the same schools, are very efficient, while in a company, management teams are not natural, and have to be patiently build, across functions, level teams… (Barsoux and Lawrence, 1997)

-‐

the graduates from public administration schools make their « pantouflage » (they pass to the private sector), and facilitate the phenomenon quoted above (Lawrence and Edwards, 2000) ;

-‐

the « prepas » (the two years before « Grandes Ecoles » exams) : « a Frenchman does not spend two years at the « prépa » studying seventy hours a week to end up working with ordinary people ». (Lawrence and Edwards, 2000) ;

-‐

an efficient way for finding a job, for a graduate of the « Grandes Ecoles », is to solicit the Alumni network (26% of the « Mines » graduates have found their first job like that (Mines-Paris Tech, 2011)

Barsoux and Lawrence believe also that the biggest obstacle to teamwork is the « reliance

formal

authority together

with

strain

towards

defensive

individualism ». While Lawrence and Edwards insist also on the special place of the State and the public sector. This point of view, from a decade, is still confirmed by a recent study (European Social Survey), used to identify the French specificities in Europe. According to these results (Boy and al., 2010), the two French exceptions are : -‐

the affection for « public service » (with state employees) 70

-‐

the proximity to the values of egalitarism and universalism.

The two last points are some sources of reflection for me : egalitarism in the abovedescribed elitist system ? And with the « universalism », it is sometimes difficult to accept the others’ differences, and therefore to work with them… Despite its concrete examples, Barsoux and Lawrence’s critical book has in the present France two weaknesses : -‐

it was written for 15 years, and « things have changed »…

-‐

it was written from abroad, and especially from the Anglo-Saxon world (and in English)

D’Iribarne (2006), « X-Mines » engineer, cannot be charged with these accusations. But he is also very harsh toward the « Grandes Ecoles », which are accessed after a « judgement of God » : « the most important is not the knowledge given, but the ranking of the exam ». After this exam, « the degree of educational nobility is established for life ». And he remembers the purpose of the first two « Grandes Ecoles » (Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Normale Superieure), created just after the French Revolution. These schools were intended to give « new elites » to the Nation, with the principle that everyone comes to life with many or less talents. Therefore, the main goal is to select these talents. More than two centuries after their creation, d’Iribarne analysis, as well as Barsoux and Lawrence above, or Veltz below, seems to show that little has changed… And Pierre Veltz is in the same situation as d’Iribarne (Veltz, 2007) : « X-Ponts » engineer, former director of the Ponts et Chaussées’ Grande Ecole and of « Paris Tech » (gathering of the Parisian « Grandes Ecoles »), and now in charge of the major project of « Paris-Saclay ». His judgement on the « Grandes Ecoles » is not more tender than the Barsoux and Lawrence’s, and is focused on the « elites »’ schools, and not on the « nonParisian » schools, which have taken an advance regarding the « genetic difficulties » of the French engineering education. The selection system is accused : after years of « micro rankings » and have been selected as an elite, why should I humble to meet non-mathematicians ? 71

And for Veltz, the « opening » to the human sciences is not enough : the scientific and technological education and the human sciences have to be integrated, or at least to closely collaborate. At the end of this glance on the « elitist » engineers, it is nevertheless important to look at the nature of the people concerned by these question. Indeed, according to the IESF annual study on engineers (Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, 2012), many of the « top engineers » (graduated from the « A group » Engineering Schools) do not choose an engineerial job. For example, if the consulting and finance sectors attract only 4 and 1.7 % of the « non-A group » graduates, 8.4 and 10.3 of the « elite » are going there. When looking at collaborative practices of engineers, but most of the time in « real engineering contexts », it is a factor that has to be taken seriously. And as described above, the « big companies » (more than 2000 employees) recruit more the A-group graduates than the others… It is another supportive assertion for Pierre Veltz and his affirmation about the advance of the « non-Parisian » schools. May I resume the question of French engineers like that, when they are still students : “are they engineering students (students in engineering), or studying Engineers ?”. For “non-A group”, the first assertion may be adequate. For the “A-group”, it may be the second one.

3.7.3 The « logic of honour » and other “cultural” approaches According to Hosftede and al. (2010), a great “hierarchical distance” and a highly individualistic stance characterize, among other themes, the French “culture”. They describe that characteristic, after quoting Crozier and d’Iribarne, as a “stratified form of individualism”. This description gives a good evaluation of the difficulties of collaborative issues in France… Another result is the high level of reluctance toward uncertainty, in France. And for him, this specificity is linked with a high attachment to membership. With this kind of “closed” view, one may easily imagine that it is more difficult to work with the others.

It is also interesting to see, in a table using the “hierarchical distance” and the “uncertainty control”, France is located in a group with countries like Bulgaria, Turkey, Peru, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Serbia, Poland, Salvador, Mexico…,described by the authors as “Pyramid” (the three other sectors are “machine”, “family” and “market”). As they also remember, the “Pyramid” model may be described by the definition of authority by Henri Fayol, a French engineer, who had (and still has ?) a great influence on French organizations : “One has to make out, in a leader (un chef), the statutory authority which comes from the function, and the personal authority, made of intelligence, knowledge, experience, moral value, leadership gift, rendered services,… In order to make a good leader (chef), the personal authority is the natural complement of the statutory authority” (in Administration industrielle et générale, 1916). D’Iribarne (1989, 2006) is not supporting Hofstede’s analysis (Hofstede wrote his book “Cultures and organizations, software of the mind” in 1991, two years after d’Iribarne’s “La logique de l’honneur” (logic of honour), and his bestseller “Culture’s consequences in 2001”), but he is also exploring the field of “cultural specificities”. According to him, the French “logic of honour” is a widely adopted strategy in French companies, and describes the strong attachment of French workers to be convinced (consciously or unconsciously ?) that they “help” their colleagues. They do not do their job because they “have to”, but because it is their “professional honour” to do it. With this approach, one can identify a variable to deal with, when considering team working and collaboration. People do not work together because they are in the same team, or company; they work together only when they want to… Regarding the collaborative issues, d’Iribarne (2006) propose a specific insight with the comparison of French and American considerations. According to him, the importance given to the collaborative work by the Americans, and the lack of importance given, at least until now, by French, may be motivated by a “cultural” difference. According to Michèle Lamont (« Money, Moral, Manners. The culture of the French and the American Upper Middle Class », 1992.), quoted by d’Iribarne, French are attached to a kind “nobility”, in an “aristocratic” version (management), or “clerical” one (education, expertise). The Americans, on the contrary, are very concerned by

resolving problems by group interactions, and the roots of these differences may be deep and ancient, anchored in “morale” and, maybe, religion. If we follow them, if the French are always the “nobles” of another, how is it possible to collaborate with the others without losing caste… And Segal’s book (Segal, 2009), is a practical observation of these kinds of obstacles on the French road toward collaboration (even if he is considering the “cooperation”, which is, for me, a first step before reaching collaboration)… Crozier analysis is also a reference for Segal, even 50 years after the book, for describing the situation he observes. Sign of the French conservatism ? And Segal observes that the transversal relationships are challenged as are also challenged the ranking hierarchies. In the French companies, the question of power and authority is central : “to know “who has authority on who” is often most occupying the minds than to know “who does what”… If we connect this question of changing hierarchies, which is disrupting the organizations, with the former evoked of the challenge of engineers’ predominance by commercial functions, one hypothesis appears. As everyone feeling threatened, French engineers may develop, consciously or unconsciously, some mechanism of defence, which could result in reluctance toward collaboration. Threatened directly by the shift of power from technical to commercial functions, and threatened indirectly by the hierarchical changes in all organization (especially

with

the

“matrixes”),

engineers

could

choose,

consciously

unconsciously, to stay among themselves, and not to go into situations where they would be individually challenged. If this hypothesis may be attractive, one point may nevertheless be considered. These two evolutions are not only French : engineers experienced those everywhere, because of the globalization, and the spread of international organizational habits. And engineers outside France seriously consider the collaborative stakes.

3.7.4 The scientist dream ? French engineers have to deal with two factors : they are French, and engineers… In his military time, General de Gaulle regretted the “Cartesian” French spirit failing, « and especially its strong taste for abstraction and systems, for its cult for absolute and categorical » (« Le fil de l’épée » - the edge of the sword, quoted by Desportes, 2011). And for d’Iribane (2006), « in the France of the ‘Lumières’, there is nothing more noble than the Reason, imagined as an access to universal truths ». And regarding the French view on engineers, let us quote two examples. As Anne Lauvergeon (former AREVA President) claimed, « engineers and scientist has to bear the rationality for the world »… (IESF, 2012). And as one executive I encountered for interviews told me “the engineer’s failing is to put everything into equations”. The difficulties encountered by the « soft sciences » (human and social sciences, social skills,…) in France may be explained by an ancient tradition, and culture, claimed by some, observed by the others : the « rationality » domination, or the ascent of the « hard sciences » over the « soft » ones. And therefore, the lack of consideration of engineers for other disciplines, and in particular, the social and human sciences. The difference – and the hierarchy – between the « hard » and « soft sciences » is a complex question. As Andler demonstrates (Andler and al. 2002), natural and human sciences are compared, opposed, associated by many ways, and by many authors, since the beginning of the philosophy. Therefore, it is not possible to postulate « objectively », if these sciences are similar, or if one is superior to the other. And as he shows, the human sciences are not more modest than the natural one, when the subject is to predict the evolution of a system : « the place of the prediction in the natural sciences are held in the human sciences by the social engineering (in the positivist version, in Comte for example) or by the delivery of the « truth » of a people, a culture, a state or an idea (in the historicist doctrines) ».

