EDITORIAL

Strategic management of engineeringbased industries

Special issues of the IEE Proceedings have appeared beforeon a number of different subjects and have attracted a widerange of engineering authorship. This issue must however beconsidered as outstanding. A glance at the list of contribu-tors will show that, between them, the authors share a levelof expertise, experience and authority in their subject,namely the management of electrical engineering, that isquite exceptional and it would be difficult to find authorsable to write with more authority on how electrical engin-eering industries are managed in the public and the privatesectors. There may well be those who believe they knowbetter how"these industries should be run, but surely theleaders of industry themselves can best say what is in theirown minds and what are the philosophies guiding theiractions.

The IEE now recognises that management is an impor-tant activity within engineering. Engineering experience isan essential requirement for chartered engineer status andmanagement (along with research, computer programming,teaching and other engineering support activities) and canqualify as relevant experience for membership of the IEE asa professional engineer. Naturally, it has always been recog-nised that management is important to and for engineeringbut, until relatively recently, it has been regarded as separatefrom engineering. To any firm of engineering consultants,no doubt, this must always have seemed anomalous, sincetheir engineers were surely part of the engineering pro-fession and doing engineering when they were managinglarge engineering projects.

At all events, the view that management can itself be animportant aspect of engineering has gained ground overrecent years within the IEE. Management was recognisedwith a capital M in the former Science, Education & Manage-ment (S.E. & M.) Division. Professional groups were formed,summer schools were held and papers were published inthe Proceedings IEE on management topics. One object inthe recent reorganisation of the divisional structure through-out the IEE has been to strengthen the consideration givento management matters, and it is timely to mark the for-

mation of the new IEE Management & Design Division bythis special issue of the IEE Proceedings.

For other subjects published in the IEE Proceedings,complaints are sometimes heard that too many of the papersare theoretical. Papers on management science can havetheir share of mathematical analysis, but even those dealingwith quantitative concepts or practical management prob-lems tend to be theoretical in that they present theirauthors' views on what chief executives ought to do ratherthan what they actually do. When it comes to management,chief executives themselves are usually too busy doing it tofind time to write about it. Even when individuals' ex-periences are described in the form of case histories, thosecases are almost always small snapshots — occassionally,exquisite miniatures — of particular situations. Rarely arethe broad strategies written about by those in responsiblepositions, not at least while they are still responsible.

Yet it is in the engineering tradition, and certainly inthe tradition of the Proceedings of the IEE, to have thelatest and best engineering practice presented by its prac-titioners. The strategic management of engineering basedindustries should be no exception. It is therefore particu-larly pleasing that so many heads of leading industriesbased on electrical engineering have (with support fromtheir staff) contributed to this issue.

The resulting collection of papers covers an importantcross-section of leading British industries involved withelectrical engineering, both in power and electronics, asmanufacturers and as users, in the public and privatesectors. We hope that this collection will provide a sourcebook of strategic views of engineering management by thestrategists themselves that will find a place in the archivesof management science. We also hope that it will encourageand assist engineers to move into such senior managementpositions themselves in due course, and we hope that theywill immediately emulate their seniors by contributingpapers of their own to the IEE Proceedings on managementtopics.

D.T. SWIFT-HOOK

JEEPROC, Vol. 127, Pt. A, No. 9, DECEMBER 1980 585

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