Search

Contribution: An evaluation of the effectiveness of systems engineering (SE) courses in developing students' systems thinking (ST) capacity in both the cognitive and affective domains. A combined cognitive ST performance and affective engagement with ST assessment is proposed as an approach to assess students' ST in both domains. The results can support course change decisions and guide learning experience development. Background: SE education aims to produce graduates with strong knowledge and skills in SE and a strong appreciation of the practical value of ST, which addresses the cognitive and affective domains in education. Consequently, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of SE courses in developing students' ST in these domains, an area that studies do not consider. Intended Outcomes: An understanding of the ST ability of undergraduate students in an SE course in a domain specific engineering program in both the cognitive and affective domains. Application Design: A study evaluated the effectiveness of two SE classes in developing students' ST capacity using a combined cognitive and affective assessment tool developed and validated in previous studies. ST assessment is determined by combining ST performance and affective engagement. To observe the transformation of students' ST capacity, a longitudinal design collected data at two times in each of two offerings of an SE course offered by the same university in two locations--Australia and Singapore. Findings: The course developed students in most dimensions of cognitive ST, but did not appear to improve students' affective engagement with ST Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This chapter examines how human-created systems in civil and organizational domains maintain their required capability to function effectively in the face of adversity and identifies the factors that enable these systems to remain resilient. Typical civil systems include power grid systems and transportation systems, such as aircraft. Organizational systems include enterprises and governments. Adversities include natural disasters and terrorist attacks. A recurring pattern in all domains is the ability to anticipate and prepare for adversity. Another recurring pattern is the ability for the system to adapt to the adversity. Some resilient systems can withstand adversity and then degrade gracefully to a satisfactory state, return to a prior state, or change to some new state. Both domains utilize a set of techniques to achieve resilience. These recurring patterns are common to both domains and are essential to the resilience of diverse systems.

In prior work, a measure of resilience for use in systems design and management was presented. The measure has the form of a time integral of the system performance level. This form generates the research question: Is the time value of resilience a meaningful concept, like the time value of money in engineering economics. This article presents four scenarios to explore the relationship between time and the value of resilience of a product or system. The scenarios are: perishable commodity packaging, the value of resilience rapidly diminishes after the contents’ expiry; a consumer durable product for use in an evolving environment and interface requirement, where the value of resilience is related to the expiry of platform resilience capability; a national infrastructure asset, where usage increases during the system life; and a factory, where the value of resilience depends on the obsolescence of the product. In the first two and last cases, the value of resilience is high for a finite interval and then low or zero. In the third, the value of resilience increases as the asset ages.

The purpose of this paper was to develop and validate a new theoretically based scale to measure students' learning of systems thinking in relation to the affective domain in the context of systems engineering education. Two variant questionnaires are reported here, one using only questions constructed using positive grammar and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, each applied to a different sample. The first group of 186 participants completed the positive version of the questionnaire, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. Construct validity was examined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). EFA was conducted to find the factors underlying each questionnaire. CFA was conducted to confirm the better questionnaire version and to confirm the factors which underlie both versions. The results indicate that a three factor, 16 item, scale with a mix of positive and negative wording is the better instrument with which to measure students' engagement with systems thinking. The results also indicate that the three factor, 16 item construct is a better representative of both versions of the questionnaire, whether the questionnaire has only positive questions or a mix of positive and negative questions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Scenario analysis is a frequently-used method to explore what a proposed system is required to do in the early phases of system development leading towards finding system requirements. A system which is intended to perform a variety of roles under a range of conditions is likely to result in the need for a quantity of scenarios that becomes intractably pluriform. The consequence of too many scenarios is that either the number of scenarios to be analyzed must be reduced to a manageable number or the analysis is likely to be perfunctory, diminishing the value of the analysis, or the total effort required for the analyses may become unjustifiably great given the value of the project and the risks associated with it. We present a method for reducing the number of scenarios to be analyzed through study of the organization of the factors which distinguish scenarios from each other, and for selecting which scenarios need analysis through identifying their points of commonality and identifying where differences may impact system capability. Our method organizes the types and potential values of factors related to a particular system development in order to reduce the number of scenarios to be investigated. We illustrate our approach with a simple case developed for the purpose of this paper.

