"I Wish I Could Do More": A Qualitative Meta-analysis of Early Career Engineers' Perceptions of Agency in their Workplaces

Engineering students graduate from their programs with a broad range of skills that are set by professional societies, industry recommendations, and other stakeholders in student success. But when those engineers enter their jobs, how are those skills utilized and nurtured by the organizations they enter? The purpose of this paper is to present a cross-sectional, secondary qualitative analysis of research exploring the experiences of recent engineering graduates as they move from student to professional. Of particular interest were the ways engineers describe their autonomy or sense of choice, the way engineers recognize and make sense of their organizations’ values, and the alignment (or lack thereof) between personal values and those of their organization. To do so, qualitative data sets from three different studies of engineers’ experiences at various stages in their professional trajectories were combined and thematically analyzed, producing four major themes that speak to the ways engineers perceive their sense of agency in their work experiences. Looking across data sets, themes emerged regarding empowerment, organizational fit, and workplace expectations. While these themes were common across the studies included in the analysis, the way the themes manifested across data sets raises interesting questions about the formation of engineers and the socialization experiences that contribute to that formation. As research on engineering practice continues to develop, it is important that researchers consider where engineers are within their career trajectory and how that influences their perceptions about the work they do and the agency they have within organizations. Introduction and Background What constitutes engineering practice is constantly changing and revised as engineering problems become more complex and multidisciplinary, and the scale on which engineering problems are solved increases [1]. Numerous blue-ribbon reports and recommendations from engineering professional societies have made calls to name and develop the skills engineers need for success in their careers. For example, in The Engineer of 2020, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) asserts that engineering graduates will need skills such as practical ingenuity, high ethical standards, strong communication, and leadership [1-2]. Further, in their “Vision 2030”, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) reports that engineers need to develop more innovation and creativity, a higher standard of professional skills, and more practice-based engineering experiences [3]. Beyond the technical knowledge required to address these complex problems, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) set out in their second edition body of knowledge that engineers should adopt attitudes of curiosity, entrepreneurship, fairness, respect, sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and tolerance [4]. The broad range of expectations and abilities needed for engineers to adequately address tomorrow’s issues require not only a diverse approach to educating engineers, but will also require work places that continue the process of broad development in early career employees. Industry representatives have echoed these issues, noting current graduates have weaknesses in practical experience, understanding of engineering codes and standards, leadership skills, and knowledge of business processes, to name a few [5]. More recently, ABET has revised their accreditation criteria to align more closely with these calls and address knowledge and skills gaps between school and professional practice [6]. These reports, recommendations, and accreditation criteria are important for engineering education because they help guide curricular choices about what students should learn and inform decisions about what kind of experiences to provide. To be sure, the skills noted above are valuable traits for engineers, but when engineers actually enter and work in engineering organizations, how do those skills develop? Engineering practice is complex, multifaceted, and dependent on a range of social, organizational, and technical constraints. As a result, how engineering is practiced and what constitutes authentic practice can vary both within and across organizations [7-10]. For some engineers, practice might entail conducting analysis and testing on components of a particular design; for others, it might look more like managing the range of tests that are conducted throughout product development [11]. Nonetheless, engineering practice can comprise a wide range of activities and accompanying skills, and these might be different from one organization—or job—to the next. The purpose of this paper is to explore the interaction between engineers’ experiences in authentic practice and the way their organizations facilitate or hinder the development of skills and dispositions noted as vital in reports and accreditation criteria. If engineering graduates have the skills called for by professional societies and accreditation bodies, it seems important that the organizations that employ these engineers provide spaces to nurture and grow such skills. To that end, we pose the following research questions: RQ1. How do workplace environments enable or constrain early career engineers’ ability to apply their skills developed as undergraduates? RQ2. How do early career engineers recognize and reconcile misalignments between their goals, values, and skills and those required to do their jobs? To explore these questions, we present a thematic analysis [12] of three different data sets of engineering practice with engineers at various points within their careers. The first data set examines the perspectives of engineering juniors and seniors having recently completed a co-op or internship, the second investigates the experiences of recent engineering graduates during the first twelve weeks of their jobs, and the third explores the beliefs of more experienced engineers who engaged in service-oriented projects as students. We selected these data because they both represent three different points in time and speak to different levels of understanding of and familiarity with engineering organizations. We conducted a thematic analysis to identify major themes related to engineers’ agency and the way their organizational structure interacts with their own beliefs and skills. Specifically, we explore themes of Relational Empowerment, Structural Empowerment, Organizational Fit, and Expectations. Results suggest that the point at which one is in their engineering career (i.e., new vs. experienced) might influence how they experience these themes, and point to critical questions surrounding the role of professional preparation from engineering programs and organizations.