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Purpose: This paper aims to disclose the implications of the 4th Industrial Revolution for vocational and professional qualifications and their systems. It also seeks to enhance more active discussion of experts and researchers about the change of vocational and professional qualifications created by the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Design/methodology/approach: Research is based on the case studies of the design and development of vocational and professional qualifications focused on the skills requirements of the 4th Industrial Revolution. There are analyzed and compared two cases of the international (EU) projects aiming to design and implement new qualifications in the metalworking industry and the case of introduction of additional qualifications in Germany. The main research methods include content analysis of the qualifications descriptors and vocational education and training (VET) curricula, a meta-analysis of the research on the implications of Industry 4.0 for VET. Findings: The choices of the structure and contents of qualifications and VET curricula in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution are defined by the specific state of technologies and work organizations in the enterprises, limitations of VET providers, individual skills needs of learners, national and sectoral policies in the field of qualifications and curricula. It requires compromises between the concept of solid qualifications based on the holistic orientation to work processes and the trends toward flexible curriculum; between the design of new qualifications and adjustment of the existing ones, as well as between the individualistic and collective approaches to qualifications. Research limitations/implications: The research is focused on the development of qualifications in the manufacturing sector (metalworking and engineering industry). The paper contributes to the theoretical discussions and research of qualifications, competence, VET and human resource development by suggesting a theoretical framework for the analysis of the development of qualifications in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution, as well as by stressing the importance of holistic view to this development which should comprise both policies and practices of the design of qualifications, curriculum design, education and training and assessment of learning outcomes. Originality/value: The paper provides insight into the implications of the 4th Industrial Revolution to the key processes of the national systems of qualifications by referring to the cases of current efforts to adjust qualifications in the metalworking sector and engineering industry. It also suggests possible scenarios for the future development of vocational and professional qualifications in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Online mentoring can be useful for supporting girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, little is known about the differential effects of various online mentoring formats. We examine the general and relative effectiveness of three online mentoring formats, one-on-one mentoring, many-to-many group mentoring, and a hybrid form of the two. All three formats were implemented in different years in the Germany-wide online-only mentoring program, CyberMentor, whose platform enables communication and networking between up to 800 girls (in grades 5-13) and 800 women (STEM professionals) each year. We combined longitudinal mentee data for all first-year participants (N = 4017 girls, M age  = 14.15 years) from 9 consecutive mentoring years to evaluate and compare the three mentoring formats. Overall, all formats effected comparable increases in mentees' STEM activities and certainty about career plans. However, mentees' communication behavior and networking behavior on the mentoring platform differed between the three formats. Mentees in the hybrid mentoring format showed the most extensive STEM-related communication and networking on the platform. We also analyzed the explanatory contributions of STEM-related communication and networking on interindividual differences in the developmental trajectories of mentees' STEM activities, elective intentions in STEM, and certainty about career plans, for each format separately., (© 2020 The Authors. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of New York Academy of Sciences.)

The German engineer H.A. Janssen gave one of the first accounts of the often peculiar behavior of granular material in a paper published in German in 1895. From simple experiments with corn he inferred the saturation of pressure with height in a granular system. Subsequently, Janssen derived the equivalent of the barometric formula for granular material from the main assumption that the walls carry part of the weight. The following is a translation of this article. The wording is chosen as close as possible to the original. While drawings are copied from the original, figures displaying data are redone for better readability. The translation is complemented by some bibliographical notes and an assessment of earlier work, wherein Hagen predicted the saturation of pressure with depth in 1852, and Huber-Burnand demonstrated that saturation qualitatively as early as in 1829. We conclude with a brief discussion of more recent developments resting on Janssen's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on engineering practice is scarce and sharing of qualitative research data can reduce the effort required for an aspiring researcher to obtain enough data from engineering workplaces to draw generalizable conclusions, both qualitative and quantitative. This paper describes how a large shareable qualitative data set on engineering practices was accumulated from 350 interviews and 12 field studies performed by the principal investigator and by students conducting PhD and capstone research projects. Ethical research practice required that sharing and reuse of qualitative data be considered from the start. The researchers' interests and methods were aligned to maintain sufficient consistency to support subsequent analysis and re-analysis of data. Analysis helped to answer questions of fundamental significance for engineering educators: what do engineers do, and why are the performances of engineering enterprises so different in South Asia compared with similar enterprises in Australia? Analysis also demonstrated the overwhelming significance of technical collaboration in engineering practice. Conceiving engineering practice as a series of technical collaboration performances requires a more elaborate understanding of social interactions than is currently the case in engineering schools. Another finding is that global engineering competency could be better described in terms of "working with people who collaborate differently". Research helped to demonstrate that formal treatment of technical collaboration in an engineering curriculum could help avoid student misconceptions about engineering practice that hinder their subsequent engineering performances.