The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE) project's dual product development cycle spanned a three‐year period from the September 2009 to December, 2012. During this timeframe, BKCASE authors met quarterly at various locations, primarily in various regions of the United States, but also in Stockholm, Sweden; Toulouse, France; London, England; and Rome, Italy (BKCASE, 2009–2019). The team successfully worked through challenges and differences to produce The Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) wiki and a Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE) publication. This article is a collection of personal stories from the team members that focus on overcoming obstacles to successfully produce the final published products.

Systems engineering traditionally approaches the design of systems through determination of requirements for and implementation of a system. The system is conceived as something to enable achievement of an effect with the tacit assumption that the system to be designed must achieve technical performance, including availability characteristics, which enable delivery of the whole of the intended effect. This approach determines the technical requirements of the system to ensure achievement of the system purpose under assumptions about how the system, or fleet, would be deployed to provide the intended service. Usually, cost is addressed after requirements, either to find the cheapest method to achieve the requirements or as one dimension of a trade-space analysis. In this paper, we explore a different philosophy for finding the system requirements; starting with the required system level service provision, but agnostic about the technical quality needed. We investigate a trade-space including the life cycle cost (LCC) of service provision as a contribution to determining subsystem requirements. We model the life cycle, for many variations of technical composition, using a Monte Carlo method, and show that a trade-space of LCC and requirements is likely to produce a cheaper solution than starting with sub-system requirements.

This paper presents a measure of resilience, which can guide system design and management. Systems design must incorporate resilience to provide stakeholders with the most appropriate solution for their lifecycle needs. Design of resilient systems demands a measure of the resilience afforded by a system proposal which can be used to compare design proposals. The measurement method should balance the interest in resilience with all other proposal evaluation criteria, and incorporate the effect of the sequence of unknown future events affecting the system. Ideally, the resilience measure should also be useful to guide management decisions for re-maintenance or upgrade during the system life. This paper presents a method to measure system resilience which can be applied to engineered systems in general, not just a specific class of systems, is threat type agnostic, and does not presuppose any “desirable” outcome allowing a system-specific determination of “desirable” outcomes.

Systems thinking (ST) offers a holistic approach rather than a reductionist approach, through appreciating all the interrelated dimensions of complex problems. It is important for understanding and interacting with all kinds of systems, in order to manage complex problems. However, the broad range of the ST‐related literature found in various disciplines, generates a great deal of disagreement about definitions and understanding of systems thinking. Despite the current ambiguities of ST definitions, its underlying philosophy has a long history. This paper aims to clarify what ST is in the modern day and why it is defined in so many different ways. It identifies a number of interpretations of systems thinking with the purpose of clarifying what it is and why it is variously understood. The main aims of this paper is to propose a new ST construct, and to define its role in the practice of Systems Engineering (SE). This paper then draws implications of the new ST construct for SE education.

This paper arose from the challenges inherent in defining and specifying the complicated, non-functional system characteristic of resilience in the presence of competing definitions. The approach adopted is to specify the resilience of a system using a state-machine. In this class of model, the state of the system is modelled by the states, the threat events that can be expected to result in altered operational states modelled by the definitions of the state transitions, and the result of the occurrence of a threat event modelled by the state to which the system would transition. The paper describes a generic model that can be tailored to form the basis for specifying a range of system types and illustrates its utility through two case studies. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The paper discusses several views on the definition of the term “emergence” in relation to systems. The paper then discusses several approaches to research which have different purposes in order to identify the relationship of the research approach and the issue of emergence. Through this discussion it is possible to identify the relationship between research methodologies, engineering development and the issue of emergence. In particular, it is shown that the problem of emergence contains the core of a pathway to the engineering of systems.

