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In studying these two reports certain ambiguities or imprecisions in both the statements and the figures have become apparent. These ambiguities or imprecisions can be divided into two categories, internal or external. The first, the internal ones, relate to lack of Consistency and clarity in the reports themselves; the second, external to inadequacies in the statistical sources. Of these two categories of imprecisions the internal one is the main concern of this paper, for a comparative study of the two reports revealed among others the following areas of difficulty: unexplained change in the base figure for components; obscure comparison of the totals for Electronics; non-differentiation between a part and the whole of the valve and semi-conductor sector. From a general pragmatic point of view N.E.D.C. provides a quantitative statement against which actual changes in the industries can be assessed. N.E.D.C. also-provides a most valuable stimulus to industry by encouraging it to examine in a rational and coordinated way its present position and future prospects.

THE purpose of this paper is to explain the nature, purposes and functions of 'Shop Steward "Combine Committees" ' in the British 'Engineering industry'. Actually, the so-called 'engineering industry'[1] is a complex of many different industries which produce a large variety of different products. In the context of this paper the 'engineering industry' or the metal trades refers to those firms whose employees' wages and conditions fall within the joint negotiating jurisdiction of the Engineering and Allied Employers' National Federation and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. Thousands of firms with an employing power estimated at 570,000 workers do not belong to the Federation but are nevertheless within the Federation's jurisdictional area because they produce products that are included in the 'engineering industry'. Consequently, the terms negotiated by the Federation and the Confederation tend to become the minimum terms even for non-federated firms; under section 8 of the Terms and Conditions of Employment Act, 1959, the Federation and/or the Confederation have a statutory right to invoke, through the Minister of Labour, the adjudication of the Industrial Court in cases where an employer in the engineering industry (be he federated or non-federated) is not observing the recognized terms and conditions of employment as laid down by collective agreements. This great industry with its vast numbers of products and great differences in production techniques can only be defined within the institutional context of its collective bargaining system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of the market on the mechanical engineering industries in Great Britain between 1860 and 1914. There has been virtually no analysis at all of engineering technology in Britain. The development of the techniques of standardization and interchangeable manufacture, for example, has been studied almost entirely from the American point of view. Knowledge of production techniques in the manufacture of steam-engines-- stationary and marine--is scarce, but when the market was right, interchangeability was aimed for and achieved from an early date. Clearly the market is not a complete answer to all our questions. To understand more fully the lags and successes of British engineering there is need for more detailed study of its training and institutional patterns. It may be that mechanical engineering differs in important respects from other industries, but in that field at least it is arguable that the slowing down of British industrial growth after 1870 was due more to objective economic factors than has previously been recognized.

The article reports about higher technical education and socio-economic development. It discusses social science, development studies and engineering education. Surveys are conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to present a factual and quantitative collation of data on social science teaching in schools and other institutions of polytechnic education at university level. It deliberates on social science teaching in higher technical education in Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. It also offers a comprehensive view of development in comparative education in social sciences, innovations in higher technical education in India, and the conditions of curricular innovation. Also, it gives a brief discussion on the technologist as the agent of a new diplomacy in teaching and research.

This article focuses on the relation between the pressure of internal demand and the British export performance. A high pressure of demand, somehow defined, leads to a situation in which manufacturers divert productive resources away from meeting the export orders, towards satisfying home demand. Such a shift of resources leads to lengthening of the order-delivery lags for export orders on the supply side. On the demand side lengthening of the lads may lead to a fall in the new orders. In this paper, distributed-lag model is proposed and estimated.

Comments on the education service of Great Britain. Perceived lack of national educational planning by the service; Necessity of establishing a Technician Education Council with adequate manpower resources; Problem of developing engineering courses and making them attractive to students.

The article focuses on some investment decisions of Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd. Because of its implications for the growth performance of the British economy before 1914, the reluctance, of many of Britain's largest firms to move into some of the more important expanding areas of engineering after 1890 is a subject which has long interested economic historians. At a general level there has been much discussion of this phenomenon, but there has been little evidence derived from business records. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the investment decisions made between 1900 and 1914 by Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd. in order to shed some light on this question. An old established Tyneside engineering firm, Armstrong Whitworth was one of Great Britain's largest industrial undertakings, and by the turn of the century it was increasingly specializing in the armaments business. As economist R.C. Trebilcock has convincingly shown, the nature of the company's arms operations favours a move into one of the new industries of this period, the motor vehicle business, a move which was in fact made by Armstrong's shortly after 1900.