Student success is among the most widely researched areas in tertiary education. Generalisability of research in this field is problematic due to cultural and structural differences between countries, institutions and programmes where the research is done. Engineering education in the Netherlands has not been studied in depth. In this paper, outcomes of studies done outside and inside engineering and outside and inside the Netherlands are discussed to help understand the complexity of student retention issues. Although generalisation is an issue, there are a number of concepts and variables that surface in many of these studies, including students' background and disposition variables, education attributes, variables concerning educational climate and student behaviour. How these variables are related and how a university can apply the outcomes of research in this field of study are discussed in this paper. (Contains 1 table, 3 figures and 2 notes.)

In today's teaching and learning approaches for first-semester students, practical courses more and more often complement traditional theoretical lectures. This practical element allows an early insight into the real world of engineering, augments student motivation, and enables students to acquire soft skills early. This paper describes a new freshman introduction course into practical engineering, which has been established within the Bachelor of Science curriculum of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of RWTH Aachen University, Germany. The course is organized as an eight-day, full-time block laboratory for over 300 freshman students, who were supervised by more than 60 tutors from 23 institutes of the Electrical Engineering Department. Based on a threefold learning concept comprising mathematical methods, MATLAB programming, and practical engineering, the students were required to transfer mathematical basics to algorithms in MATLAB in order to control LEGO Mindstorms robots. Toward this end, a new toolbox, called the "RWTH-Mindstorms NXT Toolbox," was developed, which enables the robots to be controlled remotely via MATLAB from a host computer. This paper describes how the laboratory course is organized and how it induces students to think as actual engineers would in solving real-world tasks with limited resources. Evaluation results show that the project improves the students' MATLAB programming skills, enhances motivation, and enables a peer learning process. (Contains 15 figures.)

This paper offers a multi-perspective view on engineering education at RWTH Aachen University: curriculum design, examples of newly developed teaching methods for engineering curricula, and teaching competencies and teacher qualification. It is based on the theories of student-centred learning, project learning, social skills, etc., but the paper covers the practical implications and ways of implementation of these items in a current design process of a new study programme: In the course of the Bologna process the mechanical engineering study programme of RWTH Aachen University has encountered a complete and thorough revision responding to the need of present-day technical students and--accordingly--to the fast-growing requirements of the engineering industry. This change process will be presented. A case study from engineering informatics shows concepts for modern teaching methods, responding to the requirements of students and industry, especially regarding social skills. Teaching competencies have to change and grow accordingly. Thus, a concept for the improvement of educational skills and abilities of engineering teachers--integrated into their work process--is demonstrated. (Contains 5 figures.)

Non-formal education has been suggested as becoming more and more important in the last decades. As the aims of non-formal education are broad and diverse, a large variety of non-formal learning activities is available. One of the emerging fields in many countries, among them Finland and Germany, has been the establishment of non-formal laboratory learning environments. These laboratories were established in universities and research institutes to aim at enriching opportunities for primary and secondary school students to do more and more intense practical work, e.g. in chemistry. The primary rationale of these laboratories, in the beginning, was mainly to raise students' interest in the fields of science and engineering, possibly inspiring them to pursue a career in these fields. However, recently the movement has started offering more programs aiming at all learners, but especially those students who are sometimes neglected in traditional science education in the formal sector. A focus on all learners is suggested to help raise students' level of scientific literacy when connecting practical science learning with the societal and environmental perspectives of science. Chemistry learning connected to sustainability issues offers many contemporary topics that are often not yet part of the chemistry formal curriculum but can easily form contexts for non-formal learning. Because of its flexible character, non-formal education can help implementing aspects of sustainability into chemistry education and also can take a gander at the growing heterogeneity of today's students. This paper derives a joint perspective from two non-formal chemistry education initiatives from Finland and Germany focusing education for sustainability for both talented and educationally disadvantaged students in the foreground of a more general perspective on non-formal and sustainability education in chemistry.

