ENGINEERS, MANAGEMENT AND WORK ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGINEERS' WORK ROLES IN BRITISH AND JAPANESE ELECTRONICS FIRMS*
比较英国和日本电子公司中工程师的工作角色，指出英国制造业问题根源在于技术与管理职能的割裂，而非工程师在管理层中代表不足。
Many commentators have attributed the poor performance of British manufacturing to the ‘under‐representation’ of engineers in management, and have proposed policies for bringing more engineers into management so as to develop a technologically oriented management culture. This paper argues that the under‐representation of engineers in management is a symptom not the root cause of the problem, which lies in the split between technical and managerial expertise at the enterprise level. Based on a comparative analysis of engineers’ work roles and the relationship between technical and managerial functions in British and Japanese electronics firms, the paper argues that the mechanistically structured organization systems in the British firms generate a vertical polarization between technical and managerial roles, inhibit knowledge sharing and lead to the gross under‐utilization of engineers in product development. A technologically oriented management cannot simply be achieved by getting more engineers into management. It requires, instead, organizational restructuring and changes in work practices to enable a better integration between technical and managerial expertise.