TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Bouffier, Anna A1 - Gaedicke, Sonja A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Diversifying engineering education: a transdisciplinary approach from RWTH Aachen University T2 - Strategies for increasing diversity in engineering majors and careers N2 - Engineers and therefore engineering education are challenged by the increasing complexity of questions to be answered globally. The education of future engineers therefore has to answer with curriculums that build up relevant skills. This chapter will give an example how to bring engineering and social responsibility successful together to build engineers of tomorrow. Through the integration of gender and diversity perspectives, engineering research and teaching is expanded with new perspectives and contents providing an important potential for innovation. Aiming on the enhancement of engineering education with distinctive competencies beyond technical expertise, the teaching approach introduced in the chapter represents key factors to ensure that coming generations of engineers will be able to meet the requirements and challenges a changing globalized world holds for them. The chapter will describe how this approach successfully has been implemented in the curriculum in engineering of a leading technical university in Germany. Y1 - 2017 SN - 9781522522126 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2212-6.ch010 SP - 201 EP - 235 PB - IGI Global CY - Hershey, USA ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Innovation and Diversity : Integrating new perspectives into research associations T2 - 12th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE 2017) : Paris, France, 21-22 September 2017 N2 - The link between diversity and innovation is broadly discussed in the context of research and innovation processes. Many institutions and enterprises, specifically in commerce, have already tried to establish sustainable diversity management concepts, in order to increase the diversity of their workforce in addition to establishing a corporate culture of openness. Alongside the creation of a working place where different experiences and skills are valued equally, the entrepreneurial intention is to transfer diversity into economically relevant advantages. Taking into account the potential of diversity in research and innovation processes, the project “Diversity- and Innovation Management” was incorporated within a large interdisciplinary research Cluster. The project’s purpose was to study the context between diversity and innovation in research associations and to later develop a customised management concept into an interdisciplinary research Cluster on integrative production technology with full integration. The challenge of such research associations lays in an organisational structure which is often described as being decentralised. Researchers coming from different academic disciplines, while having diverse habits, conduct research on large scientific issues and challenges. In addition, these researchers are socialised in different institutions and university chairs. Theses differences in leadership styles, business cultures and organisational strategies, follow into their research team work. Taking a closer look into the management of human resources suggests that decentral organised recruitment processes, as well as allocation of human resources, lead to a lacking overview in regard to missing competencies, perspectives and backgrounds in research networks. These circumstances are comparable to big corporate groups. While developing a management concept for research associations, these characteristics must be considered. To ensure this, the project follows a human-centred approach, which considers top-down, as well as bottom-up perspectives. This paper presents the applied mixed-method approach in the scientific issue described above. In the frame of the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries” research results based on quantitative, as well as qualitative studies, were presented as an application example. This paper provides a new perspective on the innovation and diversity context. Against the background of complex research organisations, the development approach of a management concept is particularly interesting. KW - Innovation KW - Diversity KW - Innovation Management KW - Diversity Management KW - Leadership Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-911218-54-8 SP - 767 EP - 776 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Sharma, Mamta Rameshwarlal A1 - Bleck, Wolfgang A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Diversity and innovation management in large research groups JF - International Journal of Innovation Management N2 - Contemporary research appreciates a diverse workforce as a potential source of innovation. Researchers explore the fine details of why diversity management is central for generating innovations in heterogeneous research groups and how it could be effectively implemented into organizations. Complex research associations that discuss topics with a high impact on society increasingly address the necessity of establishing a diverse workforce to confront the challenges of tomorrow. Characterized by complex management structures as well as hierarchies, research associations have not been a subject of investigation until now. For this reason, the presented research project aims to develop a diversity and innovation management strategy with the ultimate goal of inducing change in the corporate culture. The proposed approach consisted of six phases; the first two phases investigated the status quo of diversity in the existing organizational structures of member institutes and the variety of particular working cultures within the research association. The third and the fourth phases utilized qualitative and quantitative studies. The third phase focused on the connection of management level to diversity and innovation, and the need for diversity and innovation management, and tailor-made methods of implementing them. The first three phases have been accomplished successfully; preliminary results are already available. The fourth phase will mainly focus on exploring the mind-set of the employees. The fifth phase will consolidate the findings in the first four phases into an implementable strategy. The final phase will address the implementation of this strategy into the organization. Phases 4 to 6 have not yet been undertaken KW - diversity management KW - innovation management KW - research association KW - change management KW - engineering Y1 - 2017 SN - 1757-5877 VL - 5 IS - 2 SP - 49 EP - 72 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Sharma, Mamta Rameshwarlal A1 - Bleck, Wolfgang A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen ED - Farn, C. K. T1 - Innovation through Diversity - Development of a Diversity and Innovation management concept T2 - International Conference on Innovation and Management : IAM23017S : Date: July 4-7, 2017, Osaka, Japan N2 - Acknowledging that a diverse workforce could be a potential source of innovation, the current research deals with the fine details of why diversity management is central to achieving innovation in heterogeneous research groups and how this could be effectively realized in an organization. The types of heterogeneities addressed mainly include gender, qualification, academic discipline and intercultural perspectives. The type of organization being dealt with in this work is a complex association of research institutes at a technical university in Germany (RWTH Aachen University), namely a 'Cluster of Excellence', whereby several institutes of the university work collaboratively in different sub-projects. The 'Cluster of Excellence' is a part of the 'Excellence Initiative' of the German federal and state governments German Research Foundation (DFG) and German Council of Science and Humanities, with the ultimate aim of promoting cutting-edge research. To support interdisciplinary collaboration and thus the performance of the cluster, the development of a diversity and innovation management concept is presently in the conceptual phase and will be described in the frame of this paper. The 3-S-Diversity Model, composed of the three elements: skills, structure and strategy, serves as a basis for the development of the concept. The proposed concept consists of six phases; the first two phases lay the ground work by developing an understanding of the status quo on the forms of diversity in the Cluster of Excellence, the type of organizational structure of the member institutes and the varieties of specialist work cultures of the same. The third and the fourth phases build up on this foundation by means of qualitative and quantitative studies. While the third phase deals with the sensitization of the management level to the close connection between diversity and innovation; the need to manage them thereafter and find tailor-made methods of doing so, the fourth phase shall mainly focus on the mindset of the employees in this regard. The fifth phase shall consolidate the learnings and the ideas developed in the course of the first four phases into an implementable strategy. The ultimate phase shall be the implementation of this concept in the Cluster. The first three phases have been accomplished successfully and the preliminary results are already available. Y1 - 2017 SN - 2218-6387 SP - Panel C PB - Kuang Hui Chiu CY - Osaka ER -