If we follow that demonstration, hard sciences are therefore as much « efficient » than social ones (what could interest engineers). For Minguet (2001), engineers may consider the social sciences as « legitimate », despite their different way of looking at the problems : understanding, on one hand, and decide, on the other hand. Beside these methodological differences, there are three other beliefs that put boundaries between engineering students and the human and social sciences : -‐

the belief in seriousness : « hard sciences » courses vs. « light » courses (for some years, « humanities » were considered like the bourgeois « piano courses for young ladies »…

-‐

the belief in event : why losing time in social sciences courses when mediatic programs already propose their analysis ?

-‐

the belief in scientism : for Minguet, social sciences adopted a « hard way » (like Durkheim did), in order to be accepted by – or to challenge ? – the exact and experimental sciences. With this classical approach, they fail in their search for legitimacy.

Despite these three beliefs, Minguet asserts that engineering students also adopt an ambiguous attitude toward these sciences : they respect them for their primacy given to the human, but fear the risk of engagement when they have to deal with. As students say, they desire to experiment by themselves, to verify to understand, to practice to convince themselves. If Minguet is right, this has to change the ways the social sciences are often taught : theoretically. And he pleads himself for choose for education « learning in action » programs. Kaisergruber (2012) is also convinced that the belief in scientism is an obstacle for the acceptance of human and social sciences by engineers. She finds some roots to what she call « the abstraction’s cult » in Durkheim, which has a great importance in the classical French education (he is one of the rare author to be told in the general session dedicated to social sciences). For her, there is a « insoluble opposition » between the « general » and the « professional », because the latter, which « seeks a profession and a place in the economy » is « less noble » than the former, even if it « leads sometimes to dead-ends ». And this opposition was already there before 76

because Jesuitic education based on the abstract and the French universalism, rejected the concrete career prospect and the non-strictly intellectual activities, when Luther, Comenius and the German schools did not. The reluctance for « social sciences » can take several forms. I illustrated before the efficiency of « intermediate objects » in the collaborative process between engineers. But, as Vinck (1999) reminds, the classical French sociology issued from Durkheim and others condemn the use of objects in the social practices as a return to « fetishism »… In order to find an intermediate way, it has to be noticed that the Mines School (the rival of the « Ponts et Chaussées » quoted above) proposes to its engineers, between « hard » and « soft » sciences, the « sciences de gestion » (even if « management » is an adequate word to translate « gestion », it does not express the « hard » side of « gestion », which is more related, in France, to financial administration and control). And these « sciences » are clearly distinguished from the social science (described as « interpretative theories of action ») and engineering sciences (« development of tools and instruments, intended to influence action »). A good example of the place of « scientism » in the traditional French « elite » may be found in the conference organized in June 2012 between graduates of the ENA (French high administration school), of the War School (French Armies senior officers), and of HEC. Despite the absence of engineering students (even if many of War School graduates are also engineers), the ways of approaching the theme (« Deciding in uncertainty ») illustrates the predominance of the « hard sciences » (Cahier de la Défense Nationale, 2012). For these leaders, the uncertainty appears as a nightmare. For them, « the complexity of the world obliges to renounce to the dream nurtured by several generations to achieve a society where risk could be at last mastered ». And if it is not possible to avoid this uncertainty, it has to be mastered, tamed, and categorized… In this context, the support of uncertainty acceptance is quite rare.

In this quest, let us quote two authors who are pleading for uncertainty acceptance, instead of searching impossibly for its control : -‐

Robert Branche (Branche, 2010), Polytechnician and graduate from « Ponts et Chaussées » who pleads for uncertainty acceptance ;

-‐

Général Vincent Desportes (Desportes, 2011), former director of the French War School.

For them both, this acceptance of uncertainty is a real lever to allow people to better work together, and especially when they are the most « rational » ones. One last word on the topic of French reluctance to uncertainty, which comes from the complexity of the world. As KPMG consultants’ study shows (KMPG International, 2011), the present complexity due to the French regulations gives them a special ease with complexity, which they fear less than others…

3.7.5 And the drift of French social sciences Another possible reason of the reluctance of the engineers for the social sciences in France is the way they evolved specifically. According to Crozier (2005) : “a general characteristic (of the French sociology) is that the public interested by the social sciences has been patiently colonized by Pierrre Bourdieu and all those who worked with him in a protesting perspective. (…) An ideology of denunciation established herself at the same time. I will summarize it like that. It is repeated than the people do not understand because they are the system’s toys. The sociology unveils the reality but do not give any key to understand it, and moreover to transform it. We came back to the most primary Marxism, even if the reference to Marx and to the revolution has disappeared”. Fortunately, some authors are still working on the human sciences and, for an example, Stoessel’s thesis is a very rich source for approaching these questions in the industrial world. And it is directly connected to our research, because the autonomy is a part of the collaboration’s question : how much am I autonomous in my decision to collaborate with the others ?

His work is interesting in two ways : for the work in itself, and by the quotations he makes, inspired by another philosophy that one denounced by Crozier above. Among the authors opposed to Bourdieu’s influence, he quotes for example Boudon and Crozier. Boudon formalized the « methodological individualism », which is opposed to the « holism » chosen by Bourdieu (who, according to Boudon quoting Jon Elster, “analyses the social processes as the consequences of plots without plotters” (Boudon, 2003)). But Boudon also worked on other concepts, like « reasons » and « rationality », for example and his work is useful for analysing the ways of collaborating (interests, reasons…). And for Crozier, the « actor » is always autonomous in his decision, even with limits. Another author quoted by Stoessel is Norbert Alter (already quoted): one more example that, for French engineers who are interested in social sciences there are other readings than Bourdieu, even in France, if they want to have an alternative. And a lot more of alternatives in social sciences abroad. Also for analysing the collective actions, Erhard Friedberg (Friedberg, 1993, 1997), who worked with Crozier, is another interesting author. Social sciences have therefore to be, if not changed, better known is their diversity, to be accepted by engineers. But when it comes to ideologies, it is also more difficult to evolve. And, inside that global context, as Lemaitre describes (Lemaitre, 2003), even the human education of engineers is, in France, a subject of ideological disputes, and of political interpretations, and suspicions. It is probably therefore a long way to succeed in that “opening”.

4.1

Research approach and hypotheses

An “adaptive” research, with “piecemeal” hypotheses

At the beginning of this research, I did not have any certainty on many aspects of the problem: -‐

Did engineers really have weakness for collaborating with others? Or did I meet teams, which encountered very special contexts, independently from their engineers’ status?

-‐

Did French engineers encounter extra difficulties, or were their weaknesses – or uneasinesses – shared by other engineers, independently from their nationality and/or country?

-‐

If applicable, what kind of insight and, more than insights, of practices could help them more efficiently to develop their collaborative skills?

Nevertheless, I had some intuitions, or kind of beliefs (even if I am, by nature, very reluctant to “simple” explanations). For me, engineers had weaknesses toward collaboration – and especially toward interdisciplinary collaboration: -‐

Their “rational” culture, which could prevent them to accept others’ “rationalities” (which they could consider as “irrational”, and therefore “non-relevant”);

-‐

Near from that point, the opposition between “hard” and “soft” sciences, and especially in France, the predominance of “hard” sciences over the “soft” ones;

-‐

Their rejection of uncertainty (perceived as a “failure” to be rectified, and/or a unacceptable danger, especially in industrial contexts).

My initial hypothesis was that my research would be mainly a classification of all the theoretical and practical responses I will find, about the collaborative issues in engineers’ world, in the literature, and with interviews with senior executives and specialists of this profession. And that could be an interesting contribution to the exploration of this managerial case, and bring some answers and elements of improvement to the companies, which encountered these situations. In my mind, all the cases I met in my professional activity could gain from some theoretical work and from experienced engineers and managers. 80

Therefore I did not begin my research within a very planned process. The interviews opened more fields of reflections than they brought me answers. The managers I met shared with me examples of good practices, expressed some hypothesis or insights. But it was clear that there was no simple or established answer to the question. Some other hypotheses emerged : -‐

More than “cultural” influences (the engineer’s “weaknesses”), there were “organizational” influences to identify (and then explore the “institutional theories”);

-‐

French engineers interested in educational and professional issues admitted that this question of “collaboration” (and especially interdisciplinary collaboration) was a real stake, but they were not confortable with it. Therefore I could maybe use the “social defence” theories in these kinds of contexts. But it could have only be done in the course of “action research”;

-‐

French “operational” engineers, or managers in charge of engineering teams, did not considered these issues with prisms specific to engineers’ communities and minds. And I had to explore the work of specialists, to collect clues about engineers’ “cultural” specificities.

The bibliographic research was also incremental: readings after readings opened new doors, and build, article after article, a view of the works in progress, especially internationally. But the French field was worrying, because very poor. The survey was therefore an attempt to gather some complementary data, even on a small scale. Thanks to the Internet, which allowed me to request some help and contribution from my contacts, and the social network, which also opened new doors, number of respondents gave me another brick for my construction. These three ingredients (interviews, readings, survey) were not gathered successively, but more or less during the same time.

And what was most interesting was to confront these elements, in order to identify some insights, confirmed by these multi-sources experiences: the senior executives and specialists, the academic researchers and authors, and the diversity of the respondents to the survey, who I knew or not. In this context, my research evolved in that way: from a documentary action, to a humble contribution to a very opened field of investigations.