Nowadays, more and more engineering solutions are built by integrating Commercial-Of-The-Shelf (COTS) products rather than building subsystems from scratch. The selection of COTS for defence acquisition and upgraded projects presents a great challenge to systems engineers due to the rapidly changing nature of electronic systems, particularly those related to sensors, combat and mission systems, weapons and countermeasures, avionics, and communications. This paper explores the issues associated with the selection of COTS subsystems to be integrated into a larger system. When the total number of COTS components of the same kind to be procured is very low, such as one unit, there are additional constraints impacting the selection and procurement process. A case study is presented based on the development of the Systems Integration Sandpit (SIS) for exploring systems integration issues, fostering model-based systems engineering and systems engineering education.

This paper continues work begun by Hitchins with the development of the 5-layer model of systems engineering. Hitchins' work was later extended to form the Hitchins-Kasser-Massie representation of systems engineering, HKM Framework, which adds a time dimension related to the stages of a project. The HKM Framework describes the layers of concern and the stages and types of projects at which they are dominant interests. In this paper we introduce a solid space concept to the HKM Framework based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Palmer's Modes of Being. The additional dimensions are useful to guide thinking about the purpose of the product system which is the focus of the project and the kind of existence which it has at the various stages of development. These additional dimensions are expected to be useful in the development of a framework for developing processes to guide the development through an appropriate path to achieve the desired outcome.

During the past few years, natural disasters including the major earthquakes in China and Pakistan, the Tsunami floods of Indonesia, the firestorms of Australia, and terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India and Bali, Indonesia have caused major loss of life, injury and significant loss of property in Asia. How resilient have these Asian and Pacific countries been to these events? During the same period, insurgent attacks in Iraq, subway bombings in London, fire attacks on the city of Paris, and continued threats of terrorists throughout the world have placed life at risk due to terrorist activities. Also hurricanes and destruction in New Orleans, LA and the Gulf Coast region of the United States have caused major loss of life, injury and significant loss of property. How does resilience in these communities compare to similar communities in Asia? Terrorism is the systematic use of violence and force as a means of coercion through fear and intimidation. As we have seen since World War II and experienced first hand since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the calculated murder of political personalities has given way to the random killing of innocent people and civilian populations. Natural disasters are perhaps even more threatening. Are we building systems and responding in a way that permits these communities to respond properly and be resilient to these kinds of events? How can the discipline of systems engineering assist in preparing for, responding to, recovering from and mitigate against the risks of natural disasters and terrorist events? Since September 11, 2001, INCOSE through its Anti-Terrorism International Working Group (ATIWG) has focused the principles, techniques, and practices of systems engineering on how to reduce and eradicate international terrorism. We have taken this opportunity to expand emergency preparedness efforts to natural disasters as well. Through the ATIWG sponsoring of panels at previous INCOSE symposia (2002–2008), writing papers for publication (2003), a tutorial (2004), an Insight Issue (2006) and working group activities, the systems engineering community has discussed the application of collaborative engineering environments, simulation and modeling, religion, system solutions to defend against terrorism, psychology, and root causes of terrorism to address the vulnerabilities of systems as well as the attack responses to threats. This panel continues the INCOSE application of systems engineering to these international problems by discussing the proper responses, recovery and resiliency of society and the systems it builds to natural disaster events and terrorist attacks.

