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"This research investigated whether engineers, graduating from universities more than a decade after the introduction new occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation in Australia, were being equipped with the knowledge and skills to fulfil their professional, legal and moral responsibilities in relation to occupational health and safety. The study focussed on engineering students as future business leaders and designers of working environments. An instrument was designed to examine the ability of OH&S education to affect decision-making and problem solving competence in engineering students and graduates. The study found that engineering graduates in the 1990's were departing [from] their academic institutions with superficial knowledge of occupational health and safety responsibilities and accountability in the workplace. The evaluative tool identified an absence of safety management skills and knowledge within graduate and student engineer groups and an extensive urge to blame and discipline the victim or blame a government regulatory authority. The research found that although occupational health and safety professionals adopt a strategy of a safe work place rather than place emphasis on individual workers the engineers did not adopt the safe place approach and focussed on the person. It is recommended that the evaluative tool or a derivative of it should be used to evaluate the extent to which our community progresses in developing the vital OHS decision-making skills of the people who will manage and design workplaces." --p.ii. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The impetus for the research reported in this thesis came after reflection on my career in engineering which led to the observation that descriptions of what engineers do, or should do, when they work on projects, do not address the social aspects of their interactions with other people, both engineers and non-engineers, who are involved with the project. Teams of engineers can be viewed as social systems and I believed that it should be possible to describe their activities using social theories, as distinct from descriptions which focus on the application of technology and the management of resources to meet clients' requirements. The research followed a heuristic methodology. There was no initial theory. Theory emerged from the data. As a preliminary step, I examined documents prescribing the way engineering work is done and compared them with accounts of successful projects. The comparison shows that the prescriptive documentation overlooks the interaction between people, which however features prominently in the accounts of successful projects. As well, examination of the systems representation widely employed throughout projects shows that it can lead to oversimplification, when it is used to model socio-technical and social systems. / In the first iteration of this research, social theories relating to individual and collaborative learning, and the life-cycle of teams were examined. From the very large field of sociology, I used my own experience to select those theories that explained the interactions between people engaged in engineering projects. As a reality check on the applicability of the selected theories, I interviewed four successful engineer/managers, now retired. The first three confirmed the relevance of those theories. In addition, their interviews pointed to other factors requiring a second iteration of researching social theories that centred on forms of capital, leadership styles, and the interdependence of formal and informal organizational structures to management and problem-solving practices. The suite of social theories from the first and second iterations of research is integrated into a Social Systems Evaluation Framework (SSEF) that encompasses the four forms of capital, Embodied, Social, Institutionalised and Economic, and facilitates an evaluation of the social systems associated with a project. The use of the SSEF at any stage of a project life cycle is explained. Finally, it was applied successfully to the fourth interview as a “trial fit”. The thesis concludes with suggestions for further work in validating the SSEF and extending its application to other domains and cultures. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2005.

"This research investigated whether engineers, graduating from universities more than a decade after the introduction new occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation in Australia, were being equipped with the knowledge and skills to fulfil their professional, legal and moral responsibilities in relation to occupational health and safety. The study focussed on engineering students as future business leaders and designers of working environments. An instrument was designed to examine the ability of OH&S education to affect decision-making and problem solving competence in engineering students and graduates. The study found that engineering graduates in the 1990's were departing [from] their academic institutions with superficial knowledge of occupational health and safety responsibilities and accountability in the workplace. The evaluative tool identified an absence of safety management skills and knowledge within graduate and student engineer groups and an extensive urge to blame and discipline the victim or blame a government regulatory authority. The research found that although occupational health and safety professionals adopt a strategy of a safe work place rather than place emphasis on individual workers the engineers did not adopt the safe place approach and focussed on the person. It is recommended that the evaluative tool or a derivative of it should be used to evaluate the extent to which our community progresses in developing the vital OHS decision-making skills of the people who will manage and design workplaces." --p.ii. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 1999. / Also available online.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Thomas A. Leemon. Dissertation Committee: Barbara Spencer. Bibliography: leaves 129-131.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "December, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-114). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Part of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1936. / Lithoprinted. Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries, Chicago, Illinois. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 345-354).