Category Archives: leadership

Addressing societal challenges by engaging 100% of society’s intellectual capital

1 Reply

Decorative photograph of author's research groupToday is International Women in Engineering Day (INWED).  I have written previously about the lack of progress in achieving gender equality in the engineering profession in most Western countries (see ‘Reflecting on the lack of women in engineering’ on March 16th 2022) and the seismic shift in attitudes required to increase the number of women in engineering at all levels (see ‘A big question for engineers’ on June 8th, 2016).  I can see signs of change locally.  My research group has hovered around an equal number of men and women for some years.  In the School of Engineering in Liverpool four women have been promoted to be professors in the last four years – though at a reception following an inaugural lecture given by one of the pair of women who were the first female professors in the School, I was gently admonished by a senior female colleague in another school about why it had taken so long.  Of course, she is right.  Progress is very slow and we need to do better.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her book, The Second Sex first published in 1949: ‘Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.’  More than seventy years later, this still appears to be true, at least in the engineering profession who are responsible for the technology everyone uses everyday.  About twenty years ago, the then President of the US National Academy of Engineering, Bill Wulf said, ‘As a consequence of a lack of diversity [in engineering] we pay an opportunity cost, a cost in designs not thought of, in solutions not produced’.  However, diversity on its own is not enough, we have to be inclusive and treat everyone equally – as we would like to be treated ourselves.  If we do not engage women in the engineering enterprise then we ignore 50% of society’s intellectual capital and we cannot hope to solve the challenges facing society, in part because we will be confused about the truth.

Thank you to my two guest editors who reviewed this post for me.

Photo: Author’s research group in 2022.

 

Slicing the cake equally or engineering justice

Leave a reply

Decorative photograph of sliced chocolate cakeIn support of the research being performed by one of the PhD students that I am supervising, I have been reading about ‘energy justice’.  Energy justice involves the equitable sharing of the benefits and burdens of the production and consumption of energy, including the fair treatment of individuals and communities when making decisions about energy.  At the moment our research is focussed on the sharing of the burdens associated with energy production and ways in which digital technology might improve decision-making processes.  Justice incorporates the distribution of rights, liberties, power, opportunities, and money – sometimes known as ‘primary goods’.  The theory of justice proposed by the American philosopher, John Rawls in the 1970’s is a recurring theme: that these primary goods should be distributed in a manner a hypothetical person would choose, if, at the time, they were ignorant of their own status in society.  In my family, this is the principle we use to divide cakes and other goodies equally between us, i.e., the person slicing the cake is the last person to take a slice.  While many in society overlook the inequalities and injustices that sustain their privileged positions, I believe that engineers have a professional responsibility to work towards the equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of engineering on the individuals and communities, i.e., ‘engineering justice’ [see ‘Where science meets society‘ on September 2nd, 2015].  This likely involves creating a more diverse engineering profession which is better equipped to generate engineering solutions that address the needs of the whole of our global society [see ‘Re-engineering engineering‘ on August 30th, 2017].  However, it also requires us to rethink our decision-making processes to achieve  ‘engineering justice’.  There is a clear and close link to ‘procedure justice’ and ‘fair process’ [see ‘Advice to abbots and other leaders‘ November 13th, 2019] which involves listening to people, making a decision, then explaining the decision to everyone concerned.  In our research, we are interested in how digital environments, including digital twins and industrial metaverses, might enable wider and more informed involvement in decision-making about major engineering infrastructure projects, with energy as our starting point.

Sources:

Derbyshire J, Justice, fairness and why Rawls still matters today, FT Weekend, April 20th, 2023.

MacGregor N, How to transcend the culture wars, FT Weekend, April 29/30th, 2023.

