Engineers and their Responsibilities in Sustainable Development
1.Discuss engineers roles, responsibilities and the need to employ principles of sustainable development.
2.Discuss about the Manage information and documentation.
3.Communicate effectively across a range of contexts.
Engineers are not exactly defined anywhere it is a broader concept as I think. The engineering role is not confined to the designing of process or conducting the research but it is more than that. Engineer performs this work which includes locating the resources, applying and transferring the information from one department to another to coordinate with each and every one in the company. Engineers have many responsibilities to do which starts from the defining the problem, conducting and narrowing the research, analysing the criteria for the project, finding and analysing the solution for the same and making decisions to implement the plan(Lathem, Neumann and Hayden, 2011).
Engineers are the problem solvers for the project who apply their skills, knowledge, and innovation to build the project. The project will be made in accordance with the human requirements and these requirements are best fulfilled by the people who have an experience and forecasting in the market. The engineers are made this type of project which suited the environment and its issues. They worked on a wide range of issues and projects, and as a result, they have a significant impact on the progress on towards the sustainability in the business (Stump et al., 2011). Before doing this research I think there is no need of having the sustainability in the engineering profession. But after doing the research on the engineering professional I come to know that the sustainability feature is also must in this field as well. As sustainability is the factor which brings the business to the long terms aspects from which an individual can earn good and can have stability for the long term in the market. In traditional engineering, the consideration is given to the object and process only but in the case of sustainable engineering, the focus is put on the whole process in which the object or process will be used (Charles Jr, Schmidheiny and Watts, 2017).
The basic principles of sustainable development focus on the harmonizing the sectorial and development strategy. Sustainability discusses the principle of a holistic approach, principle of social justice so that each and every one should be treated with equality. The other principle of the sustainability emphasis on the principle of social responsibility, precaution and prevention before doing the project so that easy implementation of the project can be done, the principle of integration and utilizing the local resources of the area. Sustainability leads to focus on the technical as well as non-technical aspects of the project with synergy. Sustainability gives attention to solving the problem for the long-term and future as well. According to my view on the sustainability in the engineering do not give importance to the political, ethical, and societal issues in the economy but sustainable for engineers, the sustainability acknowledges the need to interact with the experts in other disciplines related to the problem (Harris Jr et al., 2013).
Sustainable Development and its Principles
Managing information and documentation is important in every aspect whether it is the small business or large business irrespective of their size, nature of the business. All the entities whether it is profit making or not for making organization, schools and colleges are required to maintain the information and accounts. Maintaining the information and documentation can be done manually by the individuals or with the help of the software’s also (Bock, Baetge and Nicklisch, 2014). The information is needed in the entire organization to have records for the future. Marinating the data and documents helps managers and other peoples of an organization to have access over the accounts and records. This maintaining of the information helps the stakeholders in knowing the company performance.
Documents are those official information or evidence that is helping in serving the record. Before giving a thorough reas4earch on the topic I think that the information and documents are similar to each other but after research, these two topics are also found not to be similar in nature. There are differences in both the topics. Both are used by the people too has access to the information. Documents are normally considered to be the official files used by the business in which records are maintained whereas the information is the representation by a particular arrangement or sequence of things. Both these Documents and information have different kinds of software’s available for collection and recording of the data and information. All software has its different and unique specifications. Some are good for the large or small organization; some are good for the material handling, some are good for maintaining the customer information and their details (Abdelhak, Grostick and Hanken, 2014).
Management of documents can be done by the software. Document management is also known as Document management system, it is the use of computer system and software to store, manage and track electronic documents and electronic images of paper-based information taken through the use of a document scanner. This software includes Enterprise Resource Planning (information related to the handling and maintaining the resources), Customer relationship management (information and documents related to the customer information), Records management (information related to the management of business records are done) (Volk, Stengel and Schultmann, 2014).
