Intercultural/Global Competency for Engineers
“The achievement of global competency depends critically on developing the ability to work effectively with people who define problems differently than oneself, including both engineers and non-engineers. Interactions with people from other countries are valuable because they are most likely (a) to draw boundaries around problems in different ways and (b) to judge problems to have distinct implications for their lives and careers. The key benefit in the ideal of learning to work productively with other cultures thus involves going beyond recognizing that engineering problems can be solved in different ways to understanding that problems can be defined in different ways and mean different things to people holding different perspectives.” (Downey, G. L et al, 2006, The Globally Competent Engineer: Working Effectively with People Who Define Problems Differently. Journal of Engineering Education, pp. 109-110)
