Search

Article Information


The Characteristics and Work Adjustment of Engineering Technicians
Kleingartner, Archie
11/3  (Spring 1969): 89-96

In recent years, technical occupations have been expanding substantially faster than has the labor force generally and faster than many professional occupations. Year after year technical occupations are identified as areas where serious manpower shortages exist. Movement into these jobs is viewed by manpower planners as one of the most attractive and feasible channels for upgrading workers and for relieving the pressures caused by the high cost and shortage of professional personnel. Similarly, technical jobs are frequently viewed as the upper limit to which training and retraining programs among the unemployed can reasonably be directed. It is paradoxical that, despite the growth and importance of technicians as an occupational category, knowledge of where they come from, how they become technicians, their motivations, and their job and career expectations is very scanty. Academic researchers as well as managers have tended to slight technicians in favor of the more glamorous professional occupations ranking immediately above technicians and the more numerous production workers immediately below them.

 

California Management Review

Berkeley-Haas's Premier Management Journal

Published at the University of California for more than sixty years, California Management Review seeks to share knowledge that challenges convention and shows a better way of doing business.

Learn more
Follow Us