Elites in Engineering in the Dissertation

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Engineers should focus on the improvement of the performance of the economy. This relates to the transformation of the theories of controlling the world and adopting new frameworks in the operating in conjunction with the planet. New engineers need to adopt and implement new theories of focusing on the economic, social, and political concepts in relation to both technical and nontechnical disciplines (Cameron 2010 p.40).

Leaders in British Engineering

According to Lewis (1998, p.88), the technology style of the 19th century stretches from the peak of one long wave to the peak of the next. The concerned style would have made its first appearance in 1870s and would have held great influence in the late Victorian period. It was marked through the diffusion of cheap bulk steel that emerged in the mid-Victorian periods, advances in science-based industries such as engineering and chemicals, spread of electric power and the adoption of novel types of managerial organizations linked to the rise of the managerially controlled corporations (Bodde 2004, p. 45). This period saw the transformation from rule of thumb techniques in industry to a world of more intricate mechanization, large-scale organizations which include science-based industries in electrical engineering and organic chemistry.

Electricity played a role of a major innovation, offering the impetus to the 19th-century long wave besides powering the transmission of the economy to the upswing of the third Kondratieff wave. The third wave of Kondratieff is linked to electricity while the second wave is linked to railroads (Bodde 2004, p. 45). The end of the 19th century saw the new technological styles in Britain's industrial structure. Towards the end of the 19th century, Britain remained among the leaders in the electrical engineering and generating field, but during the start of the 20th century, the country was outclassed by the United States and Germany.

British engineers built the first electric overhead railway and equipped it at Liverpool through a British electrical Engineering firm in 1888 (Taylor 2011, p.6). Despite, building the first electric overhead railway, British electrical firms failed to grow from a powerful stance, and they also failed to avoid a great extent of foreign penetration in the British market. The most significant turning point in the fortunes of the initial British firms came in late 1890s, when the anticipated upshots would have been a surge of action in a sector described by Lewis (1998) as the driving force of the new upswing (Lewis 1998, p.88).

According Lewis (1998, p.90), the 1890s experienced developing tension amid the engineers and businesspeople within the firms falling profitability and considerable price competition. Internal strife broke out in several large organizations in the late 1890s, and serious quarrels experienced at the Crompton and ECC (Lewis 1998, p.90). Management intricacies offer only one of a host of aspects, which causes the backwardness of the electricity industry in Britain. Other candidates held accountable included over-speculation, cheap gas competition, adverse legislation in the 1880s, and consultant engineer and management incompetence.

Consultant engineer was a strange aspect in British engineering, and its intervention prohibited the fruitful direct collaboration aimed by the engineering producer and the client (Lewis 1998, p.90). Consultant engineer tended to impose purely engineering aspects as opposed to economic criteria. The industry seemed to integrate technical conservatism with persistence, antiquated techniques, and while it could produce people of inventive genius, it seemed to lack the entrepreneurs of the level of Germans and Americans. There did not appear to be a British Westinghouse or British Siemens.

The state interference inhibited the entrepreneur effort in the electrical industry. An attempt to address the problem was made in 1888, but the destruction had already been done. British entrepreneurs wishing to get into the industry-experienced entrenched and long-term gas supply industry (Lewis 1998, p.90). In 1900s, gas provided ten times as much light as electricity did, and there lacked incentive to install electric lighting as many agencies had their own gasworks. The British steel industry has also faced criticism because of alleged failures and British businesspeople had been condemned for holding a business structure dominated by large numbers of small firms, which instigated a secretive, obstinate and pervasive individualism.

Initially, British steel industry was doing quite well with 43% in 1870. However, by 1913, the British steel industry was overtaken as a major steel producer by the United States of America and Germany, and by 1900s, USA and Germany were producing three times the British industry's output (Lewis 1998, p.90).

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As a result, engineering professionals improve their leadership aptitudes within their professional through skills in entrepreneurship, leadership, innovation and technology.

The decision by the railway companies to develop their own steam engines and rolling stock created a locomotive manufacturing industry, which was, with its private and public sector, different to Great Britain. Private companies continued to be centered in the long-established engineering areas of Northeast, Lancashire and Yorkshire serving the specialist and overseas market, and occasional home railway organizations (Bodde 2004, p. 45). Railway organizations establishments were more widely spread, and their strategic locations on their companies' lines functioned as both maintenance and manufacturing centers for their companies. The predictable and constant demand ensured that the railway companies' workshops were large and more technically developed than scores of their private counterparts (Harvey & Turner 1989, p. 11). . The companies had increased workforce compared to private companies.

However, the greatest problem facing the early railway companies included gaining and disciplining labor force. By 1919, the railway company workshop had 135, 000 employees in eight hundred different workshops owned by a plethora of railway firms (Harvey & Turner 1989, p. 11). Initial railway recruitment happened when industrial discipline was comparatively new and when skilled engineering workers were few. However, with increased trained engineers, the companies needed a special managerial design that would have offered divergent labor strategies. Modern engineering employers tried to gain control of their labor supply through forming or dominating local skilled labor markets via the granting different welfare provisions.

Railways companies retained the services of their general workers through pay and promotion incentives, thereby introducing an internal labor market with the railway companies. Britain's early railway organizations held few precursors on which they shaped their labor recruitment strategies. Only the East India Company and Army employed a similar strategy in disciplining and employing a large labor force (Harvey & Turner 1989, p. 11). The two companies offered scores of railway companies early managerial personnel. Army-like paternalism and discipline became the foundation of all railway companies' industrial links from their beginnings until the establishment of novel systems of links in the present century.

The vision of discipline and natural hierarchy became very useful in early railway companies (Harvey & Turner 1989, p. 11). The late 1880s and 1890s experienced the establishment of novel payment system, which intensified the indirect supervision of the labor procedure. Part of the general trend in the British engineering industry, the establishment payment systems and new scientific work methods and technology, were embraced to address the impacts of economic depression and foreign petition.

Elsewhere in the engineering industry, the drive to increase managerial prerogatives was to culminate in the ASE in 1897-1898. The establishment of novel technologies presented restrained prospects for management to attain increased control of the labor process. Technology did little to enhance the labor process in companies. In other sectors of the British engineering industry, the establishment of automatic turret and capstan lathers in later 1890s undermined the skills and discretion of artisans' (Harvey & Turner 19).

Characteristics of Leaders in British Engineering

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the main source of sustainable economic prosperity for regions, societies, nations, small firms, individuals and nations (Wustenhagens 2008, p.67). Innovation systems increase entrepreneurship through massive support of innovative activity such as R & D. And technology development (Carsrud 2007, p.3). Entrepreneurship also holds a crucial role in offering efficient and innovative solutions to social and environmental problems. Entrepreneurs undertake, assume, organize and manage the risks of given business. Engineers play a crucial role in changing the lives of people. Engineering is the channel through which mathematic, design and scientific skills combine. The engineering industry comprises of almost 1/5 of the United-Kingdom economy besides employing over four million people. United Kingdom is among the top ten world's largest manufacturers, where engineering form a major portion of industries that include film, construction, medicine, fashion, food, cosmetics, TV and music (Bessant 2011, p.3).

Britain is a leader in engineering for over three centuries. Engineers from Britain changed the contemporary transport through building and designing the first railways, airplanes and ships, Thomas Stevenson designed the railway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and developed ships while Geoffrey de Havilland designed and developed airplanes, and Rolls-Royce designed motor cars. These engineers also built viaducts, roads and bridges.

Leadership

A leader is more than just a commander.....

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