The article explores the reversal of skill differentials in payment by results (PBR) systems. It highlights the results of a report by the Prices and Incomes Board on PBR systems in Great Britain. The article uses data from the engineering sector to investigate the problem over a wider sample of plants, and attempts to construct some precise measures of its incidence. The types of overlap between the earnings of semi-skilled and unskilled workers in local labor markets are presented.

Focuses on the effects of the difficulties in acquiring skilled labor on the performance of the engineering industry in Great Britain. Influence of difference in wage rates on the shortages of skilled labor; Comparison between internal and external labor market; Significance of the internal labor market structure to an occupational training scheme.

John Wellens' feature on developments in apprenticeship, ICT, March 1978 pp 96-100, has rightly attracted a great deal of interest even though perhaps at the expense of some embarrassment within the EITB. As one of those fortunate enough to see an advance copy of the Board's proposals I could see no reason for secrecy. The effectiveness of the ICT article is now evidenced by the proposals being published generally as Information Paper No 49 and whatever the reasons for what Wellens calls the 'EITB Pantomime', the proposals merit wide and urgent debate if they are to stand a chance of being implemented in time and in a form to be of benefit to young people currently at school. This paper should be regarded as a personal contribution to that debate from a practising trainer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on product elimination theory and company practices. There is a gap between theory and practice in the area of product elimination. Existing knowledge and theory about the product elimination function is woefully inadequate to provide an understanding of company behavior in this area. This may be attributed to both the paucity of empirical contributions to the understanding of the product elimination function, and the shortcomings of the normative approaches developed to provide some evidence in this area. In fact, the normative approaches proposed in the literature being distilled from somewhat limited experience, common sense and logic, have distinct overtones of evangelical fervor and draw no boundary as to the specific product and company conditions to which they apply. The process through which elimination decisions are made and implemented in a particular company is related to the problem situation that evoked such a process, the importance of the role played by the product within the company and vis-a-vis its users, and the nature of the company, its business, its management, and its environment.

The article deals with trade union organization and skill in the cotton and engineering in industries in Great Britain from 1850 to 1960. There has been a growing awareness of the significance of skill within the manual working class for an understanding of the historical development of class relations in the region. Events in the British engineering industry have illustrated the continuing importance of differences around the axis of skill for an understanding of the manual working class. The cotton and engineering industries between 1850 and 1960 is known for its persistence of the skilled divide within the manual working class and its close connection with the structure of trade unionization.

Despite the continuing problem of shortages of skilled workers in most western countries, very little is known about the key determinants of apprentice intake. Several research techniques have been employed to date. The interview method has been employed fairly successfully by Williams (1957), Liepmann (1963) and MacKay (1971). While providing invaluable insight into the recruitment process, these studies are not very effective in distinguishing between different models. In short, they are useful for suggesting hypotheses, but not in testing them.
The second approach emphasizes the investment motive underlying apprentice intake decisions, with the output contribution being deferred until some initial period of learning and training is completed. Two main frameworks can be used to analyse apprentice intake levels from an investment point of view. The simplest of these derives from the pre-Jorgenson investment function literature, notably the flexible accelerator model. Such a model stresses that apprentice intake levels are some function of future output levels. It will be shown that this model performs quite well. A more sophisticated investment approach to training decisions comes from the Becker (1964) formulation, which adds cost considerations to the investment decision as well as a more general perspective to the problem. It will be shown that this approach adds to our understanding of the actual behaviour of variations in apprentice levels.
The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section II we briefly justify the use of a demand rather than a supply approach to explaining variations in apprentice recruitment. In Section III the recruitment for current production model is summarized, while in Section IV an investment model of apprentice recruitment is presented. These models are tested in Section V using time series data from the British engineering industry. Further tests are presented in Section VI where the analysis moves from flows o... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study concerns the project management strategy adopted during the successful building of an &pound:85m terephthalic acid plant for ICI. The client and many others in the Teeside region had experienced severe problems in terms of cost and time overruns on previous similar projects. The resolute application of several fundamental project management principles brought about a radical change in people's attitudes. The previously inefficient and frequently acrimonious situation was transformed to one of highly productive teamwork; resulting in the project meeting all of its objectives, being only three months late and several million pounds under budget. ICI rated the construction efficiency as the highest achieved for many years at Wilton. The paper is based on interviews with the main actors in the project and records the features which they regard as important to its success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication by Engineering Industrial Training Board in Great Britain of its information paper 1P67 in February 1983 marks a significant breakthrough in training and employment. 1P67 sets out a plan for a coherent national system of skill training in engineering and those industries related to it, which will be logical, complete and extremely flexible. It abandons, for instance, the time-serving principle and puts in its place a system of agreed and established standards, a system for measuring their attainment and a system of certification of having reached the various skill standards. It envisages a total system built around identifiable skill areas and recognised transfer points from one part of the system to another. The salient features of the scheme will seem to the average training practitioner to contain nothing new. To many it will read as a very ordinary document. All the separate items have been proposed and re-proposed over the past twenty years or so, although there are one or two features, such as the scheme for introducing company-specific modules, which could not have applied at an earlier stage, before the module system had been introduced.

