Communication and the engineering profession: Perspectives from the field

Scholars and industry leaders alike point to the growing importance of communication skills in the engineering profession. However, it remains unclear what specific skills are needed by engineers to be successful in today's business environment and whether all engineers have embraced this new philosophy. This study attempted to extend our understanding of how engineers perceive the role of communication in their chosen career paths and to explore how communication apprehension affects those perceptions.; Findings revealed several critical gaps between engineers' perceptions of specific communication activities' importance and their perceptions of self-competence in performing the same tasks. Communication apprehension strongly influenced engineers' perceptions of self-competence at performing various communication activities and also influenced engineers' perceptions of the importance of the same communication activities. Communication apprehension significantly influenced engineers' satisfaction with career progression but did not significantly influence job satisfaction.; Encouraging results showed that younger engineers appear to be less apprehensive about communicating than their older counterparts. Relatively recent efforts by educators to incorporate more communication skills training into the engineering curriculum seem to be having an effect.