4.2

Before

confronting

experiences

and

ideas

declarative

evaluations:

intermediate hypothesis Even if I realized an analytical work of the survey’s results before finishing the literature’s analysis, I kept in mind the insights, which emerged before from this work. It was not indeed difficult because I am always suspicious about survey, which cannot escape to methodological and/or sample-related bias. New intermediate hypothesis emerged from the interviews and readings. And, with theses hypothesis, I analysed again some of the results, testing new crossings for some questions and/or sub-populations. These intermediate hypothesis were new ones, or some others issued from my experienced, but that I had “suppressed” and which were then reinforced by my readings: -‐

In “engineers’ organizations”, many of collaborative issues are indeed due to problems issued more from organizational influences (bureaucracy, matrixes organizations…) than to engineers’ views and “cultural” specificities;

-‐

The engineers’ high “rationality” may be a weakness for collaborative issues with others. But it could also be a strength into addressing operational collaborative issues because, independently of their “mood”, “things have to be done” – even when it implies to collaborate with others;

-‐

An “elitist” hypothesis was confirmed. Some engineers I met in my professional and personal life, and who had “collaborative” weaknesses, were more subject to the feeling/belief/certainty that they were the “elite” of the company, or the nation. The French Engineering schools’ graduates are selected and trained in an elitist trend and context. And, as an “elite”, some of them do not see any reason to take 82

some consideration to less qualified – if not less intelligent – people, and therefore waste their time – and the company’s one; -‐

There is a link between management and collaborative skills. Because management is a kind of “collaboration” – especially in actual organizations where a “manager” has many “horizontal” relationships to deal with. And that the collaborative issues address some very personal skills – and taste -, which are described as “social skills”, even if they apply to professional contexts, in which they are described as “professional skills”;

-‐

Might they be weaknesses, or at “normal level”, the collaborative skills of French engineers could be developed, in order to contribute to a better collective performance. And this development could benefit from educational and training actions. The educational could be inspired of international “good practices”, and the training ones also, but reinforced in the professional evolution by sharing the fact that “we wait too long to train our leaders” (Zenger, 2012), and by correcting it;

-‐

And these actions could be intended in many ways, including the development of “soft issues” (sensitive approaches, personal knowledge, emotional intelligence education, …).

5 5.1

The survey: « Collaboration in companies and organizations » Some words about the survey

This questionnaire was sent by electronic way to my direct professional contacts, which could relay it to their own contacts. He was also announced on several groups on the LinkedIn network. He was putted on line between October 22nd and November 18th, 2012. Its questions were established starting from the tracks identified along more than ten years of professional practice in the council in management, where one often treats challenges “to better work together”, but also thanks to qualitative individual talks carried out within the framework of this research (see appendix 1). Before being diffused widely, the questionnaire had been tested near a reduced sample (eight people). Their answers and remarks made it possible to validate it and to modify certain questions of them. It was put on line on the surveymonkey.com website. Two versions were available: one in French and the other in English. The questionnaire’s details are in appendix 2.

5.2

Some words about the sample having answered

226 people answered the questionnaire: 191 in the French version, 35 in the English version. 218 answered the totality of the questionnaire. 8 stopped with the n°8 question. 67% are men, 33% are women.

5.2.1 Their age 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 > 70

8% 21% 40% 22% 5% 0%

5.2.2 Their geographic origin My geographical origins (if applicable) Where I first studied Where I studied also France 81% France 17% Other Northern Europe 7% Other Northern Europe 6% Other Southern Europe 1% Other Southern Europe 2% Other Central Europe 2% Other Central Europe 3% Northern America 3% Northern America 8% South America 0% South America 0% North Africa 0% North Africa 0% Other Africa 0% Other Africa 0% Asia 0% Asia 1%

Where I work today France Other Northern Europe Other Southern Europe Other Central Europe Northern America South America North Africa Other Africa Asia

77% 7% 0% 0% 2% 1% 1% 1% 1%

We do not indicate here the detail of the “other areas” because of the weakness of the sample, lower than 1% in the three columns (nevertheless not no one for Russia and Oceania, and thus thank you with those who answered)

5.2.3 Their job

I work in the Private sector Public sector (government, local authorities) Other (public companies, NGOs…)

66% 12% 18%

The size of my company/organization 1 to 9 12% 10 to 49 11% 50 to 199 8% 200 to 499 5% 500 to 1999 15% over 2000 45%

My current job is General Management Other fonctions Marketing, Sales Human Resources Administration Studies, research, projects IT and telecoms Communication and creation Industrial services (sourcing, supply chain, methods,…) Tertiary sector (bank, insurance, real estate, transportation…) Finances, Accounting Health, social, cultural, education Production, manufacturing

23% 14% 11% 11% 8% 8% 5% 5% 4% 4% 2% 1% 1%

69% of them are in charge of a team (team of management or project team). And the organizations by project are the day-to-day basis of close half of them (46%).

I work more within a direction or management team 49% a project team 19% both 27%

5.2.4 Their education My education (school, university) : If applicable, my other academic and professional My main academic education education Business and management 34% Business and management 22% Engineers 21% Engineers 2% Other science studies 7% Other science studies 1% Law and Politics 17% Law and Politics 4% Human and social sciences 15% Human and social sciences 11% Arts, applied Arts 2% Arts, applied Arts 0%

According to IESF (Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France, 2012), 39% of the French engineers have another diploma: -‐

7,8%: another engineering diploma

-‐

10,3: management and business

-‐

17,5%: other sciences

-‐

4%: specialized master

-‐

7,6%: thesis

Among the engineers of our study, 48% have another diploma (33% business and management, 8% other engineering, 2% law and politics, 4% human and social sciences). If we focus on “French engineers” (85% in our sample - not having their nationality, we consider engineers who had their main education in France…), 43% have another diploma (28% business and management, 10% other engineering, 3% law and politics, 3% human and social sciences).

5.3

Data analysis

The analysis of the results was empirical. Observing the results by main categories, we then crossed the criteria to refine these observations by “subpopulations”. The

limit of this analysis by “social groups” was the size of the resulting sample: with less than ten people, it seemed necessary to be very careful for the analysis. I realized that it could to be useful, to be able to compare more easily this diversity of “sub-groups”, to build simple indexes. Some more “technical” details may be found in appendix 3. 5.3.1 Simple indexes To compare the “collaborative skills”, I used three indexes: importance (question 2), posture (question 3) and easiness (question 4). Other indexes were calculated on the “never/rarely/often/very often” distribution (7, 8 and 13), and for qualitative assessments (questions 9 to 12). The positive value indicates an “agreement” on the motive (often and very often while a negative value is a sign of “disagreement” (rarely / never) And for question 5, an “innate/acquire” index indicates if respondents think that collaboration comes more from “personal disposition” or are “skills which may be acquired”. All these indexes allowed a fast comparison of the results by subpopulations, in particular by identifying the extreme points – tops and low -.

5.3.2 A “collaborative mark” I created also a “collaborative mark” based on the answers related to the reasons to collaborate, and those not to collaborate. The average collaborative note is to 0.65.

5.3.3

“Hell is other people” index

Lastly, since collaboration is always with double direction, I sought to evaluate propensity to seek at the others the difficulties of collaboration, and called this index “hell is other people” (as told Jean-Paul Sartre). The mean of index “hell is other people” is to 0.35. It may be noticed that here that there is no individual correlation between the collaborative notes and the indices “of hell”: one can have good reasons for

collaborating and to see much brakes at the others, it is neither dependent nor opposite.

5.3.4 An “interactional index” I created an “interactional index” based on the number and the quality of the interactions of the guarantor with other services: this index was created starting from the questions carrying about “I work rather with” (daily and occasionally). The vocation of this index was to identify, if necessary, of the types of trades more or less “collaborative”, and the possible link between this “interactivity” and “collaborative qualities”. Without surprise, it will be noticed that the highest interactional index corresponds to the populations of head office (in frequent contact with many recipients). The analyses of correlation between this index and other answers also bring interesting lightings, which we will see further.

5.3.5 Correlations to validate the answers We also carried out correlations’ analysis for the series of individual answers, which makes it possible to complement the comparisons by “sub-groups” with finer comparisons. In absolute value, the average correlation between the individual answers is 0.07. The maximum correlation is 0.47 (5 firsts are 0.47, 0.45, 0.44, 0.43, 0.40; the 25 following ones go from 0.37 to 0.24). Among the five first, there is one between where the respondents made their principal studies, and that where they work today (0.40) – what is not surprising. Two relate to the collaborative evaluations of “quality”, and the two others to the reasons of “non-collaboration”. Thus are the maximum correlations interesting: when the correlation is important, there is a high probability of general parallels between the two series of answers.

5.4

Some general considerations

The global results have been analysed in a separate study. We focus here on engineers’ results. Nevertheless, some general results about collaboration made us explore these particular results in the Engineers’ population. We choose three particular variables: -‐

The management

-‐

The general management

-‐

The “upper studies” (and distinguished the “engineerial” and the other ones.

5.4.1 Management and collaborative skills From intent to action...

General Managers (team or project) Non managers Project team Management and Project Team Management team

Skill ?

Importance

Posture

Easiness

Internal > External

1,73 1,77 1,62 1,70 1,65 1,77

1,22 1,34 0,89 1,21 1,22 1,24

0,71 0,76 0,57 0,86 0,58 0,69

0,48 0,70 -0,10 0,23 0,37 0,62

Collaborat. mark

The hell...

Interactional index

0,65 0,69 0,57 0,66 0,61 0,69

0,35 0,33 0,40 0,47 0,35 0,35

1,42 1,47 1,29 1,35 1,54 1,49

The managerial practice is apparently an important criterion for collaboration. Indeed, managers present better “collaborative marks”, and seem to encounter fewer difficulties than non-managers. But the question of the cause and the consequence may be legitimately asked: does an individual have managerial responsibilities because of its collaborative skills, or did managerial functions develop these skills? The answer is probably both. In any case, this result has a double consequence: -‐

Collaborative skills are essential to managers, and these must be taken into account in the selection of candidates for a management position;

-‐

And for the same reason, this skill may be developed, in particular for the managers in charge.

When it is about “management”, three cases arise: the management of a team, that of a project, and the mixed situation. The comparison of these three situations is interesting.