Many of the subsystems developed by the Australian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are integrated into military systems developed by larger companies. If the SMEs cannot win and sustain defence contracts to develop the subsystems because of their lack of systems capability, then the ability of the Australian Defence to develop and deploy needed systems will be adversely affected. By systems capability it is meant effectual use of sound systems engineering (SE) processes and effective use of SE tools. Unlike most large organisations, many of the Australian SMEs engaging in defence work have not widely employed SE processes and tools in their endeavour. In addition, the SE software tools currently used by the Australian SMEs do not appear to have effectively aided the SMEs in their work. This paper describes a methodology employed in the development of a framework for aiding Australian SMEs in defence work in effectively acquiring and applying SE processes and tools and thereby helping to improve their systems capability. Specifically, the methodology involves a collection and analysis of information, using qualitative grounded theory as the fundamental analysis technique, and NVivo software as the analysis tool. The paper also discusses some preliminary results of the research and future work.

This paper describes the method and result of developing a framework of research topics in systems engineering. The framework of research topics was developed as part of a project to develop a vision for research in systems engineering for use by INCOSE. This paper also describes the relationship of the framework of research topics and the description of the future of systems engineering presented in the INCOSE document: Systems Engineering Vision 2020. This paper shows significant agreement between the structure of systems engineering described in the Vision 2020 document and the framework developed in the vision for research in systems engineering. The processes used to develop both structures of ideas were conducted independently and were quite different. The agreement between them demonstrates the strength of the conclusion.

To be self-reliant and competitive in winning and maintaining defence contracts, the Australian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) need to improve their systems capability. By systems capability it is meant effectual use of sound systems engineering (SE) processes and effective use of SE tools. Unlike most large organisations, the Australian SMEs have not widely employed SE processes and tools in their endeavour. In addition, the SE software tools the Australian SMEs are currently using do not appear to have effectively aided them with their work. This paper describes research to develop a framework for aiding Australian SMEs in effectively acquiring and applying SE processes and tools and thereby improving their systems capability. Specifically, the research involves a collection and analysis of information about the fundamental nature of SMEs; an exploration of relationships between SE process and tools and the Australian SMEs; the development of requirements for SE tools functionality appropriate for SME needs; and the development of framework for acquiring and applying SE tools for SMEs. It also discusses the current outcomes of this research, which consist of a comprehensive research plan, a mapping of SE activities reported in INCOSE Symposia Proceedings (1994–2006) to the Hitchins-Kasser-Massie (HKM) framework, and a preliminary view of relationships between SMEs and SE tools. Finally, the final results of this research may be extendable to commercial and overseas SMEs.

In a pair of papers in the 2007 Symposium the early history of systems engineering, from the perspective of the IRE publications was presented. This paper extends this work with a discussion of the early history of systems engineering from the perspective of other publications produced by engineers within the engineering community. This paper reviews the matters identified and compares the findings with the findings from the corpus reviewed earlier. The differences are discussed with a particular view to understanding why different parts of the engineering community came to different positions.

We all have a tendency to confuse an object we observe with the conceptualization of that object. Most of us would not consider this to be a fatal flaw, but when it comes to systems thinking and applying this to systems engineering this tendency could have serious consequences. The object we observe that we call the “system” is not really the system itself. The system is really the “point of view” we take when we properly deal with engineering of what is commonly called “the system”. We will explore in this paper what it means to think of something “as a system” and how we can avoid the common tendencies that get in the way of truly holistic thinking.

This paper is part 1 of the first stage in a project investigating the early history of systems engineering. Many current texts refer to the post World War II era as the origin of systems engineering as a means to overcome the problems of systems development projects that failed to deliver satisfactory product systems according to budget and schedule. The present paper investigates primary sources from the 1950's period to develop an understanding of the concerns present in the engineering community when systems engineering is said to have emerged in order to develop an understanding of the objectives and issues of concern addressed. The sources have been investigated from the perspective of the evidence that they provide concerning the reasons why systems engineering emerged with the characteristics that it developed.