This paper outlines the important differences between continuing education in the United Kingdom compared with that in many European countries. In addition, the role of Cranfield Institute of Technology in the provision of continuing engineering education is outlined. (Author)

The article focuses on the institutional proliferation of engineering profession in Great Britain from 1847 to 1914. British engineering underwent a remarkable expansion in the nineteenth century, a result of the spread of industrialization and the need for men to provide the machines and expertise for canal and railway building, dock and lighthouse construction, urban development, and the manufacture of a great range of mechanical equipment. Several explanations may be advanced for these apparent anomalies. It could be argued that institutional proliferation was a response to professional success in a laissez-faire society, with educational conservatism reflecting a commitment to the ideal of self help. Alternatively, it is possible that the proliferation of institutions represented a measure of reaction--a withdrawal into congenial company within a largely hostile environment--and that the objection to all proposals for systematic engineering education stemmed from a prejudice against outside interference. The third possibility is that the effectiveness of proliferation thoroughly justified such a policy.

The article comments on the paper of engineers A.G. Jordan and J.J. Richardson regarding the fascinating account of the long and complex saga of negotiation following an official report on the engineering profession in Great Britain. To judge by their ability to document events, opinions and committee papers they have turned good access to participants and papers into a very fruitful project through diligent research. Their weave of brisk narrative and intriguing commentary is a valuable addition to the knowledge of state-profession relations, political responses to economic malaise, and the world of engineers and engineering. Yet their paper is much less convincing on their claim to demonstrate a good test of the system's capacity for policy innovation.

The Birmingham City Development Unit, the Engineering Industry Training Board and Birmingham Polytechnic in Great Britain have joined forces to set up the Midlands Quality Centre, as part of a combined effort to regenerate and support Midlands industry, particularly in relation to quality awareness and capability. The Centre will enable local industry and academic institutions to exchange information on methods and training. The Centre will open officially on January 28, 1987, but organizers expect it to be functioning before then.

Since the Finneston Report raised once again the question of the status and earnings of the engineering profession in the UK, there has been a renewed interest in the factors which influence the earnings of this group. This paper considers the determinants of the earnings of professional engineers, using data from a survey of professional institutions in 1981. The results of this exercise suggest that an unaugmented 'human capital' model can explain about 40% of the variation in earnings in the sample, in terms of differences in formal education and in experience. The inclusion of additional variables to reflect other differences in individual characteristics, such as sex, membership of trade unions, and further training, as well as factors such as location of employment raises the proportion of the variation explained to over 55%. Estimates of rates of return to education are presented based on the earnings function estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International comparisons of engineering graduate numbers are frequently used as indices of industrial development and measures of the responsiveness of the educational system to industrial requirements. Such comparisons make implicit assumptions about quality by assuming that like institutions or like qualifications are being compared. In this paper the concept of 'best practice' engineering education is derived from engineering manpower reports of German engineering education in order to address issues of both quantity and quality in comparing engineering education in Britain and Japan. Japan is found to have associated engineering education with relatively more prestigious institutions and to have attracted a higher proportion of more able male pupils to broad based engineering education compared to Britain. Yet there are some interesting differences between the model of 'best practice' engineering education based on Germany and Japanese practice, particularly in curricula, which underline the importance of the division of labour between education and employment in the education and training of engineers. Examining the responsiveness of educational systems through propositions derived from a model of 'best practice' rather than through simple output statistics underlines the importance of different patterns of institutional development, the role of the state, educational and occupational selection, and status within the curriculum for understanding the variety of contemporary engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the industrial relations and the organization of engineering work from 1880 to 1939 in Great Britain. According to the author, the last 15 years have witnessed an explosion of academic interest in the historical development of industrial work. The theoretical touchstone of this debate, Harry Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capitalism, depicted the evolution of industrial work as the progressive separation of conception and execution, in which machinery and Taylorism combined to wrest knowledge and control over work from an increasingly deskilled and enfeeble proletariat. Braverman's argument has, however, come under increasingly severe criticism as historical and comparative studies have undermined the view that the evolution of specific labour processes can be deduced from an a priori model of capitalist development. The contingent nature of long run changes in work organization has shifted attention from the refinement of teleological theories of industrial development to the search for an adequate method of studying change and continuity in work organisation. Particularly important in this respect is the insistence that the division of labour is shaped by the complex interaction between employer strategies, labour and product markets.