If the members of projects teams affirm that they practise collaboration easily, the managers of team are more reluctant in particular when they also take part in a project team. This result is not a surprise, since collaborative competence is, intuitively, important for a project manager. However, two results draw the attention: -‐

The members of projects teams very strongly identify as obstacles to collaboration, the different objectives and the lack of desire. They thus assume to be particularly qualified. But on the other hand, they seem to encounter two frequent difficulties in “non-hierarchical” management, characteristic of the project mode: to involve the others into the project, in particular when one cannot force them. However, if the project mode were business of simple control of the project and hierarchical injunction, that would be known…

-‐

People engaged in a project team obtain a very weak interactional index (weaker than those which are part of a management team and even weaker than those taking part at the same time in a team of management and a project team). Together, these indexes may indicate that the true collaborative lever is the management of a team, while the participants in the projects teams are often little collaborative – contrary to what could appear natural.

An explanation is due to the composition of this sample: less than half of the people belonging to a project team are in situation of management. If one isolates the managers from this population, one obtains much better collaborative notes. Nevertheless, these managers identify more than the others the difficulties coming rom the other. If they state to be turned towards collaboration and rather at ease to practice it, it is not certain that in fine, their collaborative practice is optimal. Then, for managers as for the participants in projects teams, project management by the mobilization of the stakeholders, without hierarchical injunction, seems to be a true axis of development. Lastly, when one studies the people taking part at the same time in a team of management and a project team, it is before all the time, which is opposed to the collaborative practices.

Apparently pragmatic, they are motivated to collaborate with the others and do not seek the difficulties from the others. But, because of their multiple interactions (confirmed by their interactional index), they miss time, and mainly identify this difficulty, for them as for the others.

5.4.2 The “Executives” and the “Elite” Because French engineers often have high positions in companies and organizations, it was interesting to look after the results of “high level managers”, might they be engineers or not. We took two variables: the actual position (general management), and the MBA education is often a way to high positions – or an external sign of a trend, or sometimes only desire –. From intent to action...

General General management Administration Human Resources Studies and projects Marketing and Sales IT, telecoms Communication Creation Services to production Tertiary activities

Skill ?

Importance

Posture

Easiness

Internal > External

1,73 1,75 1,61 1,83 1,82 1,88 1,83 1,55 1,88 1,50

1,22 1,37 1,06 1,42 0,82 1,32 1,33 0,91 1,50 1,00

0,71 0,90 0,28 0,54 0,82 0,72 0,33 0,91 0,75 0,75

0,48 0,31 -0,11 0,50 -0,47 1,20 1,00 0,73 1,00 1,25

From intent to action...

Total General management Managers (team or projects) MBAs

Collaborat. mark

The hell...

Interactional index

0,65 0,67 0,67 0,63 0,53 0,64 0,58 0,67 0,88 0,59

0,35 0,32 0,31 0,35 0,30 0,43 0,42 0,21 0,42 0,58

1,42 1,50 1,36 1,44 1,62 1,54 1,45 1,51 1,60 1,40

Skill ?

Importance

Posture

Easiness

Internal > External

1,73 1,75 1,77 1,73

1,22 1,37 1,34 1,43

0,71 0,90 0,76 0,67

0,48 0,31 0,70 0,98

Collaborat. mark

The hell...

Interactional index

1,42 1,50 1,47 1,61

0,65 0,67 0,69 0,57

0,35 0,32 0,33 0,36

I collaborate to

Total General management Managers (team or projects) MBAs

Get the buyin of my ideas

Make my projects succeed

Broaden my insights and skills

0,54 0,78 0,63 0,53

1,42 1,45 1,47 1,24

1,06 1,12 1,07 1,02

Give a good Contribute to image / a good develop my atmosphere network

-0,10 -0,18 -0,09 -0,37

0,95 0,84 0,88 0,65

Match the imposed rules

-0,78 -1,02 -0,85 -0,94

I do not collaborate because

Total General management Managers (team or projects) MBAs

It's a waste of time

Others don't understand

Uncertainty

I know what to do

No great interest

I do not want to reveal my plans

-0,81 -0,98 -0,87 -0,78

-0,81 -0,78 -0,92 -0,88

-0,91 -1,08 -0,99 -0,88

-0,13 -0,41 -0,22 -0,18

-0,99 -0,78 -1,01 -0,94

-1,12 -1,06 -1,12 -1,06

Others do not collaborate because Different goals and objectives

Total General management Managers (team or projects) MBAs

0,75 0,47 0,74 0,90

Complex Lack of time organization

0,67 0,41 0,75 0,73

0,35 0,24 0,30 0,24

Lack of will

Different habits

Interpersona l conflicts

-0,01 0,12 0,00 -0,04

0,26 0,35 0,17 0,18

0,11 0,31 0,05 0,12

The quality of collaboration in Compared to My Compared to My team others others company 1,10 0,88 0,42 0,40 1,35 1,10 0,65 0,67 1,18 0,96 0,43 0,38 1,08 0,94 0,53 0,41

People in general management’s position seem to consider that: -‐

They are quite comfortable with collaborative issues;

-‐

these are more “personal” dispositions than “acquired” skills;

-‐

They collaborate for “rational” reasons (projects) but also “knowledge” ones (for personal skills but also for others’ view – they disagree with the “I know what to do” proposal).

-‐

And regarding external obstacles, they are relatively (to others respondents, not to other responses) less sensitive to organizational “reasons” (different goals, complex organization…) than to personal ones. May be because they are in charge of objectives’ coherence and of organizations’ efficiency?

-‐

And they seem to be quite satisfied of the quality of collaboration within their team as in their company. For the same reason than above? Or are they less critical on a well-commented issue, sometimes independently than the real situation.

People with a secondary business/management education (designated by “MBAs”): -‐

Declare more to be turned toward the others, but do not seem more comfortable with these stakes. Even if they declare that collaboration is a skill, which may be acquired (but apparently not developed during their MBA…)

-‐

But their collaborative mark is high. Are they more cautious in the evaluation of their skills than they are in their real practices?

-‐

They are more critical about organizational obstacles than others. It may be an effect of their education, which developed at least their sensitiveness if not their expertise to that kind of issues.

5.4.3 The French Factor Our research is focused on French engineers, even if I have broaden the scope of it, at least regarding the literature, to make comparisons and also because there was only a few material regarding the French specificity. Therefore is it interesting to identify, if there is one, the nature of the “French factor”, to consider this influence on French engineers. From intent to action...

General "Pure" French French with experience out of France Initial education Europe out of France Not working in France

Skill ?

Importance

Posture

Easiness

Internal > External

1,73 1,70 1,79 1,77 1,69

1,22 1,23 1,29 1,14 1,23

0,71 0,66 0,93 0,77 0,57

0,48 0,63 0,05 0,82 -0,06

Collaborat. mark

The hell...

Interactional index

0,65 0,64 0,65 0,76 0,68

0,35 0,35 0,35 0,42 0,45

1,42 1,48 1,53 1,38 1,40

Even if the sample is mainly “Franco-French” (studies in France and a work in France: 141 people, are more than 60% of the answers), it is interesting to look at the variations brought by the answers of people having experience to the international one: either at the time of their studies, or from their current occupation. Identified on the “Franco-French ones”, the characteristics further identified are confirmed with the segmentations by formation (for example, the engineers, business schools): the scores are influenced in the same way on these samples. All in all, the collaborative notes of “Franco-French” are not very different from the average.

The group members having made their initial studies in Europe (except France) regard even more collaboration as a competence to be acquired. But the specificity of this sample (91% managers, whereas variable “management” increases much this aspect “competence”, and with 91% in deprived and any in the public, with the same trend) must be also considered. In the same way, their collaborative note is well above “Franco-French”, but one can think that this dominant managerial is a notable factor of influence. The

variations

scores

the

perception

the

training

“collaborative competence” are also interesting. The sample having an experience out of France considers that they acts more than one quality that of a competence to be acquired. And those that work out of France, which they or not followed their studies to France think it still more. Perhaps this is the sign of only the true “cultural factor” French on the matter: collaboration is apparently perceived like a “competence” to acquire than a personal “quality”, testifying thus more than one feeling “of possible improvement”, and less “determinism”. But 36% of this sample is in head office position, against 19% for the “Franco-French ones” and 23% for the general average: as we have seen before, this criterion has also an influence on this result. I collaborate to Get the buyin of my ideas

Total "Pure" French French with experience out of France Initial education Europe out of France Not working in France

0,54 0,50 0,48 0,86 0,86

Make my projects succeed

1,42 1,36 1,52 1,55 1,54

Broaden my insights and skills

1,06 1,02 1,10 1,14 1,20

Give a good Contribute to image / a good develop my atmosphere network

-0,10 -0,14 -0,17 0,00 0,06

0,95 1,00 0,95 0,86 1,09

Match the imposed rules

-0,78 -0,79 -0,90 -0,55 -0,74

I do not collaborate because It's a waste of time

Total "Pure" French French with experience out of France Initial education Europe out of France Not working in France

-0,81 -0,75 -1,02 -0,86 -0,71

Others don't understand

-0,81 -0,76 -0,76 -1,14 -0,89

Uncertainty

-0,91 -0,86 -0,95 -1,18 -0,86

I know what to do

-0,13 -0,27 0,07 0,14 0,17

No great interest

-0,99 -0,99 -1,07 -1,09 -0,80

I do not want to reveal my plans

-1,12 -1,11 -1,10 -1,14 -1,06

Others do not collaborate because Different goals and objectives

Total "Pure" French French with experience out of France Initial education Europe out of France Not working in France

0,75 0,71 0,76 0,86 0,94

Complex Lack of time organization

0,67 0,76 0,29 1,18 0,63

0,35 0,32 0,43 0,50 0,51

Lack of will

Different habits

-0,01 -0,11 0,19 0,00 0,34

Interpersonal conflicts

0,26 0,24 0,36 0,27 0,37

0,11 0,17 0,07 -0,32 -0,11

And if French people seem to be quite satisfied of the “collaborative climate” in their team, they consider a little bit less the global climate in their company. But is it an evaluation based on real facts, or just a feeling. As we noticed in the global study, people are more satisfied of the collaborative climate in their team than in their company. Is it a sign of organizational obstacles to collaboration, or only the one that people complain often about this theme, convincing their colleagues than, “after all”, it is worse out of their own team…

General "Pure" French French with experience out of France Initial education Europe out of France Not working in France

The quality of collaboration in My Compared Compared My team to others to others company 1,10 0,88 0,42 0,40 1,11 0,86 0,39 0,30 1,21 1,00 0,43 0,71 1,36 1,27 0,55 0,64 1,26 0,97 0,63 0,69

5.5

Focus on engineers

“Pure engineers” are those without another diploma (and “double” are those with another diploma in engineering). Engineers “plus” are those who have followed another education. And “pure French” are those who have only studied in France, and work in France.

