Documents engineering 40 results

"We spend most of our waking lives at work--in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our jobs mean to us. "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully exploring what other people wake up to do each day--and night--to make our frenzied world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around an eclectic range of occupations, from rocket scientist to biscuit manufacturer, from accountant to artist--in search of what makes jobs either soul-destroying or fulfilling."

"In construction and engineering, workers from different organisations work together, often on a project-by-project basis. Drawing on the theoretical framework of inequality regimes as presented by Acker (2006a), and the externalisation of employment relations presented by Kalleberg et al. (2003), this article investigates the gendered implications of the externalisation of technological work in the construction industry. The empirical material is based upon interviews and a questionnaire answered by regular employees, contracted staff and independent contractors working in the construction industry. The data reveal how non-standard employments are parts of the organising processes that produce gendered inequalities between core and peripheral workers. This finding does not suggest that peripheral work indicates poor working conditions, to be more precise, peripheral workers can be in the most privileged positions."

"The author uses the 2003 and 2010 National Survey of College Graduates to examine the higher exit rate of women compared to men from science and engineering relative to other fields. The author finds that the higher relative exit rate is driven by engineering rather than science, and that half the gap can be explained by the relatively greater exit rate from engineering of women dissatisfied with pay and promotion opportunities. Family-related constraints and dissatisfaction with working conditions are found to be only secondary factors. The relative exit rate by gender from engineering does not differ from that of other fields once women's relatively high exit rates from male fields generally are taken into account."

"Ergonomics/human factors is, above anything else, a systems discipline and profession, applying a systems philosophy and systems approaches. Many things are labelled as system in today's world, and this paper specifies just what attributes and notions define ergonomics/human factors in systems terms. These are obviously a systems focus, but also concern for context, acknowledgement of interactions and complexity, a holistic approach, recognition of emergence and embedding of the professional effort involved within organization system. These six notions are illustrated with examples from a large body of work on rail human factors."