Students’ learning of management and leadership in engineering education – a literature review

ABSTRACT

The increasing complexity of societal problems and the need for more interdisciplinary problem-solving in the future raise new demands for future engineering competences. Consequently, competences related to management and leadership must be reconsidered and reflected in both engineering education and engineering education research. This leads to the following research question: In which ways are students’ learning of management and leadership articulated and related in engineering education literature? In this study, this research question is answered through a systematic literature review wherein 112 journal articles were reviewed to explore articulations of students’ learning of management and leadership competences. The review finds extensive diversity in the literature, with different and sometimes even overlapping articulations of management and leadership in an educational context. Furthermore, the review identifies a difference between implicit and explicit approaches to addressing the development of students’ management and leadership competences. Finally, the importance of the mutual interaction between management and leadership is discussed in an engineering education context. It is stressed that moving forward when working with complex problems in interdisciplinary teams requires both change and vision, as well as the tools and plans to actually make it happen.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education research
• interdisciplinarity
• complex problems
• PBL
• leadership
• management

Introduction

This literature review focuses on students’ learning of management and leadership competences in engineering education. Working in interdisciplinary contexts demands new competences, and a common request is for ‘T-shaped’ engineers (Euro-CASE 2020) – this phrase refers to engineers who have deep knowledge in one discipline and general knowledge and competences that help them form bridges with other disciplines. New ways of organising and structuring knowledge call for coordination and decision-making. In highly complex organisations, decisions are often decentralised and teams are self-organised (Stacey 1992; Stacey 1996). This type of self-organised organisation requires a new model for leadership that differs from those of more traditional organisations (Baltaci and Balcı 2017).

A study at a UK university by Townsend, Pisapia, and Razzaq (2013) found that leadership is important at the college and university levels if interdisciplinarity is to thrive, while Boone et al. (2020) stated that urgent sustainability challenges require effective leadership in inter- and transdisciplinary institutions to facilitate integration among disciplines. These findings imply that leadership is an important key to the promotion of interdisciplinarity. Moreover, Carlile (2004) stated that increasing novelty can make collaboration difficult and may call for new ways of managing knowledge and competences between actors. The importance of non-technical competences (including management and leadership) has been illustrated in a study by Lima, Mesquita, and Rocha (2013) in which job advertisements for industrial engineering and management professionals had far more input for ‘transversal’ competences (as such competences are defined) than for technical competences or professional practice.

The literature points out that the difference between management and leadership is not always clear and that both terms are often used interchangeably, although there seems to be an intuitive understanding of the differences between the two concepts (Nienaber 2010; Toor 2011; Toor and Ofori 2008). According to Kotterman (2006, 16), it is generally accepted that managers and leaders have conceptually distinct functions, yet there is no universally accepted version of what constitutes these differences.

As a concept, management is much more recent than leadership and is more related to planning, budgeting, organising, and controlling. It is about establishing structures, procedures, and reward systems (Kotterman 2006; Toor and Ofori 2008), and can be seen as a tactic for coping with the here and now (Kotterman 2006).

In contrast to management, the concept of leadership has a long history (Kotterman 2006; Toor and Ofori 2008), and is related to setting a direction and developing a vision; compared to management, it is more focused on strategy and the future, and plays a part in the alignment of organisations (Kotterman 2006). Moreover, leadership is related to change and innovation and is a process that involves both leaders and followers (Toor and Ofori 2008); according to Rost’s definition, ‘Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and their collaborators who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes’ (Rost 1993, 99).

While management involves power based on position, leadership involves power based on influence (Toor and Ofori 2008). A study by Toor (2011) highlighted that management and leadership overlap and complement each other, as both concepts are necessary to accomplish organisational goals and effective teamwork. Similarly, Kirton (1976) described the behaviours of adaptors and innovators as two different ways of working with problems. Adaptors and innovators are located on a continuum between the ability to ‘do things better’, or in other words to resolve rather than find problems, and the ability to ‘do things differently’, in terms of discovering problems and finding solutions to them. Kotter (2012) elucidated that leadership creates visions and strategies which, together with the plans and budgets created by management, comprise relationships within a system which are crucial for achieving organisational goals. Management’s role is thus to make a system work, whereas leadership builds systems or transforms old systems.

With regard to engineering education, the research shows that the ability to coordinate across multiple disciplines is an important competence for engineering students engaged in any multi- or interdisciplinary project (Routhe, Holgaard, and Kolmos 2023). Interdisciplinary processes are increasingly recognised as useful; however, how disciplines should be intertwined in different contexts and for different purposes can be difficult to determine, and the same is true for the question of how work might be organised in interdisciplinary projects. In this process, the sense-making process and the creation of a common ground seem to be very important factors (Lattuca, Knight, and Bergom 2013; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005).

Management and leadership are closely related and interdependent concepts, but at the same time it is important to understand management and leadership as distinct concepts in order to balance their interaction in a situated and meaningful way. In the context of interdisciplinarity, management and leadership might have considerably different connotations as they are established in different disciplinary contexts, which will complicate the interaction process even further.

Many interdisciplinary challenges are grounded in differences in paradigms and understandings and in the use of synonyms. To be clear about interdisciplinarity, this study uses the definition provided by Keestra and Menken (2016) which encompasses multidisciplinarity (defined as unintegrated disciplines working together), interdisciplinarity (defined as a merging of different disciplines when working together), and transdisciplinarity (which is comparable with interdisciplinarity and includes non-academic knowledge). The definition of interdisciplinarity is supplemented by the topology of Klein (2011), which creates a distinction between narrow interdisciplinarity, understood as interdisciplinarity in disciplines with similar knowledge paradigms (such as different engineering disciplines), and broad interdisciplinarity, referring to that between disciplines with very different paradigms (such as engineering disciplines and disciplines from humanities).

Moreover, according to Klein (2001, 43), complexity is a keyword in the discussion of interdisciplinarity, and the complexity of knowledge and society necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. This creates the need to work with or within more than one discipline, which in turn produces a sense of interdisciplinary necessity, as formulated by Klein (1996, 40), or an evolution from a ‘buzzword’ to a necessity, as formulated by Tripp and Shortlidge (2019). In other words, complex problem solving is linked to interdisciplinarity (UNESCO 2021, 123).

Engineers working to solve these complex problems require a broader understanding of them as their solutions involve socio-cultural approaches, or a balance between the problem and societal capacity and capability to solve it (Kolmos 2006; Lehmann et al. 2008). A broader understanding of problems and solutions leads to a demand for engineers to be able to analyze the context to find the optimal solution to the problem, which is why competences like analytical problem analysis and solving, creativity, and interdisciplinarity are demanded (Kolmos 2006, 169).