79% of the engineers of our sample are managers (against 69% on average), and 27% in situation of Head office (23% on average).

5.5.1 General results Engineers consider more than the average collaboration’s importance (their note is of 1.79 against 1.73 on average). And if they seem not to adopt more than the others a specific posture, they declare a relative easiness in the practice. Moreover, their interactional indexes are part of highest of all the sub-groups studied: they are apparently in situations of frequent interactions with the others. From intent to action...

Global results Engineers (total) "Pure" engineers (and "double" engineers) Engineers non managers Engineers "plus" "Pure" engineers general management Engineers "plus" general management Engineers "plus" non managers Engineers "plus" managers non GM "Pure french" engineers

Skill ?

Importance

Posture

Easiness

Internal > External

1,73 1,79 1,76 1,80 1,84 1,71 1,25 2,00 2,00 1,77

1,22 1,19 1,28 1,00 1,05 1,29 1,00 1,00 1,33 1,20

0,71 0,77 0,79 0,50 0,74 1,00 0,50 0,00 1,00 0,71

0,48 0,75 0,76 0,80 0,74 0,29 1,50 0,00 0,89 0,74

Collaborat. mark

The hell...

Interactional index

0,65 0,62 0,64 0,48 0,60 0,89 0,50 0,44 0,69 0,63

0,35 0,34 0,30 0,57 0,39 0,17 0,13 0,67 0,35 0,32

1,42 1,61 1,60 1,32 1,62 1,83 1,55 1,67 1,73 1,62

However, their “collaborative mark” is lower than the average. And indeed, if they declare to collaborate for “rational” reasons, they affirm to do it less than the others to develop their competences, their network, to contribute to environment (and to comply with the rules at all)…

I collaborate to Get the buyin of my ideas

Global results Engineers (total) "Pure" and "double" engineers Engineers non managers Engineers "plus" "Pure" engineers general management Engineers "plus" general management Engineers "plus" non managers Engineers "plus" managers non GM "Pure french" engineers

0,54 0,56 0,62 0,60 0,47 1,00 0,50 0,33 0,33 0,57

Make my projects succeed

1,42 1,42 1,41 1,20 1,42 1,57 1,75 0,33 1,67 1,31

Broaden my insights and skills

1,06 0,81 0,72 0,80 0,95 1,14 0,50 1,00 1,00 0,80

Give a good Contribute to image / a good develop my atmosphere network

-0,10 -0,29 -0,14 -0,30 -0,53 0,43 -0,50 -1,33 -0,78 -0,31

0,95 0,88 0,86 0,70 0,89 1,29 0,25 1,33 0,89 0,89

Match the imposed rules

-0,78 -1,04 -1,14 -0,80 -0,89 -0,86 -1,75 -1,00 -0,89 -1,00

I do not collaborate because It's a waste of time

-0,81 -0,90 -0,97 -0,50 -0,79 -1,29 -1,50 -0,67 -0,89 -0,89

Others don't understand

-0,81 -0,77 -0,66 0,00 -0,95 -0,57 -1,25 -0,33 -1,33 -0,80

Uncertainty

-0,91 -1,02 -1,14 -1,00 -0,84 -1,57 -0,25 -1,33 -1,00 -0,91

I know what to do

No great interest

-0,13 -0,15 -0,28 0,40 0,05 -0,43 -0,50 1,00 -0,11 -0,40

-0,99 -1,00 -0,93 -1,00 -1,11 -1,14 -0,25 -1,67 -1,56 -0,97

I do not want to reveal my plans

-1,12 -1,31 -1,34 -1,40 -1,26 -1,14 -1,50 -1,67 -1,11 -1,31

And the obstacles they identify are above all “rational reasons”: organization and objectives. Others do not collaborate because Different goals and objectives

0,75 0,90 0,79 1,2 1,05 0,14 1,00 1,33 1,00 0,89

Complex Lack of time organization

0,67 0,92 1,00 0,9 0,79 0,71 0,25 1,00 1,11 0,89

0,35 0,13 -0,07 0,6 0,42 0,43 -0,50 1,33 0,33 0,03

Lack of will

-0,01 -0,13 -0,14 0,2 -0,11 -0,86 0,00 0,33 -0,44 -0,03

Different habits

0,26 0,17 0,14 0,2 0,21 0,29 0,00 0,33 0,22 0,03

Interpersona l conflicts

0,11 0,06 0,10 0,3 0,00 0,29 0,00 -0,33 -0,11 0,14

Then, it would be possible to be appropriate that their “collaborative competence” is strong, but skewed by the composition of the indicators (the more you have “reasons” to collaborate and the less you agree with “non-collaborative reasons”, the more is your “collaborative mark”. We however plead for confirming this relative “weakness”, and for the following reason. If the engineers collaborate mainly for “rational” reasons (and identify difficulties of the same order), it is not the same with interlocutors who are much 97

more sensitive to other factors like environment, the personal questions, the personal development… And since collaboration can only function as a form of exchange, one can easily conceive that if the exchanges between engineers are a priori of good quality, it can be sometimes more difficult to work with interlocutors who have other “rationalities.” Moreover, looking finely at the interactional index, it is noticeable that engineers are often in interaction with functions in which one does not find only engineers. Head office and production/exploitation are the functions most quoted with the related services with the production and data processing, but one finds also the functions marketing/trade, human resources and administrations. The importance of “technical” functions, statistically populated engineers, may be a reason of the good quality of the collaborative mark. But if the interactions with the other services are minority, they are reasons despite everything to consider that engineers may have some weaknesses.

5.5.2 Are engineers sensitive to “collaborative quality”? The quality of collaboration in Compared to My Compared to My team others others company Global results 1,10 0,88 0,42 0,40 Engineers (total) 1,13 0,96 0,35 0,42 "Pure" and "double" engineers 1,21 1,03 0,24 0,34 Engineers non managers 1,20 0,60 -0,10 0,40 Engineers "plus" 1,00 0,84 0,53 0,53 "Pure" engineers general management 1,00 0,86 0,43 0,57 Engineers "plus" general management 0,75 0,50 0,25 0,00 Engineers "plus" non managers 1,67 0,67 0,33 0,67 Engineers "plus" managers non GM 0,89 1,33 0,78 0,44 "Pure french" engineers 1,11 0,91 0,29 0,29

Engineers seem to be quite satisfied of the “collaborative climate” in their team.

5.5.3 Education’s influence The collaborative mark is even better for the engineers having followed an additional training of type “business school” (84% of those which followed an additional training): their note passes to 1.84. But their collaborative posture and their ease decrease with this additional training (whereas the “pure” engineers and “double engineers” are in the average). Is collaboration, for these “engineers plus”, a practice considered to be priority, but especially for other people? Do these “higher” formations isolate, voluntarily or involuntarily? Whereas the initial education in businesses and management seems to develop collaborative practices, these same trainings, when followed by engineers, seem to weaken their collaborative posture, and even, to a lesser extent their easiness to practice collaboration. Their scores are also similar to the engineers who do not have a managerial responsibility whereas, intuitively, one could think that these “executive” courses could prepare them to managerial responsibilities. And yet, only 74% of the engineers who had an additional training in “management and business” are in a management’s position (a little less than the average the engineers, who are managers with 79%). But on another hand, among those engineers, 32% stand a function of Head office – against 23% on average, 27% for the “pure” engineers and 26% for the “businesses schools”. Appendix 4 presents a short study on the “engineers plus” collaborative indexes. The main findings are the following : -‐

“Engineers plus” at Head office have very low collaborative marks : their motivations for collaborating are very low, but they do not look for others’ fault;

-‐

“Engineers plus” managers, but not at Head Office : their marks are above the average;

-‐

“Engineers plus” non managers : collaboration is a priority for them, but they declare to have problems with it (and among the lowest mark in all categories for easiness) 99

Then, why are all these “engineers plus” apparently poor in “collaborative skills”, and less than their other colleagues “pure engineers”? An insight present in the literature may be quoted here: the feeling to belong to an “elite” (school of engineer plus business school, is the “classical” way towards the stations of executive management) reduced collaborative capacities. This study did not make it possible to distinguish the “elitist” schools of engineers and the others. Undoubtedly this information, on a more important sample, would have made it possible to refine this question. Lastly, the absence of managerial responsibility is not an asset to collaborate efficiently. When it is done, it is little by effectiveness (what makes rather the others), but for the general atmosphere. But it is then difficult to separate the effect of the cause: low collaborative capacity and absence of managerial responsibilities… Nevertheless, taking into consideration their and their branch of industry age bracket (private), these “engineers not managers” let show through a certain feeling of abandonment, whereas they have still authority to work during a few years.