In a paper published in an earlier INCOSE symposium the author described a final year undergraduate course in systems engineering from the viewpoint of educational rationale. In this paper the various issues confronted in the teaching of this course are described and the changes made to the course and assessment processes in order to promote the outcomes intended by the lecturer are described. Emphasis is placed on changes implemented in 2006 because of some features of these changes which are interesting with respect to the process of developing the concept of writing a coherent description of an intended system by a large class of undergraduate students. The paper discusses difficulties confronted in the assessment processes, and the link between the assessment processes and the student effort in the teaching of this course.

This paper is the second stage in a project investigating the early history of systems engineering. Many current systems engineering texts refer to the post World War II era as the origin of systems engineering as a means to overcome the problems of systems development projects that failed to deliver satisfactory product systems according to budget and schedule. The present paper investigates primary sources from the 1950's period to provide an understanding of the early stages of development of the systems engineering solution to the problems that had been observed and discussed in part 1 of this study. The sources have been investigated from the perspective of the evidence that they provide concerning the systems engineering solution to the problems which had been experienced and why these solutions were regarded as satisfactory.

The authors have developed a framework proposal for undergraduate systems engineering education as a stream of studies forming part of a Bachelor of Engineering program in any discipline of engineering. This proposed framework has been developed with the intention of use broadly across many universities, colleges, and in all engineering disciplines in Taiwan. The paper discusses the pedagogical background to the proposal and analyses the proposed structure from several educationally significant viewpoints. The broad fronted approach to curriculum presented in this paper includes Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, the concept of graduate outcomes, a contrast of the capability of engineers educated traditionally and through the proposed curriculum, the current cultural context of undergraduate students, and the national objectives to be served through the educational activity.

The paper presents the results of an investigation of the INCOSE Systems Engineering Measurement Primer from the framework of measurement theory. This approach to the Primer is outside the scope of the claims of the Primer, and so is not entirely fair to the authors of the Primer. This investigation is conducted in order to contribute to the development of measurement processes suitable for use in systems engineering and also to provide a theoretical framework for measurement of systems engineering processes.

This paper discusses the need for the development of a framework for Systems Engineering to facilitate recognition of Systems Engineering as a discipline and to provide a fundamental basis for advancing the practice of Systems Engineering. Systems Engineering concerns the development of systems that satisfy the real needs of those who call for the systems to be created. Such systems are not tangible things that can be analyzed as objects to be inspected and described, but rather these systems interact with their users and stakeholders in a complex manner, where the introduction of the system perturbs the pre-existent situation, resulting in a need for sophisticated methodologies to analyze and predict outcomes of system creation and deployment. The paper exposes and discusses a range of research methodologies that are appropriate for contributing to the development of a coherent framework of research in Systems Engineering.

The University of South Australia program, Bachelor of Engineering (IT Option) contains a sequence of four courses in the field of Systems Engineering, comprising 12.5% of the program. This paper describes the content and teaching processes used in the last course in this sequence, scheduled for the undergraduate students in the final semester of their program. The paper discusses the evidence provided by students of the learning that they have achieved through the course in the assignment assessment, weighted 40% of the course. It is found that the learning about the practice of Systems Engineering developed by students is not correlated with the achievement in the technical aspects of the project. The kinds of learning achieved are discussed in the paper.

The concept of emergence in systems is a difficult concept for beginners in the analysis of systems to appreciate. The essence of the emergence concept is that when a set of components are brought together and assembled into a system, that system exhibits properties that are different than the aggregation of the properties of the components taken separately. Systems educators have, amongst other roles, the task of providing students with an intuitive sense of the nature of the emergence phenomenon. This paper discusses the use of tennis, a sport with a hierarchical scoring structure, as an illustration of the nature and characteristics of emergence in systems.

This paper reviews the discussions of work by engineering teams, and some very closely related issues, in the INCOSE Annual Symposia to date. The purpose of this work is to identify the issues associated with teamwork in engineering teams and the strategies to address the issues with negative effects. The publications are found to address the issues at two distinct levels, the macro of how teams should operate and the overall performance of team structures, and the micro, concerning the inner functioning of the teams, and the issues associated with the human character of the participants. The majority of the literature reviewed addresses the macro level, with only a few papers about the micro dimensions of teamwork. The review is organised chronologically to investigate temporal development of the thinking of authors.