Examples of complex problems which necessitate interdisciplinary solutions include societal problems like the consequences of climate change. According to Lehtonen, Salonen, and Cantell (2019, 339), climate change is a ‘wicked’ problem. Combating climate change requires climate action, which is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the UN in 2015 (UNESCO 2017). As pointed out by UNESCO (2021, 122–123), engineering and technology must play an important role in the achievement of the 17 SDGs, but this will require more complexity in the curriculum. The understanding of complexity can be related to the Cynefin framework devised by Snowden and Boone (2007), which defines two domains, order and unorder, which differ in their relation to causality. The order domain has two areas, namely simple and complicated, whereby there is a straightforward relationship between components but with more components in the complicated area compared to the simple area. The unorder domain also has two areas: complex and chaos. The complex area involves interdependence and a non-causal relationship between the elements, resulting in a situation that is more than the sum of its different parts. In the chaos area, the relationship between cause and effect is impossible to identify because of constant shifting without recognisable patterns (Snowden and Boone 2007). Recognition of complexity as a context for future engineers’ problem solving implies a need to change engineering curricula, as conventional engineering curricula merely respond to the simple and complicated domains (UNESCO 2021, 123).

Problem- and project-based learning (PBL) is a learning strategy that resonates with complex problem solving (Hadgraft and Kolmos 2020). It is described by Hmelo-Silver (2004, 235) as follows: ‘In PBL, student learning centers on a complex problem that does not have a single correct answer.’ Meanwhile, Savery (2006) highlights that the selection of ill-structured (often interdisciplinary) problems, and tutors who guide the process, are both critical to success, indicating that complex or ill-structured problems are a good match for PBL. PBL can be seen as an integration of both the problem-based and project-based approaches, meaning that in a cognitive learning approach learning is organised around problems and occurs in projects (Kolmos, de Graaff, and Du 2009; Kolmos, Fink, and Krogh 2004). Another important aspect of PBL that should be highlighted is that the social approach involves team-based learning, with the learning process taking place as a social act (de Graaff and Kolmos 2007, 7). Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a very similar learning strategy to PBL which takes real-world problems as its point of departure, as implementations of PBL do (Holgaard et al. 2017; Johnson et al. 2009; Kolmos, Fink, and Krogh 2004; van den Beemt et al. 2023).

As previously argued, management and leadership are interconnected but distinct concepts, which can be expanded to address the call for interdisciplinarity and the increasing complexity of societal problems. If engineering education institutions intend to respond to this by preparing future graduates to manage and lead interdisciplinary connections and complex problems, they may have to rethink their curricula. This means that the understanding of management and leadership must be transformed to fit the educational context – becoming a matter of students’ learning of management and leadership.

There is, however, no overview of how interdisciplinarity and complexity affect management and leadership. Although some pedagogies like PBL and CBL – particularly with regard to their focus on ‘wicked’ problems as starting points – provide promising frameworks, it is difficult to integrate what can barely be articulated.

This leads to the following research question:

In which ways are students’ learning of management and leadership articulated and related in engineering education literature?

Management and leadership are the objects of this research, whereas interdisciplinarity, complex problem-solving and engineering education are the context.

Methodology

The research question is addressed using the results of a structured literature review inspired by the format described by Borrego, Foster, and Froyd (2014) and comprising the following steps:

• Identifying the scope and research questions (the first important part)

• Defining inclusion criteria (developing criteria for database selection, the research protocol, search strings, and inclusion and exclusion criteria)

• Finding and cataloging sources (selecting databases, meeting with librarians, search procedures, screening, and the filtering process)

• Critique and appraisal (assessing the quality of each primary study)

• Synthesis (mapping, critique within studies, tables, critique across studies, qualitative content analysis)

• Limitations, validity, and reliability concerns (limitations due to the quality and quantity of the primary sources and bias)

The scope of the study was identified, and the research question was formulated in the previous section. This section describes the development of the research protocol, including the definition of inclusion criteria shown in Table 1 and the final search string shown in Table 2. The finding and cataloging of sources, and the number of articles in the screening and filtering processes, are illustrated in Table 3. Critique and appraisal are indirectly rendered by the representation of the data, for example by stressing the explicit versus the implicit, or by acknowledging the number of times a topic is mentioned or the inclusion of rich information in the text. Part of the synthesis is included in the section on article mapping, which is followed by a section describing the coding process. The other part of the synthesis, involving qualitative content analysis, is incorporated into the Findings section, where the tables are presented. Additional tables can be found in Appendices 1–4. Finally, the limitations of this study are described in a separate section.

Table 1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

CRITERIA	INCLUSION	EXCLUSION
Paper	Peer-reviewed journals	Conference papers, books, etc.
Education	Engineering education or science education	Secondary school etc.
Organisation	Teamwork and project work	-
Time	After 1999	Before 2000
Language	English	Non-English
Management and leadership	Management and leadership	Risk management, quality management, conflict management

Table 2. Search string.

Block	Search string
Block #1 Leadership or management	(‘leader*’ OR ‘meta competenc*’ OR ‘meta-competenc*’ OR ‘structur* competenc*’ OR manage*)
	AND
Block #2 Interdisciplinarity or complex problems	(interdisci* OR crossdisci* OR ‘cross-disci*’ OR multidisci* OR ‘multi-disci*’ OR ‘multi disci*’ OR transdisci* OR ‘trans-disci*’ OR ‘trans disci*’ OR boundar* OR ‘complex problems’ OR complexity OR ‘complicated problems’ OR ‘chaotic problems’ OR ‘societal problems’ OR ‘Ill-structured⁣ problems’ OR ‘wicked problems’)
	AND
Block #3 Engineering Education	(‘engineering education’ OR ‘science education’)
	AND
Block #4 Learning environment	(‘PBL’ OR ‘problem-based’ OR ‘problem based’ OR ‘project-based’ OR ‘project based’ OR ‘problem-solv*’ OR ‘problem solv*’ OR ‘problem-orient*’ OR ‘problem orient*’ OR ‘project-orient*’ OR ‘project orient*’ OR ‘challenge-based’ OR ‘challenge based’ OR team OR ‘project work’)

Table 3. Steps and numbers of articles in the screening and filtering process.

Step	Database	SCOPUS	EBSCOhost ERIC	EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier	Web of Science	PsycINFO	Total
1	Results all	1397	171	193	368	24	2153
2	Results journals	197	94	145	167	14	617
3	Results English	188	91	134	163	14	590
4	Published after 1999	163	88	134	157	14	556
5	Duplicates removed	85	76	77	148	14	400
6	After abstract screening	49	33	21	77	3	183
7	After full-text screening	22	16	13	60	1	112

Research protocol

The development of the research protocol was an iterative process in which scoping reviews were used to identify and select the terms used in the search strings. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined according to the purpose and scope of the review. Selecting databases is one of the first steps in a systematic literature review, and five different databases were chosen to ensure a wide search: Scopus, ERIC (EBSCOhost), Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost), Web of Science, and PsycINFO. The selected articles were all published in peer-reviewed journals and in English. Conference articles, books, and other sources were excluded. Journals concerning engineering education or science education were included, whereas journals concerning subjects such as secondary school education were excluded. To limit the number of journal articles and provide an up-to-date view of the literature, only articles published between January 2000 and June 2022 were included. Furthermore, the search was limited to studies involving students working in teams and excluded journal articles that did not concern management or leadership in general, such as those focusing on risk management, quality management, or conflict management. The full list of inclusion and exclusion criteria is shown in Table 1.