Low-stakes assessment is supposed to improve educational practice by providing feedback to different actors in educational systems. However, the process of assessment from design to the point of a final impact on student learning outcomes is complex and diverse. It is hard to identify reasons for substandard achievement on assessments, let alone the means that should be undertaken to improve the educational setting. Furthermore, it is difficult to show a causal link between educational reforms and change in test achievement over time. This paper examines the potential impact that low-stakes testing initiatives have in engineering higher education on educational improvement by examining two case studies. It discusses how the design of constructs and particular assessment conditions may foster or limit educational improvement and outlines conditions to ensure that low-stakes assessment designs achieve educational improvement.

Using data on German university graduates, this paper analyzes wage differentials by field of study at labor market entry and five to six years later. At both points of time, graduates from arts/humanities have lower average monthly wages compared to other fields. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions show that these wage differentials can be explained largely by different job and firm characteristics rather than by individual or study-related characteristics. We also find evidence that the less favorable job and firm characteristics of arts/humanities graduates at labor market entry will persist for (at least) the next five to six years. (Contains 7 tables and 11 notes.)

Today we are confronted with a new challenge in product development: "Diversity" needs to be implemented in the engineering design and development teams. Such diversity means to "mirror" within the teams the characteristics of different customer groups: the two genders, the different age groups, and the different cultural background corresponding to the cultural differences represented in today's society. Thus the products and services developed in this way are expected to serve more specifically the different customer groups within society. This approach has already been proven successful, e.g., in some areas of car design and consumer goods. Therefore, science and engineering should in this sense become concerned with "diversity" across society. In particular engineering education needs to focus on different student groups, especially women. Both enterprises and universities have to put emphasis on co-operation in order to achieve such focus on these new and different customers groups. But what sounds so easy in a pragmatic view, becomes more and more difficult under considerations of the traditional patterns in engineering education. It means accepting different motivations and experiences of students, especially women. It means also to accept different ways of teaching and learning and thus, different strategies in both engineering education and research. One way to develop engineering education further as suggested here, shows the new approach of "Gender Studies in Engineering" to be described in this paper. (Contains 2 figures.)

Purpose and aim of the study: The paper aim is to analyse qualitatively youth genderbased discrimination in employment. Design / Methodology / Approach: The methodology of exploratory case study research was employed in this research. The method of data collection was observation. Observation was chosen, as it is an effective method of collecting qualitative data for building an adequate picture related to the phenomenon investigated. The obtained data were processed via pedagogical interpretation. The data were summarised. Main Findings: Young engineering specialists have not been affected by gender based discrimination in employment. This finding based on the qualitative study is in accordance with the quantitative data received from a questionnaire survey recently implemented in selected countries of the European Union. Originality: The originality of the paper is shown by a qualitative analysis of youth gender-based discrimination in employment, as there is a gap in such studies. Implications: The scientific community could put more their efforts into the investigation of this significant topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern societies aim to solve the global challenges of the 21st century with sustainable solutions such as resource efficiency, use of renewable energy sources and recycling. Engineers are called upon to create the cutting edge technological solutions that can help to address these challenges. In developed as well as in developing countries, changes in engineering education will be necessary to prepare engineers for this important task. This article outlines some priorities for the education of future engineers. It calls upon the UNESCO to provide within the framework of its new Engineering Initiative the much needed support for reforms of engineering education in particular in developing countries.

The article features the Mulberry Harbours which is an outstanding feat of maritime military engineering of the twentieth century. In 1944, the Allied invasion against Nazi Germany was essential to prevent the Red Army from overrunning the whole of Western Europe following the German collapse. The harbours' main function was to ensure that the Allied forces could land sufficient equipment and supplies immediately after D-day to resist the inevitable German counter-offensive.

