Career Self-Efficacy of the Black Engineer in the U.S. Government Workplace

This paper reports the results of a quantitative, nonexperimental, cross-sectional, one-time, webbased survey on the career self-efficacy of self-selected black engineers in the engineering workplace—a workplace that has been described as a “haven of whiteness and masculinity” and “pale” and “male”. Engineering has been a key component of the U.S.’s global technological superiority. However, U.S. racial demographics are changing. The number of whites currently in the workforce and the number of whites entering the workforce will decrease over the next several decades. Given current college and university graduation rates by race, the number of underrepresented minority engineers is not on a path to maintain the engineering workforce. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs attempt to address this shortfall with much attention in primary and secondary schools, and in college. Additionally, U.S. companies spend $8 billion to $10 billion annually on diversity programs to create opportunity and inclusion strategies for underrepresented minorities. Even with this focus on diversity, the underrepresented engineer enters an engineering workforce where career attainment is less likely than for the majority, thus creating a gap between attainment and opportunity. Career self-efficacy—a belief in one’s ability to plan, implement, and execute the courses of action required to attain in one’s career—may be one way to understand this gap between career attainment and career opportunity, as suggested by social cognitive career theory. However, no data on the career self-efficacy of engineers in the workplace exists. During this study, career self-efficacy of black engineers was measured using an adapted 25question Career Decision Self-efficacy Short Form (CDSE-SF) instrument, assessing career self-efficacy subscales of self-appraisal, occupational information gathering, goal setting, planning, and problem solving. The results of a survey of 131 black engineers in a large government engineering organization indicate that the career self-efficacy of black engineers is high. While the CDSE-SF is highly respected and widely used, the recommendation is made to further develop and validate the career self-efficacy scale for the workplace. Additionally, outcome expectations of black engineers should also be explored to gather additional human resource data to provide a complete assessment of the social cognitive career theory model.