Emerging Trends in Systems Engineering Leadership

Book excerpt: This book celebrates the efforts of women in the international systems engineering community. While there are dozens of books that tackle the topic of systems engineering and thousands of books that address leadership, this book is unique. Emerging Trends in Systems Engineering Leadership: Practical Research from Women Leaders presents personal, well-researched, hands-on perspectives of emerging trends in systems engineering leadership from industry, government, and academia, covering timely topics applicable across many domains – all under one cover. This book presents material for engineers, scientists, technologists, and others to help them tackle challenges in their everyday work dealing with complex socio-technical systems. The book provides guidance for leaders on shoring up essential (soft) skills to address the increasing demand for professional competencies; addresses diversity, equity, inclusion, and empowering women in the workforce; discusses broader facets of systems engineering leadership including systems thinking, ethics and utilitarianism; and investigates the impact of emerging technological change on systems resilience and the digital enterprise. This book provides a multi-perspective approach for leaders to navigate a changing world and develop and deliver optimal system solutions to global societal challenges that meet human needs. To this end, the authors extend beyond the solid technical base to encompass the human aspect of system behavior. This book is written by twenty-six female authors (three of whom also serve as the editors) from around the world at varying career stages who share their research, achievements, perspectives, and successes in emerging areas of systems engineering leadership. Testimonials: “As the systems that modern society depends on get more complicated and complex, we are in the midst of a renaissance with regard to research relating to systems engineering and science. A vast majority of this research is focused on the development of a modern toolkit for systems engineers today and into the future. This takes the form of new and improved methods, models, methodology, processes and tools. This research is critical but likely insufficient without a focus on the most valuable resource with regard to systems engineering within any organization – the human resource. Therein lies the focus of this textbook. It addresses systems engineering leadership from a variety of perspectives, while also addressing broad aspects relating to mentoring and the necessary evolving competencies that we need to address in today’s workforce. This emphasis makes this book unique. The icing on the cake is that all the chapters in this textbook are written by contemporary women leaders – this provides a necessary and unique perspective on the topic of leadership – that is long overdue! I highly recommend this textbook to all my colleagues in academia, industry, and government.” Dinesh Verma, Ph.D.Professor, Systems Engineering, School of Systems and EnterprisesExecutive Director, Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC)Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030 “The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of women who are formally recognized in systems engineering technical, management and leadership positions in all sectors. With industry, academia, professional systems engineering societies and publishers enabling and illuminating the growing and substantial contributions of women in engineering, women have unprecedented opportunities today to contribute to systems engineering in both leadership and management positions. This volume, a compendium of chapters written by enterprising international women leaders at various stages in their career, addresses diverse topics such as leadership, management, empowerment, equity, diversity, inclusion, and mentoring. It is a valuable resource for engineering management courses in academia, systems engineering leadership training in industry, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program development by Human Resource departments in industry, academia, and government.” Azad M. Madni, Ph.D., NAENorthrop Grumman Foundation Fred O’Green Chair in Engineering Professor of Astronautics and Aerospace and Mechanical EngineeringExecutive Director, Systems Architecting and Engineering ProgramUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089