In this paper, I analyze how recent calls to internationalize publication behavior affect research practices at an automotive engineering department in Germany. Automotive engineering is a field with traditionally rather scarce publication activity and strong connections to industry. Substantial authority to define suitable research problems and ways of organizing knowledge production on a daily basis was therefore reserved for local academic elites as well as corporate partners. However, as engineers are increasingly expected to prove their performance through publishing in international peer-reviewed journals, the judgment as to what should be considered “interesting” or “robust” research is partly relegated to a gradually globalizing community of academic peers. This generates a variety of tensions with established ways of coordinating epistemic work at the department studied here. For example, the thematic interests of journals tend to exert a disruptive centrifugal pull in the context of an otherwise highly modular research culture, and possibilities to publish in international venues are unequally distributed across individual research projects. But while department members agree that there is a lack of fit between current practices and new expectations towards their publishing behavior, their opinions about the conclusions that should be drawn differ significantly. Some researchers argue that profound organizational changes are necessary to foster the academic rigor of German engineering research. Others believe that evaluation criteria should simply be adapted. This situation is arguably characteristic for research areas with a traditionally strong orientation to local stakeholders, and it suggests a need for more deliberative, participatory approaches to research evaluation in such fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. This paper, written in memory of Professor Wolfgang Beitz,(n1) discusses some of the influences of the work undertaken in Germany on systematic engineering design, highlights differences between the language regions, and gives examples of design research and design education linked to Konstruktionslehre--the standard text on systematic engineering design for which Professor Beitz was most widely recognised outside Germany. The paper finishes with a plea for a greater exchange of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an account of Prof. Dr. Kinji Shimizu, the first president of Nagoya Institute of Technology, and his establishment of Nagoya Municipal Science Museum. After graduating from the Electrical Engineering Department of Kyoto Imperial University in 1923, Shimizu was impressed by the German Museum in Munich during his stay there as a student in 1932. It's the first time that he learned the education in cooperation with industries. Just after the Second World War, he became director general of the Ministry of Education. However, new education system given by the United States focused not on developing practical ability but on gaining the basic knowledge, which is contrary to what he expected. Then, he contributed to the establishment of the Japanese Society for Engineering Education, besides working as the president of Nagoya Institute of Technology in the earlier 1950s. His idea was supported by industries for the economic growth. Throughout his career, Prof. Dr. Shimizu was convinced that practical engineering education would benefit Japan, and wanted to introduce cooperative education between universities and industries, along the lines of the same system in Germany and the United States. With this vision he founded Nagoya Municipal Science Museum in cooperation with local industries and local government as his final achievement. The museum was completed in 1964.

This paper describes a series of student projects which are intended to complement theoretical education in acoustics and engineering noise control with practical experience. The projects are also intended to enhance the students' ability to work in a team, to manage a project, and to present their results. The projects are carried out in close cooperation with industrial partners so that the students can get a taste of the professional life of noise control engineers. The organization of such a project, its execution, and some of the results from the most recent student project are presented as a demonstrative example. This latest project involved the creation of noise maps of a production hall, the acoustic analysis of a packaging machine, and the acoustic analysis of a spiral vibratory conveyor. Upon completion of the analysis, students then designed, applied, and verified some simple preliminary noise reduction measures to demonstrate the potential of these techniques., (© 2012 Acoustical Society of America)

This paper describes how some aspects of Martin Heidegger's philosophy resonate strongly with an engineering outlook. He argued that practice was more "primordial"" than theory, though preserving an important role for theoretical understanding as well, thus speaking to the gap between engineering education (highly theoretical) and engineering practice (mostly empirical). He also underlined the reality of "average" practices into which we are socialized, though affirming the potential for original work and action too, thus providing the grounds for self-actualization whether within the routine or in transcending it. His notion of "thrownness" emphasizes the importance of context, with which engineers are constantly engaged. While all this relates to the idea of our "being", Heidegger also dealt with the influence of time on our practices. Future death could be seen as spurring innovation, cultural history as a source for critiquing current practice and the present "situation" as the immediate context for corrective action. His major book is appropriately called "Being and Time".