The information management concern a cycle of organizational activity in the acquisition of information from one source to another is done to have the access all over the information and any person can dispose of it whenever they want according to their convenience. For doing the gathering of information, various software is used which includes web content management, document management, digital asset management, records management etc. all these software’s are used to together the information at one place only so that anyone can easily access them (Hiltz, Van de Walle and Turoff, 2014).
Document and Information Management in Organizations
Communication is the way through which the information flows within the organization and with other organization as well. In this web, the manager becomes the link between the top level and lower level of employees. All the decisions and directions are the move in the upward direction or down ways or sideways depending on the position of the manager in the communication channel of the organization. Communication is the essence of management. Without communication in the organization, work cannot be completed. Communication is done to have the relations between the all the levels of the management as all the information through communication only. Communication helps to develop, implement and review the strategies for the internal and external environment as well as to the levels of management. Communication is done in the organization to have effectiveness and efficiency in the operations, programs, and activities of the business (Canale, 2014).
I think communication done between the superiors and subordinates is as important as the matching the internal requirements with the external factors. If the communication is not done in the right way then the information cannot be transferred and employees can get confused what work to do, how it is to be done and who have to perform the task. So communication is must in every type of organization. Without communication, the distribution of strategies and information cannot be possible in the organization. With proper communication, this can be done while maintaining the proper integrity, ownership, and efficiency of the organization (Bowe, Martin and Manns, 2014). Effective communication should not be followed in the top level management but also spread through the other departments of the organization also.
In developing and implementing the proper strategies in the organization, special communication needs to be done which can able to avoid the discrimination in the work area. Establishing the proper channels of communication, the proper review should be there in the channels. Communication is done at all the levels of the management, irrespective of their authorities, power and designation. In the organization, there are three channels of communication followed in every organization. These channels are the formal communication, informal communication and unofficial communication (Bhatia, 2014).
These communication channels cover all the individuals are related to the working of the organization. In the formal channel of communication, all the official information is shared among the managers and employees who are related to the business decisions whereas in the informal communication channel are formed with the interaction among the employees (Cummins, 2014). Through reflection, it is evident that the role of communication found to be the most important in every organization. After having the deep research on this topic, I found communication to be the essence of management as I was thought previously. Without communication, no organization can survive in the market.
References
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Bhatia, V.K. (2014) A generic view of academic discourse. In Academic discourse (pp. 31-49). United Kingdom: Routledge.
Bock, O., Baetge, I. and Nicklisch, A. (2014) hroot: Hamburg registration and organization online tool. European Economic Review, 71, pp.117-120.
Bowe, H., Martin, K. and Manns, H. (2014) Communication across cultures: Mutual understanding in a global world. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Canale, M. (2014) From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In Language and communication (pp. 14-40). United Kingdom: Routledge.
Charles Jr, O.H., Schmidheiny, S. and Watts, P. (2017) Walking the talk: The business case for sustainable development. United Kingdom: Routledge.
Cummins, J. (2014) Beyond language: Academic communication and student success. Linguistics and Education, 26, pp.145-154.
Harris Jr, C.E., Pritchard, M.S., Rabins, M.J., James, R. and Englehardt, E. (2013) Engineering ethics: Concepts and cases.Boston: Cengage Learning.
Hiltz, S.R., Van de Walle, B. and Turoff, M. (2014) The domain of emergency management information. In Information systems for emergency management (pp. 15-32). United Kingdom: Routledge.
Lathem, S.A., Neumann, M.D. and Hayden, N. (2011) The socially responsible engineer: Assessing student attitudes of roles and responsibilities. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(3), pp.444-474.
Stump, G.S., Hilpert, J.C., Husman, J., Chung, W.T. and Kim, W. (2011) Collaborative learning in engineering students: Gender and achievement. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(3), pp.475-497.
Volk, R., Stengel, J. and Schultmann, F. (2014) Building Information Modeling (BIM) for existing buildings—Literature review and future needs. Automation in construction, 38, pp.109-127.