The development of the search string was an iterative process; the aim was to develop a search string based on a variety of key words related to the research question. This research is limited to active learning environments like PBL and CBL and is not a comparative study of different learning strategies; it is merely an identification of contexts in which students are at the centre of the learning process. After the process was completed, the search string was reviewed by a librarian at Aalborg University Library. The final search string is shown in Table 2.

The search of the five databases was conducted in June 2022, and the subsequent filtering process followed the steps described by Borrego, Foster, and Froyd (2014). These steps are summarised in Table 3.

The right-hand column of Table 3 shows the total number of results for each step (searching, screening, and filtering) for all five databases. In total, 2153 articles were found; however, after excluding all sources other than peer-reviewed journal articles, 617 articles remained. After excluding articles that did not fit the language and date of publication criteria, 556 articles remained. Using the referencing programme EndNote to handle the references, 156 duplicates were removed, resulting in 400 articles remaining before abstracts were screened. Abstracts, rather than just titles and keywords, were screened because important content was not necessarily revealed in the titles or keywords. After abstract screening and subsequent full-text screening, a final total of 112 articles were selected. A full list of all 112 articles can be found in Appendix 1.

Mapping the articles

To form an overview of the 112 selected articles, the following parameters were mapped: a list of the countries from which the articles originated, a list of the journals in which the articles were published, and the years in which the articles were published.

The country with the most contributions was the USA with 50 articles, followed by Spain with five, Denmark and Portugal with four each, Belgium, Canada, France, and Sweden with three each, and Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UK with two articles each. Twenty-one articles were from countries that produced only one article, and 10 articles could be accredited to more than one country.

The selected 112 articles were published in 47 different journals. More than 50% of the articles were published in the following four journals: the International Journal of Engineering Education (28), the European Journal of Engineering Education (13), the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice (12), and the Journal of Engineering Education (eight). Besides these journals, other articles were published in Advances in Engineering Education (three), IEEE Transactions on Education (three), the International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (two), the Journal of Manufacturing Systems (two), the Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (two) and Sustainability: the Journal of Record (two). Finally, 37 journals contributed only one journal article each.

The distribution of the articles according to their year of publication (January 2000 to June 2022) is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 illustrates that despite some fluctuations, the selected articles were mainly published within the last ten years, indicating an increased focus on this field during the last decade.

Figure 1. Publication year for the 112 selected articles. The literature review was conducted in June 2022, which explains the relatively low number of articles published in 2022 included in the review.

Coding

Three different programmes were used to structure the review after the full-text screening. All articles were imported into EndNote to keep track of the references. Subsequently, five subgroups were created in EndNote containing the selected articles from the five different databases. Preparation for coding involved importing the 112 selected articles into NVivo as PDF files. Besides the coding functions in NVivo, the ‘Text Search Query’ function was used to make a content analysis across all files to investigate the occurrence and frequencies of certain words and concepts. According to Hsieh and Shannon (2005) the occurrence and frequencies provides an indication of the focus or specific content in the articles. Microsoft Excel was used to map information and create an overview of the trends in the literature. The coding process involved several steps ranging from the specific to the general (Creswell and Creswell 2018); in total, four rounds of coding were performed in NVivo. In the first round, data-driven or open coding was used to create an overview of the articles and to remain open-minded with regard to the content (Gibbs 2018). During the first round, codes were developed and categorised into themes, giving a total of 83 codes across five themes. The five themes after the first coding round were: ‘Competences’, ‘Engineering’, ‘Engineering Education’, ‘Management-Leadership’ and ‘Structure’. Round two was initiated by reading the content of all the codes, merging the coding, and reducing the coding. After the second iteration, the ‘Engineering’ theme was excluded, and all coding was related to ‘Engineering Education’. In the third round, the themes were reduced to three (‘Conceptual Understandings’, ‘Curriculum’, and ‘Structure’) with six sub-themes: ‘Management and Leadership’, ‘Principles’, ‘Learning Objectives’, ‘Future Needs’, ‘Organizing’, and ‘Tools and Frameworks’. A fourth iteration was necessary to further reduce the scope of the review; in this fourth round, the themes were reduced to: ‘Articulation of management and leadership’ and ‘Articulation of learning objectives as implicit or explicit’. To finalise the articulation and relation of management and leadership a concept map is constructed based on the findings and the theoretical review. In the concept map, management and leadership are juxta positioned and the relation and articulations are illustrated.

Findings

In this section, the findings are presented in four sections related to 1) management, 2) leadership, 3) a concept map illustrating the articulation of management and leadership, and 4) learning objectives as implicit or explicit. With this research focus, a measurement of the occurrence and frequency with which these concepts appear in the literature is useful for informing an understanding how management and leadership are articulated in the literature. At least 11 different designations are used in the selected articles to describe non-technical competences, a group to which management and leadership belong. Appendix 2 presents a list of different designations used in the articles for these non-technical competences, along with the frequencies with which these designations occur.

Management

Use of the ‘Text Search Query’ function in NVivo showed the number of articles in which the term ‘management’ occurred, as presented in Table 4. Management is articulated in the articles as management, project management, time or resource management, team management, or knowledge management. Table 4 lists the different concepts related to management and the number of articles in which they occurred. In Appendix 3, a more detailed list of the frequency of occurrence of the different concepts can be found.

Table 4. List of concepts related to management found in the articles.

Key word	Management	Project management	Time or resource management	Team management	Knowledge management
In number of articles	109	73	29	12	8

Management as a concept was found in 109 of the articles, see Table 4. Management is often used in the articles as the second part of a more specific concept, such as project management, team management, etc. However, some articles refer to management as a stand-alone skill, for example in Farrell et al. (2003, 69) where ‘Team dynamics improve and management skills are incorporated into the project’. In Maturana et al. (2014, 1225), management is described as an interpersonal skill like communication and multidisciplinary teamwork, and is highlighted as a key attribute of professional engineering practice. Bourgault and Lagacé (2002, 178) describe three groups of competences, namely technical competences, management skills and above all leadership skills, while describing them as forming an indissoluble whole in the management of engineering projects.

When management is found in the articles it is often related to project management. Out of the 112 articles, 73 mention project management, but only 10 mention project management more than 10 times, see Appendix 3. The frequency with which project management occurred indicates that only a few of the selected articles have explicitly focus on this. When project management is defined, it is often expressed as relating to time and capacity planning or more explicitly to workflow, time scheduling, and resource handling (Bender and Longmuss 2003) – i.e. team, resource and time management, or handling of the product development process (Bourgault and Lagacé 2002; Lawanto et al. 2019). Lawanto et al. (2019, 136) define project management as comprising three elements: team management, resource management and time management. In the actual study, these competences are combined with dynamic decision making, requiring a high level of student self-regulation (SR). Lawanto et al. (2019) focus on studying self-regulation strategies in an engineering design project consisting of a five-stage model, in relation to both design and project management skills.