5.5.4 Where do engineers learn to collaborate? Where have you learned to collaborate with others ?

"Pure" and "double" engineers

Engineers "plus" Total Total responses engineers

Total

General Management

Non managers

Managers non GM

Total

General Management

"Pure French" engineers

All responses (multiple responses) During my non-professional experiences During my professional experience During my education

49% 84% 22%

44% 92% 19%

53% 95% 16%

50% 100% 25%

33% 67% 0%

67% 100% 11%

38% 90% 21%

43% 100% 0%

49% 91% 17%

100% distribution During my non-professional experiences During my professional experience During my education

32% 54% 14%

28% 59% 12%

32% 58% 10%

29% 57% 24%

33% 67% 0%

38% 56% 6%

26% 60% 14%

30% 70% 0%

31% 58% 11%

French or not, engineers do not learn to collaborate during their education. And more than other people, they learnt during their professional experience. Regarding the importance of “non-professional experiences” – less important than other educational origins, it may be an idea to consider seriously, as it was proposed in the literature’s review.

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5.5.5 And what kind of actions do they propose ? Question 14 of the survey proposes the respondents to propose one way of improving collaboration (“if you could change one thing to improve collaboration within your team, it would be…”). More than half of the respondents gave an answer. The suggestions related to the following themes: -‐

Share objectives (17%);

-‐

Foster participative management (16%);

-‐

Liberate time (15%);

-‐

Develop quality relationships (15%);

-‐

Change the persons (12%);

-‐

Trainings and coachings (7%);

-‐

Teamwork (5%);

-‐

Reward the collaborative work (3%);

-‐

Share a physical space (3%).

Engineers’ answers were related to : -‐

Share objectives (26%)

-‐

Foster participative management (16%)

-‐

Liberate time (16%)

-‐

Trainings and coachings (13%)

-‐

Develop quality relationships (10%)

-‐

Teamwork (6%);

-‐

Share a physical space (6%)

-‐

Change the persons (6%)

Engineers’ specificities appear again in this qualitative part. They prefer “rational” improvement, like sharing objectives and they look less than the others to other people’s fault (“change the persons” is the less quoted). And the reward-related theme disappear (as engineers say, “things have to be done”…).

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Two other items are interesting : -‐

they suggest more than the others trainings and coachings – a confirmation that they are convinced, more than others, that collaboration is a skill which may be acquired (their mark to their inner/outer perception was 0.75 when mean is 0.48);

-‐

And they also propose to foster participative management. An affective choice ? Probably not: this kind of management is the most efficient in the actual and widely implemented complex organizations (matrixes).

5.5.6 Are French engineers “worse” than the others? Regarding the little number of “non-French” engineers, it was difficult to compare directly their results. Nevertheless, regarding the global results and other influence factors, it can be stated than French engineers’ collaborative skills may not be significantly “worse” than others. Some rare differences appear, comparing “Pure French” engineers to other engineers: -‐

Collaborating for their project: for other reasons, their indexes are same as other engineers. But this one is lower. Are they less tenacious? This difference is an interrogation, because of the other results, similar to average.

-‐

The relation to uncertainty: they seem more sensitive to uncertainty than the average engineer. A sign of “national” specificity, according to Hofstede ? But they are also less sensitive to “engineers plus” in general;

-‐

More open to intellectual challenges? They seem to reject more than other engineers the possibility of knowing what to do, without collaboration;

-‐

“External reasons” : they identify more than the others time-related reasons, different habits and interpersonal conflicts, and less the “lack of will”.

Comparing these results to the “French specificities”, it appears that they are more influenced by the engineers’ factors, than by the French ones.

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Results and conclusions

Many “piecemeal” hypotheses appeared during the time of this research: -‐

H1 : Engineers had weaknesses in collaborative practices;

-‐

H2 : Collaboration was more a skill that could be acquired and developed;

-‐

H3 : These weaknesses were mainly due to their “rational” mind-set and education, which is different from others’;

-‐

H4 : That difference was for them (more than for the others) a disadvantage because of the commonly perceived advantage of “hard sciences” over “soft sciences”. That perception might not encourage them to go toward “weaker” colleagues, or colleagues whose point of view would be considered as non relevant and/or a waste of time;

-‐

H5 : On the other hand, engineers’ rationality was an advantage for improving collaborative practices, if it may be demonstrated that it was necessary, and/or more efficient. And I believed that this was the most efficient way to develop their collaborative skills;

-‐

H6 : I thought also that engineers were reluctant to uncertainty, and that prevented them to collaborate with others – because sharing leads to an uncertainty for the final result - ;

-‐

H7 : Some of difficulties with collaboration came more from organizational issues than from “cultural” ones;

-‐

H8 : French engineers were weakened in their collaborative skills by the “elitist culture” in which they (or some of them) grew up;

Another hypotheses appeared as surprising for me, because I did not encountered, or used that approach, in my experiences : - H9 : The management’s factor : managers are more skilled with collaboration than non-managers. These hypotheses were completed with two statements made during my professional experiences, when identifying resistances to collaborative actions : -‐

H10 : The time which has to be invested to improve the collaborative practices;

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-‐

H11 : The efficiency of “collaborative objects”, which I sometimes named as “artificial objects” (because the way of “constructing” them – together – was more important than the result).

6.1

Is it necessary to improve French engineers’ collaborative skills ?

According to the motto that “if you want to fix a problem, you have to accept that you have a problem”, it was necessary to validate “Hypothesis 1”.

6.1.1 H1 : a real need for improvement ? Many elements confirm that engineers may develop their collaborative practices : -‐

the concern of American educational organizations about this theme (especially ABET, which has a huge influence on educational practices through the accreditation system), and the literature and experiments dedicated to it;

-‐

the result of our study, which demonstrate that collaboration is an important theme, and that there are differences between the importance aimed to it, and the easiness to put that priority into practice (importance is 1.73, and easiness is 0.71; 1.79 and 0.77 for engineers);

-‐

focusing of French engineers, the literature was less abundant but the expertise and experience of the authors (Claude Maury, Pierre Veltz, Institut Montaigne, for example) were good criterions to validate that hypothesis;

-‐

and the French respondents do not declare to be more accustomed to these issues than the others. H1

H10

H11

J

6.1.2 H2 : a skill ? In the literature – international or French -, the recommendations about collaborative practices’ improvement rarely mention the recruitment’s lever.

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Some encourage for special attention to the collaborative abilities when building a team. But none affirm that these cannot be improved. In our study, the result of this question is indicated by a score from -2 (a natural quality) to +2 (a skill than may be developed). The mean value is 0.48, and 0.75 for engineers. Some rare groups have values over 1 : -‐

engineers “plus” in position of general management (1.50);

-‐

Human sciences’ graduates in position of general management (2.00);

-‐

People over 60 years old (1.14);

-‐

Marketing and sales people (1.20);

-‐

IT/telecoms people (1.00);

-‐

Production’s related services (1.00);

-‐

Specialist of tertiary sector (1.25).

Some sub-groups have “negative values” (more a quality than a skill) : -‐

business schools’ graduates in position of general management (-0.20);

-‐

non-managers (-0.10);

-‐

non-managers human sciences’ graduates (-0.92);

-‐

public sector’s people (-0.23);

-‐

administrative people (-0.11);

-‐

studies and projects’ people (-0.47).

For all, who are not really convinced that collaborative skills may be improved, and maybe especially for these last sub-groups, it may the result of the lack of collaborative skills’ training. If people do not experience any improvement, they probably think that these are qualities, which may not be developed. H1

J

H10

H11

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6.1.3 H3 : too rational ? As Anne Lauvergeon said, “engineers have to bear rationality for the world”… Does that mean that other professional are less rational, if rational at all ? Engineers have their specific mind-set, solutions’ oriented, and developed with scientific methods for analysing, reasoning, resolving… And as we saw in the educational initiatives, special courses intended to develop their “professional skills”, or “soft skills”, are designed to “open” the engineers’ view to others’ rationality (and even of other engineers’). But the result of our study does not indicate that “rational reasons” are used to explain any reluctance to collaboration. And as we saw in the literature, engineers are also sensitive to “soft” influences (nationality, culture, religion), but also to interpersonal values, such as informal exchanges (chats…). It appears then than, if engineers’ rationality seems to be specific, nothing indicates that it is a special weakness to collaborative skills. This “rationality” is then a “difference”, which has to be considered, shared, explained, in order to facilitate collaboration with others, but not more than others’ specificities. H1

J

K

H10

H11

6.1.4 H4 : Are “hard sciences” superior to “soft sciences” ? Nothing in the international literature we studied was expressing any “superiority” of “hard sciences” professions over “soft sciences” ones. Only impacts of engineers’ work - and failures – were quoted (money, time and safety), but not in excluding other professions. On the other hand, the quoted French literature confirmed one of the French specificities, and for the authors, weakness if not failure : the educational selection’s process, based principally on maths. And, consequently, the traditional domination of Engineers’ schools (and not engineering schools) within the “Grandes Ecoles” (at

106

least until a recent period, with the “dramas” lived when HEC graduates acceded to the highest positions, in companies (EDF) or in governmental positions. The dominance of “hard sciences” then appears more than a “social factor”, influencing the engineers in their relationship with others, but regarding their “social position”, than an “individual factor”, concerning all engineers. H1

J

K

H10

H11

6.1.5 H5 : “Things have to be done”… If engineers’ rationality may not be considered as a special weakness for collaborative issues, it also may be considered as an advantage. Indeed, as we saw in the survey, engineers are less inclined to look to others’ fault, in order to identify obstacles to collaboration : they are more sensitive to look for organizational reasons (organizations, objectives…). The literature gave also examples of “ad hoc collaboration” : engineers naturally go to find useful information, to adapt their knowledge to a changing environment. This pragmatic attitude may also be noticed in their positive look toward acquiring collaborative skills. And their “result’s oriented” culture make them collaborating with others, because “things have to be done”. Therefore, their “rational specificity” may be considered as a real advantage regarding the collaborative issues, as long as they are convinced that it is useful to collaborate. And the examples of the students’ evaluation after educational experiences shows that, when they experience collaborative actions, they are convinced that is worth collaborating with others. H1

J

K

J

H10

H11

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6.1.6 H6 : The uncertainty’s factor The uncertainty theme came more from my personal experiences and believes than from the literature. Indeed, I made a link between the dominant “rational” mind, and the reluctance to uncertainty, which I noticed in my professional experiences. Even if uncertainty has “hard scientific” foundations, it is often rejected. And the literature relative to uncertainty, in companies as well as in military affairs, confirmed that view. My hypothesis was based on the fact that, when you share a decision, or a project, you increase the probability of other solutions that the one you expect. But engineers do not make the link, and by the way seem not so uncomfortable with uncertainty… The link with the collaborative practices was therefore not established. H1

J

K

J

L

H10

H11

6.1.7 H7 : Organizational obstacles These obstacles were some of those, which emerged from the interviews. The literature is also providing examples of practices and experiments made to overcome organizational obstacles to collaboration. And the survey shows that respondents are very sensitive to the organizational “motives” for non-collaborative practices (organizational complexities, and different objectives). This appears also as one of the major themes of improvement proposed in the survey. All these elements demonstrate that collaborative practices are also subject to organizational factors – might they direct obstacles, or integrated in individuals’ attitudes with “social defence mechanisms”.

