Abstract
By 1921 the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his book The Engineers and the Price System argued for a technocracy in which the welfare of humanity would be entrusted to the control of the engineers because they alone were competent to understand the complexities of the industrial system and processes and thereby optimise and maximise its output. This chapter sets out to explore the extent to which Veblen’s technocratic leadership thesis has come to pass. We first review the role of the engineer in society and in the context of Europe, the USA and China and examine the influence of the engineering profession on the management and economic welfare of nations. Second, we review trends in engineering education and formation in Europe, China and the USA and the substantive developmental role of the Grand Écoles in eighteenth-century France. A comparison is made between the economies of Ireland and China, in the context of their recent economic performance. Third, a review of commentary on the interconnectedness of world economies and shift in economic power from nineteenth-century United Kingdom market dominance to twentieth-century United States supremacy and to present day emergence of China as the world’s second largest and fastest growing economy is made in the context of the role of engineering leadership. We finally ponder whether a hybrid political environment, with a blending of meritocracy with technocratic leadership and moderated by nonengineering influences, might be a recipe for sustained economic success of nations.
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Notes
- 1.
One hundred years later in 1995, the company collapsed through futures trading within the space of a single weekend.
- 2.
Of interest, a small country called Ireland made representations in Paris to have its sovereignty recognised by the great powers. This recognition was not forthcoming, and Ireland went through a war of independence followed by a civil war both of which occurred while Veblen was writing ‘The Engineers and the Price System’.
- 3.
Germany fully cleared its First World War debt in 2010 when it made its final payment under the Treaty of Versailles.
- 4.
Given the collapse of the world economic system in the late 1920s, the argument can be made that had engineers been solely in charge of optimising industrial output, as argued for by Veblen, then engineers might well have made matters worse by increasing output into deflating national economies.
- 5.
The primary organisation of power in the CCP comprises the Central Committee which includes (a) the Politburo Standing Committee, which currently consists of nine members; (b) the Politburo, consisting of 24 full members (including the members of the Politburo Standing Committee) and one alternate; (c) the Secretariat, the principal administrative mechanism of the CCP, headed by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China; and (d) the Central Military Commission (a parallel organisation of the government institution of the same name). The Central Committee has approximately 370 members, including ministers and senior officials in Beijing and leaders of provincial governments and cities in addition to senior military personnel. The current membership of the Politburo Standing Committee includes Hu Jintao, President of the Peoples Republic of China and Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission, and eight senior party members.
- 6.
There are exceptions to the rule. Looking back over several decades at deputy and ministerial posts in the Irish Parliament, there is perhaps only one entry of a senior ministerial post held by an internationally renowned engineering academic. Tribute was paid by UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in August 2008 upon the death of Professor James Clement Dooge.
Professor Dooge (1992–2010) was an Irish hydrologist, politician, engineer and academic. He lived a multifaceted existence with his roles including a period as Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Chairman of the Irish Senate, President of the International Council for Science, President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences and Professor of Hydrology at Dublin University. He had a significant role in the development of the European Union during the Irish presidency of 1984 (UNESCO-IHE).
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Murphy, M., Coyle, E. (2012). Engineering Leadership. In: Christensen, S., Mitcham, C., Li, B., An, Y. (eds) Engineering, Development and Philosophy. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5282-5_21
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