Carlos Rodriguez-Lluesma

A “knowledge profile” of an engineering occupation: temporal patterns in the use of engineering knowledge

Each engineering occupation is distinguished by the body of specific knowledge it has built up over time. Some scholars argue that the instrumentality of this historically established knowledge in the solution of everyday design problems renders formal education more important than experience. Other scholars counter that engineering work primarily demands practice-generated knowledge that individuals construct in the course of everyday activities. We address this argument by documenting the frequency with which engineers apply different types of knowledge, with different derivations. Adopting a behavioral perspective, we isolated 1072 episodes of knowledge use in our field observations of structural engineers. From these episodes, we constructed a ‘knowledge profile’ that indicated that two-thirds of the knowledge engineers employed was practice generated. The profile also revealed temporal patterns in the frequency with which the engineers used each knowledge type. Knowledge profiles like the one we constructed should help differentiate among engineering occupations, thereby serving as the foundation for conceptualizing occupations in a world of ‘knowledge work’. In addition, knowledge profiles can help university engineering education programs better target and mirror the knowledge demands of the profession.

Occupational Stereotypes, Perceived Status Differences, and Intercultural Communication in Global Organizations

This paper offers a novel perspective on why individuals in global organizations make culturally based attributions of their colleagues that impede effective working relations. Drawing on observational and interview data from an ethnographic study of product development work at a global automakers engineering centers in Mexico, the United States, and India, we show the important role that occupational stereotypes and perceived status differentials play in global workplace interaction. The findings demonstrate that individuals who consider themselves to be “low-status” attempt to increase their status by leading high-status individuals to believe that they work in ways that reflect dominant occupational stereotypes. However, because these stereotypes are often inaccurate, members of the high-status culture assume that the stereotype-imitating behaviors of low-status individuals represent deficiencies in how they work. These findings have important implications for intercultural interaction in the global workplace and for theories of communication in multinational organizations.

Competing institutional logics in ICT4D education projects: A South American study

We take an institutional logics perspective to explain why design-reality gaps persist in ICT4D projects. From case study interviews at development agencies at work on two national education projects, one in Argentina and one in Uruguay, we show how two main institutional logics strongly shaped thought and action among development staff. The presence of an education sector professionalism logic aimed at creating real changes in education was not surprising because both projects were directed towards the education domain. Yet, this logic in many ways was secondary to a technology sector professionalism logic that focused on superior performance in product development, solving problems with technology, and evaluating technology uptake. We show how these two logics competed over time and within projects. We conclude by noting that an institutional logics perspective helps explain the persistence of design-reality gaps by making clear, for example, why solutions such as participatory design may fall short because they fail to come to terms with competing logics.

Humanistic Leadership as a Value-Infused Dialogue of Global Leaders and Local Stakeholders

The humanistic perspective on leadership has attracted an increasing interest in the past few years (e.g., Maak & Pless, 2009). Humanistic leadership is generally understood as a set of principles oriented to developing meaningful and purposeful human experience, guided by basic values and focused on the common good. At the individual level, the exercise of humanistic leadership takes a person-centered view of the leader-followers relationship and considers the individuals’ position and voice within each society (Davila & Elvira, 2012). In business organizations, humanistic leadership is becoming an important pillar to the view of sustainability that includes the stakeholder perspective of the organization (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010). At the societal level, humanistic leadership considers the roles played by businesses from which contextual factors demand diverse business roles, such as becoming part of the social support system (Davila & Elvira, 2012).

Erratum to: Contextualizing the subjectivist-objectivist debate in entrepreneurship using engineering, art, craft, and bricolage

The debate regarding the degree to which opportunities and resources are social constructions risks stagnation because it is difficult to argue that opportunities are either entirely constructed or entirely objective. In this paper we seek to contribute to this debate by introducing some overlooked aspects of the work of Levi-Strauss (1962) as they relate to the discussion of entrepreneurial opportunities and resources. A categorization scheme of entrepreneurs based on Levi-Strauss’ categories of art, craft, engineering and bricolage can be used to help differentiate the ways in which entrepreneurs view opportunities and resource acquisition, and how those views impact entrepreneurial action and ultimately entrepreneurial success. This contrasts with the more traditional entrepreneurship literature, which views opportunities as objective phenomena and opportunity identification and exploitation as completely rational.

Job (In)Stability in the European Long-Term Care Workforce

Demographic changes and growing demand are making Long-Term Care (LTC) services for chronic patients and senior citizens a dynamic sector facing major challenges. Jobs in this sector tend to have limited attractiveness, to be associated with low retention rates and, consequently, potential workforce shortages. The objective of the present paper is to measure LTC job stability in order to quantify a potential attractiveness gap between caregiver occupations and other related careers across European countries. We make use of the European Labour Force Survey database (EU-LFS). The data covers 26 countries over the period 1992-2011. We estimate the conditional continuation probabilities of maintaining current job over time for LTC workers, applying a retention rates approach. We compare these estimates to those for typical health sector workers within and across-various countries. Our findings indicate that, although LTC jobs are as stable as other healthcare related occupations in most of Europe, two groups of countries exhibit different patterns. In Southern and Eastern European countries, LTC occupations appear less stable. Central European states, by contrast, reveal an apparently higher retention in favor of LTC occupations.