Lawanto et al. (2019, 136) describe team management as typically involving the dynamic coordination of three to six persons, their personalities, and their various agendas, and as being particularly important in design projects. Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht (2021, 2262) describe the team management process as involving planning project workflows and tracking each member’s contributions in a study in which students in teams were taught a collaborative delivery process in the context of Building Information Modeling (BIM). When Janakiraman et al. (2021, 6) refer to team management, it is more in relation to teamwork, taking responsibility for participation, avoiding defaulters and conflicts, and making contracts to prevent team failures.

Charosky et al. (2022) developed an ‘Innovation Competences Framework’ in which time management is a part of planning and managing a project, together with planning and organisation. In Mazzetto (2018), the focus is on multidisciplinary collaboration in project management education and hence the explicit focus is on project management. In many studies, project management is only mentioned a few times and hence the focus on project management appears to be more peripheral or implicit.

Another concept used in relation to management is knowledge management, which is mentioned in eight articles in total. Knowledge management is the main topic in Bender and Longmuss (2003), who discuss it in relation to educational engineering design projects; the authors describe a more systematic and goal-directed approach to handling knowledge, as knowledge is the main resource to be generated in project teaching and learning. Systems management is mentioned once in both Xu, Cees, and Cai (2016) and Huerta et al. (2022). Design management is found in Jin et al. (2018) together with the phrase ‘project design and management’, comparable with the phrases ‘design and management methods’ found in Luo and Wood (2017) and ‘design and management’ of systems found in McConville et al. (2017). Finally, in Luo and Wood (2017), complexity management is highlighted as a significant capability which engineers and technology companies should develop to sustain successful inventions in conditions of increasing complexity. Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht (2021) use management in several ways in a study on teaching BIM as a collective information management process; examples include information management and resource-, production-, library-, task-, time-, project- team- and process-related management skills, including communication, planning and teamwork.

The articles reveal different ways of practicing project management. In Colsa et al. (2015), students from three different disciplines participated in project teams, playing different roles depending on their discipline. The three roles were project manager, project manager work package, or team member. In another study (Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018), management students used scrum methodology and played the role of management in interdisciplinary teams. A similar approach was found in other articles (Bowman and Farr 2000; Iriondo et al. 2019; Schäfer and Richards 2007). In Bourgault and Lagacé (2002), the key roles of a company were used as input for roles in a play in which students, based on a card description, played the roles of, for example, project managers, functional managers and general managers, making the experience as authentic as possible. Graduate students can be used as project managers (Farrell et al. 2003; Lovgren and Racer 2000) or the role can be appointed (Schäfer and Richards 2007), and in Grimheden and Strömdahl (2004) the roles were switched during the project. In a project relating to Engineers Without Borders (EWB), important roles like chapter president and student project managers were filled by election and an assistant project manager was appointed (Wittig 2013). In some cases, project management can be a group responsibility (MacLeod and van der Veen 2020) or it can be defined within a framework like BIM, with a defined manager who is responsible for managing all the models and workflows developed, including the BIM execution plan and other BIM management deliverables (Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020).

Tools or methods like Gantt charts and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) are used in connection with project management in several articles (Adair and Jaeger 2014; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Castronovo et al. 2017; Christodoulou 2004; Clevenger et al. 2017; Colsa et al. 2015; Gider et al. 2012; Huerta et al. 2022; Jin et al. 2018; Luo and Wood 2017; Mazzetto 2018; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010; Prescott et al. 2012; Stone et al. 2018).

Methods supporting development processes like BIM are related to project management (Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012; Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Castronovo et al. 2017; Clevenger et al. 2017; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Jin et al. 2018; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Rangel et al. 2016; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020). The scrum method is related to both management and leadership (Albayrak 2017; Arce et al. 2022; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018).

In summary, 109 articles in this literature review are related to management in various ways, mostly concerning project management. Different views and definitions are articulated; some articles treat time management and resource management as part of project management, while in other examples these are not explicitly included in project management. However, the understanding of management as skills or competences used to plan, control, and organise through the use of defined tools or processes is recognised. To provide an overview of the various conceptualizations of management found in the selected articles, the concepts are summed up in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Concept map illustrating articulations of management and leadership in the literature.

The majority of the articles do not articulate an explicit understanding of project management, rather stating that project management is a concept for which there exists a common unarticulated understanding.

Leadership

Table 5 shows the concepts related to leadership and the number of articles where they are found. In Appendix 4 a more detailed list of the frequency of occurrence of the different concepts can be found.

Table 5. List of concepts related to leadership found in the articles.

Key word	Leadership	Shared leadership	Collective leadership	Rotating leadership	Transfor-mational leadership	Problem solving leadership	Entrepre-neurial leadership	Team Leadership
In number of articles	80	5	3	3	2	1	2	9

The concept of leadership is not found in as many articles as the concept of management. Of the 112 articles, 80 mention leadership, see Table 5 and only 21 mention leadership more than 10 times, see Appendix 4. Kobza et al. (2016) describe the importance of using proper definitions when discussing leadership education. Moreover, Kobza et al. (2016) claim that universities seem to fail to create leaders due to their focus on creating managers, which is why the student-run international organisation European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management (ESTIEM) offers experiential learning activities in which shared and rotating leadership are practiced. Wolfinbarger et al. (2021) discuss how, historically, studies of organisations have also examined key issues like leadership and leadership research in the engineering education field without a deeper examination of the concept, as if the meaning was self-evident.

Further, Wolfinbarger et al. (2021) state that leadership identity as a component of leadership development is important in an engineering context; in their study the concept of Engineering Competition Teams is used to develop leadership identity on the basis of Leadership Identity Development (LID) model (as defined by Komives et al. 2005; 2006). The LID model, in which leadership is considered a relational process, identifies six stages of students’ development of leadership: ‘(1) Awareness, (2) Exploration and Engagement, (3) Leader Identified, (4) Leadership Differentiated, (5) Generativity, and (6) Integration/Synthesis. As students advance through the stages, their understanding moves from leadership as positional to leadership as process, and their associated behaviors become more collaborative and inclusive’ (Wolfinbarger et al. 2021, 927). According to Wolfinbarger et al. (2021), these stages of students’ development of leadership enable them to develop an understanding that leadership does not stem from holding a particular position within the organisation but can come from anywhere; this helps prepare students to participate in shared leadership processes.

The concept of shared leadership is also found in Zafft, Adams, and Matkin (2009), who use the competing value framework (CVF) (as defined by Quinn et al. 1996) to identify and measure leadership in self-managed student teams, thus supporting engineering educators in developing effectiveness in student teams. Shared leadership is understood as the distribution of leadership among several individuals within a team. McNair et al. (2011) use the concept of Self-Managed Work Teams (SMWT) as applied in industry, with leadership originating from within the team instead of from an external supervisor in a top-down model. In some studies, these self-managed teams are denoted as ‘tutorless PBL’, but challenges arise in these tutorless teams in relation to the role of the leader and the students’ reluctance to take on this role (McQuade et al. 2020). Situations can become difficult when students must critique and direct the performance of their peers (Lovgren and Racer 2000). The terms ‘collective leadership’ and ‘rotating leadership’ are other examples of forms of leadership that are not limited to one person (Kobza et al. 2016).