Rawls J, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1971

Sovacool BK & Dworkin MH, Global Energy Justice: Problems, Principles and Practices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Image: https://www.alsothecrumbsplease.com/air-fryer-chocolate-cake/

Reflecting on self

1 Reply

In a recent interview, the artist William Kentridge described becoming another person when standing back from a work in progress and becoming a critical director of the other person’s work.  He talked about ‘constructing myself from yesterday’s dream and tomorrow’s expectation’.  I have had similar experiences when I am speaking to an audience, lecturing to students or making a presentation at a conference.  I mentally stand back from the speaking self and the other self reviews what is happening and sometimes starts mind-wandering triggered by something said by the speaking self or a reaction from the audience.  I talk about ‘self’ when I am lecturing on leadership as part of our Continuous Professional Development programme [see ‘On being a leader’ on October 13th, 2021].  I am often asked what is meant by ‘self’ and ‘identity’, particularly in the context of Kegan’s scheme of cognitive development [see ‘Illusion of self’ on February 2nd, 2017].  I sense that students are often dissatisfied with my answers.  So, let me attempt a written answer here.  A dictionary definition of ‘self’ is ‘the entire being of an individual that constitutes the individuality and identity of a person’.  In psychology, it might be defined as ‘the totality of the individual, consisting of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and physical.’  A dictionary definition of ‘identity’ is ‘the distinguishing character or personality of an individual’ and in sociology it is ‘the qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance and, or experiences that characterise a person’.  Hence, combining these definitions, identity is the attributes that characterise your ‘self’ and distinguishes you from others.  Kegan’s schema implies that our sense of self develops through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood to the extent that some people (about 35%) can separate their relationships and identity from their self and hence are capable of more nuanced decision-making – this is known as the Institutional stage.  About one percent of the population develop to a further stage, known as the Interindividual stage, where they are capable holding many identities and handling the resultant paradoxes that arise, which can help them to exercise both emotion and rationality as leaders.  I think that self is closely related to our consciousness and consequently is constructed from yesterday’s experiences and tomorrow’s dreams to misquote Kentridge.  So, perhaps it is reasonable to think that we construct, or at least evolve, a self each day as we engage in different roles, for example in my case as a teacher, researcher, university leader or family member.  I suspect that it is my researcher self that sits on the shoulder of my teacher self and mind-wanders while my teacher self talks about something else.  My experiences and dreams in each role are different, divergent even, and means that I have at least two selves that exist towards opposite ends of the ‘Change Style Indicator and have different qualities as well as experiences.

Sources

Peter Aspden, ‘The self is a construction we make every day: Lunch with the FT – William Kentridge’, 22 October / 23 October 2022.

Kegan, R., The evolving self: problem and process in human development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Longman Dictionary of the English Language, Harlow, UK: Longman Group Limited, 1984.

Global citizenship in the context of COP27

Leave a reply

About five years ago I wrote a long piece for the Citizens of Everywhere project and also published it on this blog [see ‘We are citizens of the world‘ on April 5th, 2017].  One theme of the essay was the way in which scientists and engineers work as part of a global community contributing to, and exploiting, a shared knowledge and understanding of natural and manufactured phenomena; and in this process, as global citizens, we are relatively unaware and uninfluenced by the national boundaries drawn and fought over by politicians and leaders.  Engineers frequently draw boundaries to define a system for analysis [see ‘Drawing boundaries‘ on December 19th, 2012] but we understand that they do not exist in reality so energy and, sometimes, matter can flow across them.  Similarly, national boundaries are man-made constructs, occasionally existing in physical reality such as the Berlin Wall, but usually only on a map.  Most people would like to be able move freely around the world; however, we are often restricted from crossing borders by the location of our mother when she gave birth to us.  Gaia Vince in her book, Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval, has suggested that assigning nationality based on your birthplace is arbitrary and instead we should have a universal UN citizenship with a national affiliation.  This might be one small step towards achieving peaceful mass migrations from uninhabitable zones created by major changes in the Earth’s climate.  There could be 1.5 billion environmental migrants by 2050 according to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration – that’s one in five people!

As I have argued before [see ‘Planetary Emergency‘ on February 20th, 2019], our politicians need to stop arguing about borders and starting worrying about the whole planet not just at COP27 but in everything they do. We are all in this together and no man-made border will protect us from the impact of making the planet a hostile environment for life.

Source: Anjana Ahuja, Acclimatising to crisis, FT Weekend, 27 August/28 August 2022.