Estimates of union wage and productivity effects are derived using primary micro-level panel data for a sample of firms in the UK engineering industry. Union wage differentials of the order of 10% are suggested from the results, whereas union productivity impacts appear to be non-linear with respect to union density.
This paper reports estimates of union wage and productivity effects using primary micro-level panel data for a sample of firms in the UK engineering industry. The theoretical arguments in this area are well known, and surveys of the theoretical and previous empirical literature will be found in Hirsch and Addison (1985) and Metcalf (1988). Using micro-level data avoids the aggregation problems leading to bias in some previous work (Stewart, 1983; Geroski and Stewart, 1986). Moreover, the particular micro database at our disposal is richer in firm-specific and contextual variables than that available in other recent UK establishment-level analyses (e.g. Blanchflower, 1984; Blanchflower and Oswald, 1988; Nickell and Wadhwani, 1987; Wadhwani and Wall, 1988). This puts us in an unusually advantageous position to take account of the manifold organizational and industry-level factors that impinge on union wage and productivity effects (Bemmels, 1987). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the results of an empirical study into the role of marketing in consulting engineering service firms in the UK. The results suggest that marketing is, to some extent, considered a 'legitimate' management function within these firms. however, evidence can he seen to illustrate that the 'trappings' of marketing prevail rather than the 'substance', which is required if a firm is to have the market-led and customer-driven orientations fundamental to the implementation of the marketing concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the importance of basic industrial research in mediating the controversies between practical engineering and science in Great Britain. Principles on the components of electrical circuit; Symmetry between the electric and magnetic fields; Electric resistance of the equation.

When embarking on any new construction project there will be a probability that some, if not all, participants have not worked together before. Participants, because they lack previous knowledge, will anticipate a type of behavior from the other parties befitting the behavior normally attributed to the group they belong to. If the other party is an architect they will attribute a behavior that belongs to architects in general. This paper seeks to measure this attributed behavior between the three main groups involved in construction; namely, the clients, design professionals, and contractors. It presents the results of a survey measuring the level of mutual confidence between the three groups. The implications of the survey for potential conflict and breakdown of relations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences described in this paper are of six overseas-trained engineers whose education (primarily British) and experience followed different routes. Their applications for professional registration were turned down because they could not submit transcripts of their education. This paper discusses the origin of the British approach to secondary and higher education in the hope that evaluators of foreign education might gain insight into the quality of education of many foreign-trained engineers practicing in the United States. The external examiner system of London University was exported to all British colonies, and this has strongly influenced the systems of education in these countries even after independence. The strong control of the state over the content and quality of the curriculum also extends to the process of professional registration. Thus, because of the basic similarity in academic standards in all the countries of the British Commonwealth, an engineer who has had his or her education and professional training in one part of the Commonwealth can usually be licensed to practice in Britain even if he or she has never lived there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes a project activity used in the undergraduate engineering education which simulates the manufacturing life cycle in Great Britain. Project activity undergone by the students from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath in England; Objectives of the project; Background activities; Involvement of the GEC-Marconi Electronic Systems Corp. in the project.