Transformational leadership can be understood in different ways, as in Songer and Breitkreuz (2014) where it is related to professors’ understanding that there are multiple sources of leadership and to that students should be enabled to create solutions to real-world problems, thereby developing the students’ leadership competences. Meanwhile, Laberge (2016) relates transformational leadership to a level of consciousness within management, or to those who are capable of seeing a multitude of points of view and looking for interdependencies rather than relations of cause and effect – in other words, a more change-oriented approach.

Problem-solving leadership was only found in Jablokow (2008), where it is mentioned in relation to technology change, the growing complexity of problems, and the involvement of not only one problem solver but rather a collaboration with other problem solvers, and hence the understanding of key differences and similarities: ‘Facilitating this matching of people to problems and managing the gaps between them is the essence of problem solving leadership’ (Jablokow 2008, 937). Furthermore, ‘In our framework, a leader is the (any) person holding the role in leadership that will facilitate the team in solving a particular problem, over a specific time, with the currently available resources, within the available team’(Jablokow 2008, 943).

Team leadership is mentioned in nine articles and can be related to predicting psychological safety in engineering design, as stated in Traylor et al. (2020). In Jacques, Bissey, and Martin (2016) the ability to demonstrate the capacity for teamwork and team leadership to stimulate innovation is mentioned as a learning objective. Kobza et al. (2016) refer to entrepreneurial leadership as distinct from team leadership.

Students learn about different ways of practicing leadership, from single-person leadership roles to different kinds of shared leadership. The emergent leadership mentioned in Traylor et al. (2020) is a situation in which one person steps up to provide leadership. In Stone, Gorrell, and Richey (2018a), a profile-based method is used to find appropriate methods of organising and leadership, while in Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov (2017) the team elects a group leader after the formation of the group. Another role connected to leadership is that of the ‘scrum master’, who can be identified as the leader of a team. The ‘scrum master’ is a student selected internally by the team with the role being rotated within the team, while the ‘product owner’ can be the teacher (Albayrak 2017). Conceptualizations of different configurations of collective leadership as shared leadership or rotating leadership can be found in the literature. Rotating leadership is also seen in connection with team leadership responsibilities, as in Songer and Breitkreuz (2014), and team leadership, as in Bhavnani and Aldridge (2000, 14) where each team member is given experience as a team leader by rotating the position on a weekly basis and assessment of the team leader by all team members, thus reducing the chance of one person becoming the de facto team leader.

As Table 5 shows, many definitions or conceptualizations of leadership are present in the literature, including shared leadership, collective leadership, rotating leadership, transformational leadership, problem-solving leadership, and emergent leadership. The articles reveal very different focuses and approaches concerning leadership: leadership is a central issue in 12–15 articles but only a peripheral theme in most of the rest. As with management, many articles only mention leadership a few times, indicating a peripheral or implicit focus on the concept, and as was also the case with management there seems to be an implicit common understanding of leadership. However, where leadership is discussed explicitly in the literature it is understood as a relational process involving leaders and followers. Leadership is related to change and psychological safety to support teams or projects and helps to create room for design and new ideas.

The selected articles containing the most references to leadership all refer to a leadership framework. Wolfinbarger et al. (2021) use the LID framework and Zafft, Adams, and Matkin (2009) use the CVF to assist educators in measuring leadership in self-managed teams (SMT). Kobza et al. (2016) use the Virtue-Based Orientation (VBO) model, which supports teaching self-insight to students, Jablokow (2008) uses Kirton’s Adoption-Invention (KAI) framework to develop problem-solving leadership, and finally O’Shea et al. (2013) investigate how student groups in PBL projects develop specific leadership configurations with four leadership roles of Envisioning, Organising, Spanning and Social Leadership (as defined by Barry (1991)). Figure 2 illustrates the articulations of leadership and management found in the literature.

Concept map illustrating management and leadership

An overview of the findings relating to articulations of students’ learning of management and leadership competences is illustrated in a concept map in Figure 2. The concept map is constructed based on the findings concerning management and leadership in the articles and with a point of departure in the theoretical review. Management and leadership are juxta positioned and the relation between management and leadership and the related articulations are mapped. Only a few of the articles explicitly articulate concepts of management and leadership; however, those articles which do explicitly focus on these concepts clearly distinguish between management and leadership, as illustrated in Figure 2. There are a few common areas or overlaps, and the indications support the view that management, especially project management, is about planning, time, and resources, and that tools or defined development processes support the role or position of manager. In contrast, leadership concerns change and is more related to relations and influences. In students’ contexts, this is often expressed as distributed forms of leadership, such as shared leadership or collective leadership, rather than more individually located forms like emergent leadership. However, individual leadership concepts can give different students the opportunity to develop leadership competences if the leadership position is rotated. Frameworks are suggested in the literature to support leadership development with a focus on identity development processes.

The concept map illustrates three overlaps between management and leadership: ‘projects or teamwork’, ‘design process’, and ‘scrum’. The concept map indicates that management and leadership are important for different purposes, and it is important to embrace the interaction between the two concepts to create new thinking while also reaching goals. In the majority of the reviewed articles, management and leadership are not explicitly articulated, and where articulations are explicit, they vary widely, especially with regard to leadership. Management is often identified with project management, whereas the concept of leadership appears to be more diffuse. To develop students’ learning of management and leadership and how they are related, a first step might be to explicitly articulate both concepts; perhaps the points of connection between them can be a starting point for embracing the concepts of management and leadership in future engineering education.

Implicit and explicit learning objectives

As the last part of the review, the integration of students’ learning of management and leadership in the curriculum is examined. It is often seen that the studies report learning outcomes which are not explicit learning objectives in the formal curriculum. Articulations of learning objectives in the articles can be split into two categories: implicit development and explicit development. With implicit development, the development of management and leadership competences is not clearly articulated or is expressed as a byproduct of education. With explicit development, the competences are clearly articulated, or the focus is on the development of either management or leadership competences. However, for some explicit learning objectives, management and leadership competences are only mentioned without being specifically described; for others, the learning objectives are specifically related to either management or leadership. Regarding implicit development, different concepts concerning supporting courses were found in the literature; however, due to the difficulty of identifying all aspects of supporting courses, no categorial distinction was made (see Table 6).

Table 6. Implicit or explicit learning objectives in relation to management and leadership.