J

K

J

L

J

H10

H11

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6.1.8 H8 : The Elite vs. collaboration In a democratic country, and even more in a country apparently very attached to egalitarian values, it is probably impossible to assume an “elitist stance”. Therefore was it probably, from the beginning, an impossible task to identify some “elitist behaviours”, which could negatively influence the collaborative practices. It was also not asked, in the questionnaire, if the engineers taking the survey were graduated from “A-group” engineering schools, or not. This hypothesis came therefore more from personal experiences – weak signals -, in my contacts with some high-level engineers, who were more, with anyone, in a “I will explain you why…” stance, than in a listening one. The “casts” issues were described by some authors of the global French context. And some others speak of “French arrogance”. But this could not be illustrated in our research, and more than that, related to the engineers’ collaborative issues. H1

J

K

J

L

J

K

H10

H11

6.1.9 H9 : Skilled managers ? The link between collaborative skills and managerial positions (and/or skills) came out of the survey. In the literature, one may be find a link between “good management practices” and “soft skills”. And as the link is made between collaborative skills and soft skills, it may be stated that management skills and collaborative skills are related. But the link is only due to a logical inference, not to demonstrated studies. H1

J

K

J

L

J

K

H10

H11

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6.1.10 H10 : The time factor The time factor is another insight that emerged from the survey. But it is also one of my experience : it is always worthy to take the time for “work-outs”, “team work”,… in order to improve collective decision, and also collaborative skills. This statement may also be made by consultants, eager to help companies ‘teams to improve their efficiency… But I did not explore this idea into the literature. But regarding the importance given in the study to the time factor, it would be a surprise that the literature dedicated to collaborative practices (and not only engineers’ one) would not suggest this kind of practices. H1

H10

J

K

J

L

J

K

J

H11

6.1.11 H11 : Collaborative objects The “collaborative objects” did not come out of the survey, in the qualitative part. But it was quoted in the literature, and I experienced their efficiency in my mission for developing my clients’ collaborative skills. H1

H10

H11

J

K

J

L

J

K

J

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6.2

Some ideas and practices to improve French engineers’ collaborative skills

French engineers are not totally aware of the weaknesses of their collaborative skills. But some authors and education’s specialists begin to express their concern about these issues, and propose some improvements, in particular for the engineers’ education. It may be the beginning of a real change, especially with the recent informations, according to even French “elite” graduates are now suffering from unemployment (Deloitte/IFOP, 2013). Facing new difficulties, engineers – and their educators - may be forced to look after the reasons of their weaknesses. The best reason to hope that this awareness, and also these skills, may be quickly developed, is that France seems to be an exception toward its interest about this theme. An extensive “benchmark” may be used to identify some good practices, and adapt them, if necessary, to the French engineers’ specificities. Two themes seem to be the more important to develop: -‐

the “soft skills” development;

-‐

the teamwork abilities, within multidisciplinary groups.

These improvements may be made during their initial education, but also after it : within “executives”’ courses (MBAs’ type), or with professional training, in their companies.

6.2.1 Develop their “soft skills” For the time being, soft skills seem mainly to be developed through “general education” courses. This might be too intellectual to change engineers’ attitudes, and more than that, behaviours. But it is a good beginning point, at least to develop engineers’ awareness of these issues. Some actions of personal development could also improve their awareness of their specificities, and then contribute to develop their attention to interpersonal differences. But these actions have to be considered – and beginning by the educational personals, as “role models” – as relevant because useful in engineers’ practices. 111

6.2.2 Improve their team working experiences The other theme is the development of engineers’ team working abilities, with a strong focus on multidisciplinary teams – including, of course, “soft skills” specialists. These kinds of actions may be developed during the initial education, within the future multidisciplinary organizations, which will be created – at least geographically. And it could be a point of real improvement within post-graduate courses (MBAs’ types), which are gathering people from different origins.

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Limitations of the research, options for future research

7.1

Survey: some words on the quality of the answers

The “self-managed” questionnaires are, like all the other questionnaires, submitted to bias. This questionnaire does not pretend to be “scientifically based”, and in particular for the following reasons: -‐

Most of the people who answered the questionnaire are undoubtedly inclined to co-operation: because answering this questionnaire was an act of cooperation with me, and that nobody was obliged to. Perhaps some made it to get results (it was proposed), but it is undoubtedly rather marginal. Less than half of the guarantors expressed their wish to receive the results of the study, and it was not, for sure, their only motivation;

-‐

The sample is subject to skewed perception (including self--perception). Within our professional environment, it is more “positive” to collaborate with the others (or at least to express the intention of it). To collaborate is perceived like a professional quality, and one likes to judge, consciously or unconsciously, rightly or not, to hold this quality. The answers are thus probably influenced either voluntarily, or more probably involuntarily. This group was probably therefore a field of application of the “theories in uses” and “espoused theories”. Nevertheless, I have the feeling that the questions encouraged the respondents to auto-analyse the reality of their situation, most objectively possible, and thus to reduce this bias.

Despite this “scientific” uncertainty, this questionnaire may have several utilities (beyond its use in the report of research for which it was carried out): -‐

To be able to compare various “populations”, whose answers are most probably affected same bias;

-‐

To make reflect the respondents on this important issue in their companies’ and organizations’ life, and help them to progress, by analysing – alone or with an external help - the various brakes with dynamic collaborative of their 113

environment to give effective answers there. It is, beyond the university vocation of this work, the principal expected benefit of this work: to help the men and the organizations to progress, as a kind of “research in action”.

7.2

On the survey : broaden the sample

The number of responses was a very good surprise, and the correlation between individual series showed that general considerations could be made from these results. Nevertheless, and to focus on “sub-groups”, it could be interesting to use this survey on more numerous populations, and especially with a more multinational approach, to identify, if they are, the French engineers’ specificities.

7.3

On French practices : the lack of literature may be not the lack of good practices

It was quite difficult to identify some literature related to the subject, in educational organizations as in companies. But regarding the “French exception” toward “management literature”, it does not mean that there are no experiences and good practices in this field. The example of ARTEM seems to be an interesting illustration of the situation. Without comparing the number of students involved in the initiative, and the diversity of the British initiative, this kind of multidisciplinary education may be compared to the Imperial College example. But it seems to be no specific research on this French “good practice”. And the same is probably the same for companies’ initiatives for talents’ developments. This could be a theme for further explorations, with direct contacts with several educational organizations for engineers, and with engineering companies.

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7.4

The reluctance toward collaborating : a mechanism of defence ?

The uneasiness, or the interrogations, of some of my contacts for interviews, led me to another hypotheses, which I could not explore during this research. If they were respected during the long era of industrial development, engineers’ supremacy is now challenged by other functions and profiles : the opposition between engineers and marketing people were explored above. Facing this threat on their power – but may be also on their jobs, in executive position more than in “real engineering” ones, French engineers’ reluctance to collaboration (and more than that, their acceptation of their weaknesses in that field) could be the sign of a anxiety related to their professional identity. That could be another field of research.

7.5

A further “research in action” : use the results to generate reactions, confidences, proposals… and change.

Another proposal would be to use this research as the beginning point of a “research in action”. The purpose of this research may not be only to contribute – if considered useful to to further academics’ research. It could also be used as a “tool” to open some discussion, to generate some reactions, with education’s specialist and professional, and to take part to their awareness to these issues.

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9.1

Appendices

Appendix 1 : list of interviews

I would like to thank, for the insights and experiences they shared on the occasion of this study and – if we had this opportunity – during the missions I had with them and their teams. Anne BOUTRY, InterMines, General Manager Marc GAUCHER, EDF Production Engineering, Director Olivier HERZ, RTE, Finance Director Valérie LAMACQ, General Electric Energy. Sourcing Director Pierre MESSULAM, SNCF. Strategy Director Claude MAURY, CEFI / IESF. General Manager Philippe PELLETIER, General Electric Healthcare, HR Senior Executive

136

9.2

Appendix 2 : the questionnaire

Study : collaboration in companies and organizations Study : collaboration in companies and organizations

Preliminaries and opening question Thank you to have clicked on this link and to have agreed to take part to this survey. The questionnaire is voluntarily short: it is made of 25 questions. It will take you 5 to 10 minutes. I carry out this study within the framework of a research for HEC Paris and Said Business School - Oxford University. Your answers will remain completely confidential. If you wish to get the results of this study, do not hesitate to contact me either directly, or by indicating it at the end of the questionnaire, I will be very happy to address them to you. Lastly, to enrich the quality of this study by the number and the diversity of the answers, I invite you to make follow the following link to your professional contacts, in your company or organization, and more largely, and propose them to take part to this survey : https://fr.surveymonkey.com/s/collaborationstudy And if you wish more, do not hesitate to contact me: alexis.kummetat@kaqi.eu. I very warmly thank you for your contribution.

