Understanding Adaptability in the Engineering Field

Adaptability has emerged as an essential skill in the engineering workforce due to constant technological and social change, engineering grand challenges, and the recent global pandemic. Although engineering employers and national reports have called for increased adaptability among engineers, what adaptability means in the engineering workplace has not been investigated. This dissertation uses qualitative semi-structured critical incident interviews with engineering managers from four corporations to better understand their perceptions of adaptability and then incorporates these findings into a scenario-based intervention for the engineering classroom. Thematic analysis of the interviews with engineering managers expanded existing frameworks for workplace adaptability to provide an engineering-specific understanding of adaptability as a construct. Managers’ perceptions of adaptability span six dimensions, each important when teaching this competency to engineering students: Creative Problem Solving; Interpersonal Adaptability; Handling Work Stress; Dealing with Uncertain and Unpredictable Situations; Learning New Technologies, Tasks, and Procedures; and Cultural Adaptability. Managers’ beliefs about the importance of a balanced approach to being adaptable in different work contexts, and the influence of personal characteristics such as self-awareness and having had specific experiences related to being adaptable, emerged from the findings as well. Composite narratives reflecting real-life situations encountered by engineers in the workplace were developed based on findings from the engineering manager interviews to provide greater texture to the data. Six of the narratives mapped to the six dimensions of adaptability identified in the thematic analysis, while the seventh narrative illustrated the importance of balance and context when deciding whether and how to be adaptable. They revealed how multiple dimensions of adaptability work together and that contextual factors like support from managers and coworkers are integral to an engineer’s adaptability. The narratives were condensed into two scenarios for use in a classroom-based intervention with first-year engineering students at a large public university. After the intervention, many students’ definitions of adaptability became more multi-dimensional and reflective of adaptability context and balance. Students also reported a better understanding of engineering work, an expanded definition of adaptability, greater delineation of adaptability, increased self-awareness, greater appreciation for the importance of adaptability balance, and enhanced feelings of job preparedness.