Learning objectives related to management and leadership in engineering education
Implicit development	Explicit development
	Learning objectives with little specification	Specific learning objectives for management or leadership
64 articles	19 articles	17 articles
Students participating in projects with different levels of supporting courses or no supporting courses. Management and leadership merely developed as a result of participation. No specific learning objectives related to management or leadership.	Management or leadership learning objectives may be described with little specification or at a headline level.	Specific management or leadership learning objectives or development or specific strategy to develop management or leadership as the main objective.
(Albayrak 2017; Arce et al. 2022; Barut, Yildirim, and Kilic 2006; Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Bowman et al. 2019; Carulli, Bordegoni, and Cugini 2013; Castronovo et al. 2017; Cobb et al. 2008; Collofello et al. 2021; Daems et al. 2003; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Farrell et al. 2003; Gadhamshetty, Shrestha, and Kilduff 2016; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Goldberg et al. 2014; Grimheden and Strömdahl 2004; Hirsch and Yarnoff 2011; Huang et al. 2021; Huerta et al. 2022; Jaeger et al. 2013; Janakiraman et al. 2021; Jin et al. 2018; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Khandakar et al. 2020; Kim 2015; Kitts and Quinn 2004; Korkmaz 2012; Korkmaz and Singh 2012; Laberge 2016; Larsen et al. 2009; Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018; Lima et al. 2017; Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012; Lovgren and Racer 2000; Lu et al. 2012; MacLeod and van der Veen 2020; Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012; McConville et al. 2017; McNair et al. 2011; McQuade et al. 2020; McWhirter and Shealy 2018; Neill, DeFranco, and Sangwan 2017; Neumeyer and McKenna 2016; Neumeyer and Santos 2021; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Oladiran et al. 2011; Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010; Pazos et al. 2019; Rangel et al. 2016; Riis et al. 2017; Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019; Sankaran et al. 2021; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Simpson et al. 2004; Soares et al. 2013; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Songer and Breitkreuz 2014; Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020; Stone et al. 2018; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020; Wittig 2013; Xu, Cees, and Cai 2016)	(Adair and Jaeger 2014; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Bigand, Craye, and Deshayes 2000; Bramhall and Short 2014; Christodoulou 2004; Costa et al. 2019; Heylen et al. 2007; Izquierdo et al. 2016; Jacques 2017; Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016; Lappalainen 2010; Lawanto et al. 2019; Maturana et al. 2014; Prescott et al. 2012; Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001; Sirinterlikci and Mativo 2005; Stone, Gorrell, and Richey 2018a; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020; Zotova et al. 2021)	(Bourgault and Lagacé 2002; Bowman and Farr 2000; Chang and Miller 2005; Charosky et al. 2022; Chowdhury 2013; Clevenger et al. 2017; Colsa et al. 2015; Gider et al. 2012; Iriondo et al. 2019; Jablokow 2008; Kobza et al. 2016; Mazzetto 2018; Missimer and Connell 2012; O’Shea et al. 2013; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021; Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009)

Twelve articles were not categorised as relating to a learning objective because they are research articles or frameworks, or do not describe learning objectives. As shown in Table 6, 100 articles were classified as mentioning learning objectives, with 64 articles interpreted as discussing implicit learning objectives concerning management or leadership, 19 articles mentioning learning objectives concerning management or leadership with little specification, and 17 articles specifically concerning the development of either management or leadership competences.

For the implicit development of management and leadership competences, the focus is on developing competences through participation in projects or other activities, for example: ‘Their joint and individual struggle should help them gain the skills that they need for interdisciplinary settings’ (MacLeod and van der Veen 2020, 364). Other activities discussed in the literature include global engineering teams (Oladiran et al. 2011), makerspaces (Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020), and learning factories (Jaeger et al. 2013). Another concept used in the reviewed literature is design thinking, either as a part of a design project, sprint, or course or in other design activities (Albayrak 2017; Arce et al. 2022; Lawanto et al. 2019; Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012; Rangel et al. 2016; Schäfer and Richards 2007). Projects can be related to sustainability (Korkmaz and Singh 2012) to real world sustainable civil engineering projects, as in McWhirter and Shealy (2018); they can be student projects, like Engineers Without Borders (EWB), or performed in collaboration with communities, as with Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) (Collofello et al. 2021). Activities can be an extracurricular club of undergraduate and postgraduate students working in multidisciplinary teams to manage projects, as in Huerta et al. (2022). Alternatively, they can be supported through working with a framework like BIM or by participating in a workshop or a project using BIM (Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Jin et al. 2018; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020). Several examples of competence development using gamification or simulation were also found in the literature (Bourgault and Lagacé 2002; Castronovo et al. 2017; Daems et al. 2003; Jin et al. 2018; McConville et al. 2017; Zotova et al. 2021).

Nineteen articles express learning objectives relating to management and leadership explicitly, although they do not all go into detail about learning objectives and may use sentences like ‘The ability to take part in a dynamic team, manage the relations with the various partners, and steer developments: leadership, commitment, project management, explain and communicate to non-specialists and specialists (competency named “C3”)’ (Jacques 2017, 121). One of the related learning outcomes is defined as ‘LO 3.2. To demonstrate team leadership’ (Jacques 2017, 122). Other examples of learning objectives expressed in the articles include ‘teamwork and leadership’ and ‘planning and time management’ (Izquierdo et al. 2016, 482), ‘display social responsibility and leadership in managing sustainability issues’ (Janakiraman et al. 2021, 3), a course at KU Leuven focusing on ‘Problem Solving and Engineering Design’ in which one of the students’ objectives is ‘team working and project management skills’ (Heylen et al. 2007), and in Zotova et al. (2021, 165) the ‘Ability to manage projects (management, planning, scheduling, budgeting, etc.)’.

Finally, 17 articles express management and leadership learning objectives in a detailed way. The development of management and leadership competences is the main purpose of these articles. Project management may be studied as a programme or subject in itself (Iriondo et al. 2019), for example in a 4.8 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) engineering project management (EPM) course (Colsa et al. 2015), or a Master’s programme with a focus on construction engineering and management (CEM) (Clevenger et al. 2017). Furthermore, competence development can be taken as a minor, for example as in ‘Engineering Communication and Performance’, which is an interdisciplinary programme designed to improve the ability of engineering graduates to work in teams and among others so that they are prepared for leadership roles (Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001). Focusing on leadership in engineering, Bowman and Farr (2000) introduce an engineering leadership design process, while Penn State University has created special courses and programmes to develop problem-solving leadership competences among engineering students (Jablokow 2008). At the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), the Master’s programme ‘Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability’ (MSLS) aims to attracting early to mid-career professionals (Missimer and Connell 2012). The previously mentioned student-run international organisation ESTIEM offers a series of educational activities and programmes besides university activities, and explicitly focuses on the development of management and leadership by working in teams (Kobza et al. 2016). A study comparing two courses called ‘Product Development Project’ (PDP) and ‘Challenge-Based Innovation’ (CBI), involving the comparison of two groups of telecommunications engineering students, found that: ‘Following a traditional project-based course is better suited for developing Planning and Managing a Project related innovation competences and Experimentation & Knowledge Discovery. For developing Creativity and Leadership & Entrepreneurship competences, a challenge-based course combined with Design Thinking approach would be a better choice’ (Charosky et al. 2022, 369).

The dominant trend in the literature is a focus on implicit learning objectives whereby management and leadership competences are developed as part of team or project work, with an understanding that it is difficult. Soares et al. (2013, 995) state that ‘Team management and project management are probably the most challenging soft skills that students must deal with in this type of projects’.

