Sara Baptiste-Brown

An organization’s greatest strength is employees who live their values, who feel valued, and whose ideas are valuable. When these align, personal and professional potential can be uncovered and unlocked to better serve society.

In societies largely driven by economic forces, companies and other organizations often exert their power to determine what is created and developed based on their ambitions. To help accomplish the objectives of these employers, engineering typically conforms to their ideals. Engineering currently focuses on applying scientific principles to design, develop, construct, and/or operate structures, machines, and products. The future of engineering requires a connection to self and society. This imagined future may be unlocked through further work on workshops that were delivered to engineers that asked them to explore their personal values as expressed in the context of work.

This research is based on prosocial values and the development and delivery of a workshop that guided participants (engineers) through 40 value statements and their array on a most-like-me to least-like-me scale used for self-classification into categories using Q-sort methodology. The full value structure underpinning the value statements is organized into two sets of opposing higher-order value types, arrayed on two bipolar dimensions. The first dimension—openness to change versus conservation—opposes values that emphasize own independent thought and action and favor change (self-direction and stimulation) to values that emphasize submissive self-restriction, preservation of traditional practices, and protection of stability (security, conformity, and tradition). The second dimension—self-transcendence versus self-enhancement—opposes values that emphasize acceptance of others as equals and concern for their welfare (universalism and benevolence) to values that emphasize the pursuit of one’s relative success and dominance over others (power and achievement). Hedonism includes elements of both openness to change and self enhancement.

The workshops served as case studies with potential for future development.