1. If you are taking this survey at the request of your company, please fill in here the code you have received

2. Do you think that the quality of the collaboration within a management team, or a project team, or a company, is an important issue ? There are other priorities

We must have it in mind

It is important

It is a priority

    

137

Page 1

Study : collaboration in companies and organizations Yourself and the collaboration issue

3. Do you collaborate with others ? Rarely

From time to time

Often

Always

    

4. When you collaborate with others, is it easy for you to do it ? It is a constraint for me

I often have difficulties

It is easy most of the time

It is so easy !

    

5. To collaborate with others, it is mostly (one answer only)  mainly a personal and natural disposition    

 a personal desire, which can be improved      a technical skill that should be acquired    

6. If applicable, where did you learn to collaborate with others ? (multiple answers possible)  In my non-professional experiences      During my studies    

 In my professional experiences    

7. When you collaborate with others, your motivation is : To get the buy-in of my

Never

Rarely

Often

Very often

    

ideas To make my projects succeed To broaden my insights and skills To give a good image of me / to develop my network To contribute to a good atmosphere To match the imposed rules Other (please specify)

138 2 Page

Study : collaboration in companies and organizations 8. When you do not collaborate with others, your reason is : Never

Rarely

Often

Very often

    

I know myself what to do

    

It is of no great interest

    

I do not want to reveal my

    

You have to argue, to listen, and it is a waste of time Others do not understand my stakes and difficulties The more you associate the others, the less certain of the result you are

plans Other (please specify)

139 3 Page

Study : collaboration in companies and organizations The collaboration in your company / organization

9. How would you rate the quality of collaboration in your team (people directly connected to you) ? Awful

Poor

Fair

Very satisfactory

    

10. How would you rate the quality of collaboration in your company / organization ? Awful

Poor

Fair

Very satisfactory

    

11. Comparing to others, do you find that the quality of collaboration in your team is :  worst than in other teams of my company / organization      same as in other teams of my company / organization    

 best than in other teams of my company / organization    

12. Comparing to others, do you find that the quality of collaboration in your company / organization is :  worst than in other companies / organizations      same as in other companies / organizations    

 best than in other companies / organizations    

13. When you encounter difficulties of collaboration from other people, these are due to : Never

Rarely

Often

Very often

    

A complex organization

    

A lack of time

    

A lack of will

    

Different habits of working

    

Interpersonal conflicts

    

Different goals and objectives between teams, and/or inside teams

Other (please specify)

14. If you could change one only thing, in order to improve the quality of the collaboration within your team (management team or project team), it would be : (free answer)  

140 4 Page

Study : collaboration in companies and organizations Some personal informations

These datas are essential to the quality of our analysis. Thank you for your answers.

15. I am  a man    

 a woman    

16. My age  0-19    

 20-29      30-39      40-49      50-59      60-69    

 70 and more    

17. Some geographical informations : Where I mainly studied



(If applicable, ) where I



studied next



Where I work now Other (please specify)

18. I work in the  private sector (company)    

 public sector (governement, local authorities...)      others (public companies, NGOs,...)    

Other (please specify)

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Study : collaboration in companies and organizations 19. The size of my company / organization  from 1 to 9 employees    

 from 10 to 49 employees    

 from 50 to 199 employees    

 from 200 to 499 employees    

 from 500 to 1999 employees      more than 2000 employees    

20. My academic and professional education (university, school...) My main academic



education (If applicable), my other



academic and professional education : Other (please specify)

21. My current job is : 

22. I work more within  a direction or managerial team    

 a project team      both    

23. I am in charge of a team (management team or project team)

 Yes      No    

24. I mostly work with Mainly

and (if applicable)

On a daily basis



Occasionally



Comment

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Study : collaboration in companies and organizations Thank you

You have now completed the survey. Thank you for your contribution. Do not hesitate to associate some friends and colleagues to this survey, by sending them the following link https://fr.surveymonkey.com/s/collaborationstudy Thanks a lot

25. If you would like to receive the result of this survey, please fill in your informations below (or send directly an e-mail to alexis.kummetat@kaqi.fr) First name, Surname: Company, Organisation: Country : E-mail:

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9.3

Appendix 3 : technical choices for indexes and correlations

Importance, posture, easiness indexes When the question proposed four answers (standard “always”, “often”, “from time to time”, “seldom”), the indicator was built on the following basis: note = 2 x “always” + 1 x “often” + (- 1) x “from time to time” + (- 2) x “seldom”). These notes can thus vary between +2 and -2. Three questions were noted whereas it comprised only three possible answers (the perception of collaborative quality in the unit, in the company: better than, similar to, worse than; and modes of training – character, desire + development, competence). For these two questions, the indicator is built in the form: note = better than – worse than and = competence notes - character. It thus varied from +1 to -1. To facilitate the comparison, one will have multiplied the result by two to obtain a note varying potentially from +2 to -2. The “collaborative mark” The interest of this “mark” was confirmed by a good correlation between this series of notes and the notes of collaborative attitude and collaborative easiness.

The

strongest correlations were identified between all the compared series : -‐

when the results of sub-groups were compared,

-‐

and among the strongest when the individuals were compared.

Those who declare to be “more turned” towards collaboration are also those who are more at ease practise collaboration. And one may assume that their practices are rather collaborative. The correlation between the “priority” note and the “collaborative mark” is equivalent for the individual declarations. But it much weaker (although satisfactory) if one searches the correlation between the sub-groups. This evaluation of “priority given” may be more “political” (or “social”) that for the two others (posture and facility), which reveals more “individual” practice. The more there are answers “very often” to the 6 “reasons” suggested to collaborate, the more one can think that the practice of the guarantor is collaborative; in the same way, when there is less of answers “very often” to the 6 “reasons” not to collaborate. 144

The “collaborative mark” is thus the difference between the sum of the “collaborative indexes” and “not collaborative indexes”. She has authority to evaluate the “collaborative practice” of the population observed. Each index theoretically which can vary between +2 and -2, the total of the collaborative indexes may vary between +24 and – 24. To be able to compare them with the indexes, one will thus have divided the total by 12, to obtain theoretical variations between +2 and -2. “Hell is other people” index Conceived on the same principle that the collaborative mark, it is the sum of the indices raised in the evaluations “others do not collaborate because…” (divided by 6, to be able to vary between +2 and -2). The assumption is that more often the guarantor identifies collaborative difficulties at the others, plus this index rises.

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9.4

Appendix 4 : focus on “Engineers plus”

Let us consider three populations among the “Engineers plus”: in Head office, management but not in Head office, not in management. The weakness of the sample must however lead to prudence regarding the conclusions. These engineers having followed an additional training of type “business-management” are only 16. Among them, 4 occupy a function of Head office, and 3 do not have a function of management; 9 are managers, in other functions. “Engineers plus” at Head office Those with a function at Head office have collaborative marks much lower than the average: 1.25 for the importance given, 1.00 for the posture and 0.50 for the facility. Their collaborative mark is 0.50. These scores are rather lower than the average of the people occupying a position at Head office: 1.75/1.37/0.90 (mark is 0.67). They are also lower than those of engineers in general: 1.79/1.19/0.77, and with those of the “pure” engineers (including those which followed a double training of engineers): 1.76/1.28/0.79 (mark is 0.64). And the “pure” engineers in situation of Head office still have better collaborative marks: 1.71/1.29/1.00 (the mark is 0.89, best of all the sub-groups). When they collaborate, it is for making the projects succeeding, and to very seldom comply with the rules. The other motivations are also below the average (in the lowest of all sub-groups). When they do not collaborate, it is possibly by rejection of uncertainty and because they do not see the interest of it. They do not advance other reasons. And for them, the collaborative failures are especially due to the differences between objectives. They allot less than the others the failures to the other factors. Their index “of hell” is lowest of all the sub-groups (0.13), and even slightly better than their colleagues “pure” engineers in situation of Head office (0.17). Thus they have bad collaborative evaluations, but do not blame the others for difficulties.

146

Lastly, they consider more than the others that collaboration is a skill, which is acquired (1.50 against 0.48 on average general, 0.31 for the functions at Head office and 0.29 for the “pure” engineers at Head office). Apparently, the messages were heard during their additional trainings, even if they are not necessarily translated into actions… “Engineers plus” managers except Head office Those in situation of management (except Head office) have scores significantly higher: 2 (the maximum) for the importance given, 1.33 for the posture, and 1.00 for the facility. But their total note is in the average, just like their “index of hell”. They also collaborate to advance the projects, and to very seldom contribute to their image or their network. When they do not collaborate, it is very seldom because the others do not understand them or because they do not see the interest of it. Generally – but as for the others, it is because they know what it is necessary to do. When they analyse the difficulties, they see special difficulties related on the differences in objectives and especially to organisational complexities. On the other hand, the desire and the problems of people do not draw their attention. Therefore, their look on the collaborative ability seems to be appeased. “Engineers plus” non managers Let us look finally at “engineers plus” who do not have a managerial function. Nothing distinguishes them a priori “sociologically” from the others. Only that they all are in the age bracket of 50-59 years (a category without note significantly different from the others). If they think, like the others, that collaboration is a priority (2, that is to say the maximum), they obtain very weak scores for their posture (1, like the engineers more in Head office), and even 0 for the expressed easiness. For them, it is a desire, which may be developed (note: 0; between nature and skill). When they collaborate, it is very seldom to promote their image, seldom to advance the projects, but often for environment. When they do not collaborate, it is absolutely because they know what it should be done and because the others do not understand. This is probably due to the fact that they are in situation of expert position (not management). 147

As for the identified difficulties, they all place them above the average (they thus seem to meet more often than the others of the difficulties of collaboration), except for the conflicts of anybody, than they identify very little, and the different practices. Their collaborative note is weak (0.44) and they allot much â&#x20AC;&#x153;the hellâ&#x20AC;? to the others (0.67).

148