The difference between articulations of the concepts of management and leadership is also reflected in the articulation of learning objectives. Learning project management is generally related to learning techniques and is hence more instrumental compared to leadership. As stated by Kitts and Quinn (2004, 4): ‘To prepare for this experience [of functioning in multidisciplinary teams], lecture content includes a review of project management techniques and techniques for working effectively in a team’, indicating an instrumental approach to project management using well-defined tools and methods. Leadership development on the other hand, as Wolfinbarger et al. (2021, 926) state, does not occur automatically as a result of participating in leadership-related activities. Moreover, to quote Traylor et al. (2020): ‘However, these findings indicate that within engineering design teams, learning goal orientation has a positive effect in perceptions of leadership. This may be because in the design context, individuals must be intrinsically motivated and interested in the learning process as much as the product, as too much focus on the product might be detrimental to the team’s performance overall’.

The articulation of learning objectives in the reviewed literature supports the finding that management and leadership are articulated as two different concepts with different learning objectives and approaches, as concluded by Charosky et al. (2022) in their study comparing two different courses. However, a lack of knowledge about leadership development in engineering teams can be a barrier to the development of leadership competences, or to quote Wolfinbarger et al. (2021, 925), referring to Engineering Competition Teams: ‘These teams offer a specialized environment for learning about and practicing leadership within a technical domain […], yet we know little about the mechanisms by which leadership development occurs within these teams.’ Further research is thus necessary, both on management and leadership themselves and on how engineering students can develop these important competences.

Discussion

This article is intended to determine how students’ learnings of management and leadership are embedded in engineering education. A heterogeneous pattern was found of both management and leadership aspects in engineering education, and a variety of language used to articulate each of these concepts. Three relations between management and leadership were found: scrum, projects and teamwork, and design processes. Furthermore, a considerable variation in how these competences are integrated into the formal curriculum, was also found.

Complex problem-solving, teamwork and leadership are just a few of the new engineering competences endorsed in the literature (Castronovo et al. 2017; Jablokow 2008; Laberge 2016). However, more than 60% (70 of 112) of the reviewed articles clearly articulate skill gaps concerning these engineering competences in relation to future needs. Examples of skill gaps were found in relation to management skills as well as leadership, team building, and motivation skills, among others (Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Martin et al. 2005). The challenge of making room for social skills in the traditional engineering curriculum is mentioned by Lovgren and Racer (2000).

Leadership skills are very important in the industry, and are explicitly mentioned as being vital for construction students (Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012, 128). According to Wolfinbarger et al. (2021, 928), ‘Within the engineering profession, interest in leadership beyond traditional conceptions of engineering management is growing.’ In addition, Luo and Wood (2017, 431) underline the importance of management: ‘The increasing complexity in general invention processes may pose many challenges, such as increasing time, expenses and failure rates, to engineering design efforts aiming for invention. Especially, if not properly managed … ’

Traylor et al. (2020) describe ten teamwork findings from student design teams in which leadership played an important role. Moreover, a study from the USA concerning factors affecting innovation in student engineering design teams concludes that leadership, among several other factors, is a key determinant of innovation at the team level (Asio, Cross, and Ekwaro-Osire 2018). Different arguments are used. The need for transversal competences is stressed in the following excerpt: ‘The integrated development of technical and transversal competences aligned with the profession can be seen as a requirement for developing adequate academic curricula for the initial training of engineers’ (Lima et al. 2017, 2). Meanwhile, others take a system design approach: ‘To feed the growing needs driven by the increasing complexity of design processes for invention, universities and R&D organizations should set up educational programs focused on complex system design and complexity management for invention processes or adding such components to traditional engineering curriculums or professional development programs […]’ (Luo and Wood 2017, 432).

While the importance of both management and leadership is emphasised in the literature, this literature review illustrates the difficulties that may be encountered when dealing with competences like management and leadership in an interdisciplinary context. These include difficulties relating to the many different names used for skills and competences relating to management and leadership, which reflect the fact that there is no clear picture of what management is and what leadership is. Nonetheless, there is a recognisable pattern, as previously pointed out and illustrated in Figure 2, of articulating management, especially project management, as being about planning, time, and resources where tools or defined development processes support the manager’s role or position, while leadership concerns change and is more related to relations and influences.

In their report, Graham, Crowley, and Mendelsohn (2009) offer a snapshot of engineering leadership education. They present examples of leadership programmes grouped into two categories: one with explicit programmes, and one with non-explicit programmes. Within the explicit programmes, mostly found in the USA, engineering leadership development is the primary and explicit objective. Within the non-explicit programmes, engineering leadership development is part of a broader context. The same pattern is recognised in this study. The articulation of learning objectives implicitly indicates that the underlying hypothesis is that participating in projects and being part of active learning, as in PBL, will lead to the development of the necessary management and leadership competences, as only a few of the articles express explicit learning objectives. However, as pointed out by Wolfinbarger et al. (2021), this may not be enough, especially not for leadership development.

Concerning project management, several different guidelines, standards and methodologies already exist, like ISO21500, PRINCE2 and PMBOK@Guide, and associations and organisations are operating in project management fields like the Project Management Institute (PMI), International Project Management Association (IPMA) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (Drob and Zichil 2013). Agile methodologies like Scrum, as also referred to in the articles in this review, can be used (Cervone 2011). A way forward for engineering education in relation to project management might be to adapt some of the guidelines, standards, and methodologies above to frame the use of proper tools.

However, other challenges exist concerning leadership. Research suggests that engineers are resistant to the leadership paradigms that are dominant in other disciplines, and it is important for engineering leadership that engineers recognise themselves as leaders (Rottmann, Sacks, and Reeve 2015). The development of leadership competences in a student-centred environment makes sense, however, it may not be possible to develop leadership without a clearer picture of both management and leadership. It may be difficult to adequately address one method or course or facilitate the development of management and leadership competences for interdisciplinarity. This aligns with the essay by Seidel, Marion, and Fixson (2020), where four modes of teaching the innovation process are suggested to develop student competences. If engineering education institutions must prepare students for the challenges of leadership, it is important to understand what leadership implies in an engineering education context, and maybe a leadership framework for engineering education is needed, at least as the point of departure for further leadership development for engineering students.

The PBL and interdisciplinary context of this literature review creates challenges, but also opportunities for developing management and leadership competences in engineering education. In a PBL environment focusing on problems, students develop generic competences besides those of the disciplinary competences (Boelt, Kolmos, and Holgaard 2022). Complex problem-solving can be embedded within PBL, and can be considered in different disciplinary and interdisciplinary constellations (Kolmos et al. 2020; Kolmos et al. 2023). However, research has revealed that even in a PBL environment. students experience challenges when they are acting in broad interdisciplinary projects (Bertel et al. 2022; Routhe et al. 2021; Routhe et al. 2022), whereas students participating in narrow interdisciplinary projects with a defined product and a clear boundary object experience fewer challenges (Routhe, Holgaard, and Kolmos 2023; Winther et al. 2022). With the many different understandings of interdisciplinarity there is a lack of what can be described as a vision for interdisciplinarity (Van den Beemt et al. 2020), and by creating a vision for interdisciplinarity the engineering education research may be strengthened. A solution could be to use the design process and agile project management, which connect management and leadership in Figure 2, not only to enhance management and leadership competences, but also to address the challenges of working interdisciplinarily. Referring to Cropley (2015) and to the distinction between creative and routine problem-solving paradigms, more incremental design may call for more management, with a focus on development processes and tools, whereas more radical design may call for more leadership, and hence for leadership development processes.