Using data from a large survey of German researchers in public science and based on a formal structure, this paper examines determinants of academic entrepreneurship. The key contribution is to discern factors driving research-driven entrepreneurship versus overall academic entrepreneurship. The extant literature has almost exclusively focused on the latter and implicitly assumed academic entrepreneurs to commercialize their research. Results show that, despite some plausible similarities in the determinants, there are significant differences. In particular, while both entrepreneurship categories benefit from greater patent applications, more time spent on consulting by the researcher and from participation in European conferences, research leaders and engineering science disciplines are more likely to lead to research-driven entrepreneurs. However, the positive influences of university employment (compared with being employed at a public research organization) on overall academic entrepreneurship fail to show up in research-driven entrepreneurship. One implication is that universities may be unduly patting themselves on the back – they might yield more entrepreneurs, but not necessarily research-driven entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering work in the German automotive industry is currently being dictated by corporate reorganization processes. These are driven by processes of informatization, financialization, and globalization, and evince an increase in the (global) division of labor in product development, as well as an increase in competitive pressures. Being able to deal with information and knowledge is important for coping with these processes at work. In terms of engineers' work, this means that engineers must be able to deal with the increasing amounts of information available in the form of benchmark figures, data, etc., as well as with the challenges presented by work shared in global networks. This paper presents the results of a series of qualitative interviews. The main trends that can be pointed out are the ‘enucleation’ (removing the core) of engineering work, the loss of autonomy, increasing insecurity, and the changing materiality of the objects worked on. Enucleation processes are increasingly changing older engineers' fields of work. More and more, they are being called upon to take over communication and coordination practices. In connection with increasing insecurity, employees' perception of their own position in the company is changing and, in the end, their strategies of action, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on 19th and early 20th century engineering education reveals two quite general phenomena: in several countries (a) curricula have varied widely among engineering colleges with some of them strongly ‘science-oriented’ while others were more ‘practice-oriented’; and (b) at certain times and places the curriculum has tended to shift away from ‘practice’ and toward ‘science’ (a process sometimes known as ‘academic drift’). In this paper I show that relatively little attempt has yet been made to account for either phenomenon. After reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the literatures on the USA, Germany, Britain and to a lesser extent France, I argue that comparative analysis is essential in order to develop a general understanding of the dynamics of the system of higher engineering education. An example of how this might be done is taken from my recent study of German agricultural colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of the Collaborative Research Centre 'Distortion Engineering', begun at the University of Bremen in 2001, comes to a formal end in 2011. This note briefly describes the background to the project and the body of open information it has yielded [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flow velocity measurements on several Rhine branches near the Dutch–German border were carried out in 1790 and 1792. Original description of the velocity instrument and original measurement techniques were evaluated to assess the reliability of the instrument and data. The operation of the instrument is based on a dynamic balance between drag force on a submerged vertical plate and gravitational force on a weight above the water surface. Uncertainty in measured velocities caused by friction of the instrument is negligible. Consequently, velocities measured with this instrument are realistic and can be used for detailed analysis of river flow parameters. The original aim of the 1790–1792 campaign was to determine the new discharge distribution of the Rhine branches after construction of groynes at the bifurcations in 1784. The measurements showed that discharge distribution had improved. The analysis herein of instrument operation and accuracy justifies this conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the outcome of the Audio Engineering Society 116th Convention held in Berlin, Germany in May 2004. Awards and opening ceremony; Exhibitor seminars; Paper sessions.