System resilience means different things to different people and different things across different industries and system contexts. For example, in some contexts, the need is for the system performance to be unaffected after the occurrence of a defined threat event, whereas in others, system impairment or even loss may be acceptable, particularly for severe threats, providing certain constraints, such as system safety, remain uncompromised. When wishing to specify resilience or to describe or analyse the performance and behaviour of a system in response to a threat situation, it is useful to have a conceptual model that can support these activities. In this article, we present a state-based conceptual model of the variety of states that a system may experience when encountering and resolving a resilience-related situation. We contend that it has promise for framing discussion on resilience objectives of a particular system during the design process by imbuing a common understanding of the expected resilience characteristics of the system to all stakeholders. Furthermore, we advocate that during operations the model informs decisions on how best to deal with multiple resilience-related issues, such as an impending threat and an impaired system. Copyright 2015 International Council on Systems Engineering

This paper discusses two different approaches to understanding the nature and purpose of Systems Engineering. The two approaches to thinking about Systems Engineering involve, on one side, a project level view in which Systems Engineering is seen as a set of processes by which major, complex projects may be addressed and completed on time and on budget and on performance. The contrasting view centres about the conceptual issues of determination of how we can be confident that our projects are appropriate and useful. This paper exposes the two views of Systems Engineering and discusses the relationship between them. The two views are different, and have different emphases, and so are instructive in different ways, but are different views of the same thing. The two views are not opposed and do not, fundamentally, conflict.

This paper discusses the problem of specification of the requirements for a project from the point of view of requirements as a representation of the hypothetical or target product. The relationship between the description and nature of things presented by epistemology is considered. Project requirements introduce the further problem of knowing the essence of things through the representation provided by a description, and that before construction the proposed product is hypothetical. This is presented and discussed.

This paper presents a framework for visualizing the research coverage of system of systems engineering (SOSE). The framework is based on prior similar work providing a framework for systems engineering research (SE) coverage. The framework presented for SOSE is sufficiently broad and developed to enable meaningful classification of SOSE research contributions. This paper compares the coverage of SOSE and SE in relevant bodies of research. The comparison reveals both different emphases in the two fields and different stages of maturity of the fields. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Engineers working in expatriate situations experience intra-project-team cultural diversity and therefore need to develop cross-cultural abilities. In culturally diverse project teams the cross-cultural adaptation process is a significant contributor to project success. This paper identifies the challenges faced by Indonesian expatriate engineers in the cross-cultural adaptation process in multicultural working environments.This paper shows the factors that influence the adaptation process of the engineers’ working situation in performing systems engineering practices in multicultural work environments. We report the results of interviews with 18 Indonesian engineers working outside Indonesia in multicultural teams concerning their experience and knowledge of cross-cultural adaptation in the implementation of systems engineering practices. The engineers were working in seven countries in the Middle East, South East and East Asia and Australia. The results indicate three factors that influence the cross-cultural adaptation process in culturally diverse project teams:previous experience, workmates influence and cultural dimension. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This book consists of essays related to the issues of regulation of communication. The chapters present different facets of the question of how officials control, "regulation," and informal social and cultural constraint of communication, "regularization," impact the processes of communication on the professional and workplace setting. Some of the topics covered include: the regularized communications forms used in the healthcare profession; the impact of the PowerPoint software application as a regulator or "regularizer" of professional presentations; the regulatory practices of academic writing; the use of discourse to challenge the status quo and to work for change; the nature of power in the workplace; and the discourse form used in public hearings and inquiries. The text achieves the editors' objective in providing the reader with a sound picture of the state of current study and with a framework of ideas and perspectives to prompt future research.