A number of writers have cited poor records as limiting the ability of supervisors, and indeed of contractors, to carry out some of their most important functions. The study reported in this paper aimed to identify the problems in detail. This was achieved by conducting a mail-shot survey of construction supervisors working for firms of civil engineering consultants. The results indicate that there is considerable room for improvement in the records kept on most sites, where guidelines are said to be inadequate and the problems of enforcing these inadequate guidelines were also recognized. The main source data for progress records was identified as the site diaries kept by individual members of the supervisor's team, and these were found to be particularly difficult to access for a number of reasons. Since the site diaries are such an important source of information, it is argued that most benefit may be gained by taking steps to improve these daily logs which, in turn, will allow better overviews of progress to be produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on teaching mechanical design principles on engineering foundation courses at universities in Great Britain. Nature of problem solving in mechanical design; Details on the problem solving method for mechanical product analysis; Externalization of concepts with the aid of drawing and sketching; Significance of the ability of students to combine mechanical principles and creativity.

A postgraduate training programme in the areas of student learning and supervision is presented. An experiential method of training is employed which involves laboratory and pilot plant supervisions in the Chemical Engineering Department of Imperial College. A series of workshops is used to facilitate discussion on teaching theory and practice, as well as on student counselling and communication issues. Log-book entries are used for the documentation of specific events arising from the supervision sessions, which provide a good basis for peer discussion, as well as an opportunity for self-reflection. A number of examples arising from the workshops are used to demonstrate the mutual benefits of the training programme to academic staff and students. In addition to training in teaching skills, the programme is shown to provide a mechanism for the quality control of demonstrators involved in undergraduate teaching, as well as a regular feedback mechanism to staff on the efficacy of the laboratory-based courses. Through teaching and a structured staff support scheme, the programme is believed to address some of the current concerns on the non-technical (soft) training, and on the further development of the broad science and engineering knowledge of UK postgraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT For decades British engineers have been seen as playing an inadequate role in industry. Their restricted roles have been ascribed to diverse causes and conditions: as ‘under-educated’ for the grounding to lead companies to ‘world class’ status; as ‘under-utilized’ by employment in technical support roles; and as ‘under-professionalized’ in a supposed generally anti-engineering national culture. This study of young graduate engineers seeks to disentangle these blanket characterizations by differentiating between the sectoral and cross-national motive forces in an allegedly ubiquitous ‘British engineer problem’. Our evidence suggests that restricted jobs and careers are sectoral, as opposed to general, phenomena. In some sectors, a ‘crowding’ of engineers and under-recruitment of technician grades results from overreliance on a labour supply of standard, degree-level, qualification sources. Other important influences on work roles and careers are graduate engineers’ orientations to work, and engineers’ own microcorporate culture. Many British graduate engineers feel over-qualified for tasks, but German engineers are divided into the graduates of more theoretical university degrees and the graduates of more practically-focused vocational college degrees (Fachhochschule) responsible for more applied tasks. Within the British complex of occupational crowding and distance between technicians’ and engineers’ tasks, most engineers prefer not ‘high-flying’, managerial careers but work involving engineering know-how. A defensive and subordinate-occupational culture in engineering departments, rather than an independent professional or enterprise one, results from these factors. The analysis concludes with an assessment of its implications for recent reforms to the qualifying procedures for engineering graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyone associated with the nuclear industry will know that the provision of a deep repository has receded by at least several decades. The question now is: 'How does the nuclear industry engineer a suitable storage regime for the foreseeable future?'. This paper explores some of the engineering considerations that Nuclear Installations Inspectorate specialist inspectors need to address when considering the safety case for a long-term radioactive materials store. Any licensee contemplating building a store should already know of such items. Integrity of waste form, storage container, handling equipment and storestructure are addressed. Licensee's knowledge management is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses recent empirical data to explain why the youth labour market has disappeared over the last 20 years. The findings demonstrate that some young people stayed in education to acquire credentials, while others did so merely as a substitute for unemployment. Government policy is discussed in the light of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a snapshot of the findings from the National Survey (1999) into CAA activity in higher education and gives an overview of the usage of CAA in the engineering sector. It offers an insight into the ways in which technology and objective tests can be used to assess a range of learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explains how individuals trained to be physicists take a path to become engineers and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this transformation, particularly with regard to the term "renaissance engineer." Examines the system for registration of physicists as engineers in the United Kingdom. (Author/YDS)