Copyright of IFLA Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article, based on a paper read before the Royal Society of Medicine, points out that industrial efficiency is as much a problem of physiology and psychology as of engineering. The effect of nutrition on efficiency is considered with particular reference to the rationing of bread ; and other factors, such as air conditions, working hours and training are briefly discussed. An account is given of the extremely interesting training methods pursued by the Deutsche Institut für technische Arbeitsschulung, or Dinta, of Düsseldorf [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women engineers in Germany rarely reach the higher management levels of companies. The men-dominated work culture in engineering is regarded as one of the reasons for this. In particular, because there is a masculine 'engineering habitus', the women's habitus conflicts with the field-specific rules. However, successful women engineers are able to deal with and adapt to the 'engineering habitus' to integrate into the profession. This study examines the importance of the help of others in overcoming this problem. It asks how social support promotes the adaptation to an engineering habitus that benefits women engineers who aim to achieve leadership positions. To answer this question, qualitative interviews with women engineers who hold leadership positions were analyzed. The results reveal that the adaptation to the engineering habitus can be facilitated by the social support of various persons. In particular, supervisors, role models, and colleagues introduce women to the work culture and they give them access to higher-status persons. Partners and women's networks provide emotional support to deal with gender-specific challenges and they help to alleviate the conflict between their roles as women, mothers, and engineers. This study deals critically with masculine norms in engineering and highlights the need for an inclusive work culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although governments and higher education institutions across Europe are promoting agendas for widening the educational participation and increasing the social mobility of young people from lower socio-economic groups, very little has been written about the experiences of these individuals when seeking and entering employment. We aim to address this gap. Using a qualitative research approach, we explore the career expectations, experiences and limitations of first-generation university engineering students and graduates in Germany. The article draws upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu to demonstrate how social and cultural capitals instilled by parents and social peers are invaluable in developing personal and professional networks and eventual entry into the engineering professions. A lack of, or underdeveloped, capitals can inhibit career opportunities and ultimately the social mobility and professional choices of graduate engineers. Our research discovered that university graduates from less advantaged backgrounds face a 'class ceiling' at university, in obtaining an internship and then when gaining entry to and working in the engineering profession; they encounter 'sticky steps' at each stage of their career ladder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in psychology are often surveyed for personality. Empirical results show relevance of this topic, because personality influences academic success. In contrast, we know much less about the personality of students of cooperative education. So, we collected data from 5,863 students at Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in August 2016. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) indicated that gender (partial η² = .06), academic field (partial η² = .01) and covariate university entrance scores (partial η² = .05) have an effect on Big Five personality traits controlling age and social class. The results can be used for selecting students in cooperative education for academic fields and compare them with other types of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inefficient and ineffective management of technical product changes during ramp-up phases of new model ranges in series production endanger the defined time-to-market and, concurrently, a company's expected earnings. One of the research projects at the Bremen Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science at the University of Bremen deals with this topic, and, accompanied by industry, significant weaknesses with regard to the organizational aspects have been identified. Today's product change management processes are based on DIN 199/4, a German standard publicized by the German Institute for Standardization in 1981, which focuses on a documentation scheme for bills of materials as well as engineering drawings. Unfortunately, the management of a physical product change process is not described. The project, however, shows the organizational deficits in this area of research. This article points out the main weaknesses of today's product change management and proposes a new approach for a product change classification scheme as well as an approach for a new organization scheme for product change management teams in order to reduce product change implementation lead times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A calendar of events related to metallurgy from April 12, 2010 to September 11, 2010 is presented which include the Energy and Environment Week in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, NanoBioEurope in Munster, Germany and the Materials Science and Engineering in Darmstadt, Germany.

During the so-called "Second Industrial Revolution," engineers were constituting themselves as a new social and professional group, and found themselves in often fierce competition with existing elites--the military, the nobility, and educated bourgeois mandarins--whose roots went back to medieval and early modern pre-industrial social orders. During that same time, engineers also discovered the discipline of philosophy: as a means to express their intellectual and social agendas, and to theorize technology and its relationship to art, history, culture, philosophy, and the state. This article analyzes engineers' own philosophical writings about technology as well as the institutions in which they composed them in 1910s and 1920s Germany. It emphasizes engineers' contributions to well-known discourses founded by canonical philosophers, the role of preindustrial economies and their imagination in such philosophies, and the role of both the history and the philosophy of technology in engineers' desire for upward social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vitali Vitaliev tells us of the technology behind the world's wealthiest spot that he himself discovered in the Bavarian Alps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information from various aspects of the field of international serials and electronic resource management. Abstracts for several research articles are included on topics such as scholarly electronic books (e-books) and open source data in academic publishing. Additionally, awards and grants presented by the American Library Association (ALA) in 2011 are highlighted along with notes on the reorganization of the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG). Brief information regarding the 2012 conference for the UKSG and a list of online resources related to serials librarians are also included.

Copyright of Journal for East European Management Studies is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The case of Germany is taken as an example of cyclical variation in higher education enrolment in the sciences. The article argues that the mechanism underpinning these fluctuations is the cobweb model. This model establishes a recursive loop between trends in enrolments in a discipline and trends in the labour market associated with this discipline. The analysis highlights two conditions that are required for the model to apply: the elasticity of higher education capacity and the segmentation of the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employers attempt to shape employees' work identities through the organisation of work. However, they are partly constrained by employee expectations related to education and training, the occupational structure and the labour market. Employees, individually and collectively, also attempt to influence how their work is performed and play an active role in shaping their own work identities. Work identities are therefore influenced both by structural factors and the agency of employers and employees. This article concentrates upon how individuals working in engineering seek to shape their own work identities. An overview of the broad structural context of working in engineering and metal working in France, Germany, Spain and the UK is given, followed by an outline of how employers sought to shape work identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]