This book bridges two fields - the management of teams and the use of collaborative software tools to support work in the virtual team environment. It is divided into two parts: the first addressing the managing of virtual teams and the second an evaluation of software tools to support the virtual teams. Chapter 1 discusses team dynamics in a virtual team. Chapter 2 concerns the establishment of a virtual team. Chapter 3 discusses the choice of particular collaborative tools. Chapter 4 addresses decisions about communicating with the team, while Chapter 5 addresses the issues of coordinating the team. In Chapter 6, the authors advocate the use of a wiki for authorship of documents, while in Chapter 7, they discuss the conduct of project reviews. Chapter 8 concerns the processes required to manage risk and change, while Chapter 9 wraps up Part 1 by discussing the evaluation of projects. Part 2 describes the general classes of tools available, the variety of features available in tools, and the interaction of those features with different types of of situations presented in virtual team work. The chapters of this part deal with the general approach used by the authors, the issues of installation, customization and security, collaborative software suites, meeting and communication tools, information broadcasting tools, information sharing tools, information gathering tools, "push" technologies, and wikis. The guidance provided in this book will be of considerable assistance to anyone making decisions about appropriate tools to support collaborative virtual teamwork.

This book is the published version of Gina Poncini's Ph.D. thesis, completed at University of Birmingham, UK. It provides an account of a research project in the traditional manner and substantial referencing of the literature. The work is motivated by the observation that work and business are becoming more difficult as a result of globalization, which has forced more people to confront the language and cultural interaction issues caused by working with people from other national backgrounds. Poncini examines the issue by presenting one particular company's experience. The book is divided into nine chapters. In Chapter 2, Poncini presents the view that a multinational business meeting is a distinctive structure that represents a unified culture in itself. Later chapters outline the methodology of the work, examine the use of personal pronouns, and investigate the use of specialized lexis. The use of language that expresses evaluation of subject matter is discussed, as well as the three major frames of reference of the communication structures used in the meetings. Poncini concludes by asserting that meetings form some kind of new culture, or are at least characterized by the participants' shared cultural practices, which is probably related to the individual benefit derived from achieving group success through coherence of the overall group. The text is a valuable contribution because it forces the reader to think more deeply and subtly about the nature of intercultural interactions.

This book examines the place of mobile telephone technology in Japanese society. It is a compilation of chapters by various authors, most of whom work in social sciences or humanities in Japanese universities. The book is divided into five sections, representing a logical development of the methodology for investigating and presenting the issues developed by the editors: "The Social and Cultural Construction of Technological Systems"; "Cultures and Imaginaries"; "Social Networks and Relationships"; "Practice and Place"; and "Emergent Developments." The book is a very interesting exploration of the interaction between Japanese society and mobile telephony technology, discussing the kinds of uses and the impact of the changed possibilities effected by the existence and deployment of the technology.

