This course intends to prepare students for management and leadership tasks in technology-intensive operations. In working life, engineers are continuously involved in work groups whose task is to change and develop the industrial company's activities and probably to function as project manager and/or manager with responsibility for coordinating people and formal staff liability.
For the interplay between technology and economics to function in an efficient and successful way, it is thus central that the engineering work, in addition to deep technical and business area skills, is characterised by a skilled leadership. This facilitates the creation of preconditions for a well-functioning cooperation between people and a visionary competence provision – all important strategic challenges for the development and competitiveness of industrial organisations. Furthermore, leaders and executives have a far-reaching responsibility to use their authority in a reflective and ethically-aware manner – which implies handling and integrating questions about gender equality, diversity and sustainability in the daily work.
The task of a Master of Engineering is also often to carry out both incremental and radical change management, both within the framework of continuous industrial leadership and technology-intensive development work. Change management in technology-intensive environments implies a mixture of different knowledge and skills.
Firstly, knowledge and understanding of the industrial context and activities are required, as these are crucial to be able to identify the changes that are needed in order to reach the goals, and to meet the need for change.
Secondly, it is necessary to know how to handle and lead complex restructuring, implying the handling of social relations, trust, participation and learning within work groups with highly skilled key persons for the organisation.
The knowledge within all these fields must be based both on practical experiences and on current research.