In projects involving engineers from multiple cultural backgrounds the implementation of Systems Engineering (SE) Processes demands cross-cultural leadership competence by the engineers who lead such work teams to support the quality of project performance. This paper reports the qualitative results of a web-based survey of Indonesian expatriate engineers addressing their perceptions of cross-cultural issues in the implementation of SE processes in projects. The questions investigated the engineers' knowledge, experience, and perception of how they manage the leadership aspect of their intercultural relationships. Several issues were identified as factors influencing cross-cultural leadership. The factors that influence cross-cultural leadership include conflict resolution and decision making styles used by the project leader. This study reveals that, as perceived by Indonesian engineers, the conflicts that happen in the project team were resolved based on existing policy rather than considering the specific cultural background of participants and the important decisions in the project team were made collaboratively using the leader's ideas and members' contributions. Another result from this study is that the relationships between team members were important to the achievement of an effective balance between the completeness and quality of the project. This paper discusses how intercultural issues interact with performance of formally defined project processes. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper reports the implementation of Systems Engineering (SE) processes by expatriate Indonesian engineers in their project or company with particular attention to awareness of cross-cultural issues within the project team. A web survey was conducted in which several questions are designed to investigate the engineers' awareness of how they manage their cultural background in implementing SE processes to achieve high quality project performance. The survey questions were designed using the results of a set of 18 interviews with Indonesian engineers working in several countries as expatriates. The interviews were used to surface the issues that would enable a tightly organized set of survey questions. The survey was answered by 291 Indonesian engineers working in various countries as expatriates. Several factors were identified as influencing productivity and performance in the implementation of SE Processes, as perceived by the Indonesian engineers. These factors include work ethic, social environment and educational background. This study reveals that engineers with an Indonesian cultural background typically exhibit several behaviors supporting a good work ethic such as discipline, responsibility, politeness and persistence. Other results from this study are that their social environment, educational background, and cultural background contributed to their awareness of their productivity and performance in implementation of SE processes. The purpose of this paper is to identify their awareness of how their cultural background influences the implementation of SE processes particularly in productivity and performance. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper discusses a problem in the way people think about measurement. This problem is analyzed using the tool of an Object Oriented Model of Measurement, developed in the paper, which is related to the Representational Theory of Measurement but includes alters or extends the tenets of that theory. It is concluded that all measurement involves a leap of decision concerning the model of analysis of the observed which is to be employed, and in addition information processing often involves a leap from the algorithmically derivable to useful conclusions about the observed as sought through the measurement process.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2013.01.103 With the ever-increasing complexity of systems, it is important to properly educate the upcoming systems engineering workforce. The Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE) provides guidelines for graduate program degrees in systems engineering. GRCSE establishes a baseline set of entrance expectations, objectives, outcomes and content for any graduate degree in systems engineering. GRCSE recognizes that each university needs to meet the needs of their constituents, and for this purpose, GRCSE only defines 50% of the program content, and leaves the other 50% to be defined by individual universities to satisfy the needs of their stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to introduce GRCSE's outcomes, and how those outcomes can be attained through the program content. GRCSE

This paper examines a set of abstract, top-level principles and subprinciples collected from the literature to determine their usefulness in enabling the avoidance, survival, and recovery from disruptions caused by threats of various sources. The principles are compared to concrete solutions recommended by domain experts in various case studies and to the actual events in those case studies. Also examined are the limitations, conflicts, and vulnerabilities that may be apparent when concrete solutions are created from these principles. The systems considered are physical, organizational, and procedural systems. Examples include cases from fire protection, aviation, railways, and power distribution domains. Threats examined include terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and human and design error. Each principle is found to apply to different phases of the disruption cycle surrounding an encounter with a threat. It is found that principles, in general, cannot be applied singly to a system but must be combined with other principles to enable resilience. System developers in various domains can use the principles to create concrete solutions to characterize a particular system, model that solution, and determine the degree of recovery of the system from a specified threat. ©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 16

This paper reviews the progress and content of the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and the Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE™) products being developed as part of the Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE™) project initiated in September 2009. The version 0.25 of each product was released for limited review in fall 2010; version 0.5 of each product will be released for public review in fall 2011; and final version 1.0 of each product are due out in fall 2012. This paper reviews how these products differ from and build upon existing products, and recounts lessons learned after the first 15 months on the project.

Systems engineering practice performed by Indonesian expatriate engineers involves intra-project-team cultural diversity. In culturally diverse project teams, one of the key success factors in project performance is technology and knowledge sharing. This paper identifies elements of how technology and knowledge sharing work performed in systems engineering practices is influenced by cross-cultural adaptation in multicultural work environments. We interviewed 18 Indonesian engineers working outside Indonesia in multicultural teams, about the implementation of systems engineering practices in their experience and their knowledge of cross-cultural adaptation. The results indicate three factors that influence the technology and knowledge sharing strategy in culturally diverse project teams: communication; authority perception; and staff development strategy. Refereed/Peer-reviewed