Carlile (2004) argues that different levels of novelty call for different types of boundary crossings from knowledge transfer to knowledge translation and finally to knowledge transformation. These different boundaries may call for different interactions between management and leadership. Management, especially project management, is important to ensure that ‘things are done’, whereas leadership is important for creating change and visions or ‘doing the right things’. A high level of novelty, and hence transformation across boundaries, may call for more leadership, whereas with less novelty management is needed to reach the goals.

For engineering educations, the implications of an articulation of management and leadership will be an opportunity to put both on the agenda and to create a clear understanding of the differences between management and leadership. With a tacit understanding of management and leadership it is difficult to facilitate those student competences. An articulation of leadership is the first step in a leadership development programme. A leadership development programme with a point of departure in engineering and engineering education can help minimise the engineering resistance concerning leadership and help to scaffold students for the development of leadership competences. Introducing the engineering students to different project types (Kolmos et al. 2023), where some types of projects focus on developing management competences and other projects focus on developing leadership competences might enhance the students’ competences concerning management and leadership. These competences are important parts of the T-shaped engineer and are highly demanded by the society to help solving the complex problems, to bridge to other disciplines and to lead the necessary technological changes. But to succeed with that, more focus on research concerning leadership is needed.

Limitations

This literature review has some limitations. Firstly, it only includes journal articles, and there is much information to be found in conference articles, books, and other sources. Furthermore, many of the results found in the articles are based on a few students and specific cases, making it difficult to generalise based on these results. Attention also needs to be paid to the presentation of the results; in the process of compressing the content of 112 articles into one article, potentially important information may have been omitted, such as considerations using lenses other than those employed here. Some studies can be difficult to interpret because of problems such as missing descriptions. Moreover, difficulties resulting from the use of many different designations for the same phenomenon (for example, skills, competences, or competencies) or different conjugations or spellings, with or without a hyphen, may have resulted in the exclusion of valuable articles from this review and may thus have influenced the interpretations drawn from it.

Conclusion

This literature review has investigated articulations of students’ learning of management and leadership in 112 journal articles concerning engineering education in relation to complex problem-solving and interdisciplinarity in PBL or similar environments. The time frame for the journal articles was from January 2000 to June 2022. Students’ learning of management and leadership in relation to engineering education are more frequent in articles published in the USA compared to other countries, with almost 50% of the articles in this review originating from the USA. The publication years of the articles show that more articles on this subject were published during the last 10 years than in the preceding 12 years. A look at the journals in which the reviewed articles were published reveals a heavy reliance on major engineering education journals, although articles from 47 different journals are included in this literature review.

The literature review has identified several different designations for the non-technical competences, which makes it difficult to express the need for these competences, to which management and leadership belong. Only a few of the articles explicitly define management and leadership. Nonetheless, it is possible to connect management, especially project management, with planning and time, and resources management using tools or defined development processes that support the role or position of manager. In contrast, leadership concerns change and is more connected with relations and influences. In students’ contexts, leadership is expressed as forms of distributed leadership, like shared leadership or collective leadership, instead of as more individually located forms. When more individual-focused leadership concepts are used, this is often in connection with rotating leadership, whereby different students take turns being the leader.

An examination of the management and leadership learning objectives discussed in the investigated articles reveals three clusters. The first cluster concerns implicit learning objectives, whereby the competences are developed in practice by participating in complex projects. At the other end of this spectrum are learning objectives focused on developing management and leadership, whereby the focus is made explicit through specific learning objectives related to either management or leadership. Finally, in the articles in the third cluster, management and leadership learning objectives are expressed at a more headline level. The majority of the studies (64 articles) belong to the implicit cluster and 19 articles to the cluster with a headline focus, while only 17 articles clearly focus on management or leadership. However, it may not be enough to participate in interdisciplinary projects, and especially the development of leadership competences may require a framework to support the development process.

This literature review points to different patterns in the understanding of management and leadership exhibited in interdisciplinary education activities. The reviewed articles agree on the importance of both management and leadership competences for the future needs of engineering students, and this seems to be even more important in interdisciplinary settings that cross the boundaries between different paradigms and understandings. However, the development of management and leadership competences may require different strategies. Leadership cannot be developed using the same methods as management, and it is not enough to merely participate in leadership activities: more supporting actions and understandings are necessary.

Acknowledgements

This work is part of InterPBL, a research project aimed at developing innovative educational models to educate engineers in working proactively and interactively in an interdisciplinary work environment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Poul Due Jensens Fond; Poul Due Jensens Fond (Grundfos Foundation).

Notes on contributors

Henrik Worm Routhe

Henrik Worm Routhe is with the Aalborg Centre for Problem Based Learning in Engineering, Science and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO (UCPBL) Aalborg University, Denmark.

Jette Egelund Holgaard

Jette Egelund Holgaard is with the Aalborg Centre for Problem Based Learning in Engineering, Science and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO (UCPBL) Aalborg University, Denmark.

Anette Kolmos

Anette Kolmos is with the Aalborg Centre for Problem Based Learning in Engineering, Science and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO (UCPBL) Aalborg University, Denmark.

Appendix 1.

Overview of the selected papers (N = 112).

Table

Reference	Development of project management or leadership competences	Participants	Context
(Adair and Jaeger 2014)	Explicit with some formal LO	Mechanical, chemical, and electrical, as well as faculty from mathematics and computer science (programming)	Interdisciplinary capstone project – project development process
(Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012)	N/A	Survey asking recruiters in the US industry to rate key competences for construction graduates identified as important in the literature	N/A
(Albayrak 2017)	Implicit	SW with shifting Scrum Master	System analysis and design course including Scrum and Agile methodologies
(Arce et al. 2022)	Implicit	56 first-year students following three STEAM degrees (Covid-19 period): Industrial Engineering, Automation and Industrial Electronics Engineering and Electrical Engineering	Design sprint methodology and prototyping
(Asio, Cross, and Ekwaro-Osire 2018)	N/A	Survey involving 709 participants to empirically test factors proposed in the engineering student team innovation framework and identify key determinants of innovation	N/A
(Barut, Yildirim, and Kilic 2006)	Implicit	47 students from (USA, India, and Turkey), industrial engineering and business students	Global learning experience in supply chain logistics management
(Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017)	Implicit	64 electrical engineering students over 4 years	VLSI design projects
(Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012)	Implicit	Construction engineering and management (CEM); architecture, various engineering, and construction management degrees to work in four multidisciplinary project teams	BIM – course; elective semester long. Virtual collaboration between two universities
(Bender and Longmuss 2003)	N/A	Conceptual paper concerning Knowledge management in engineering design projects	Knowledge management in engineering design projects
(Bergendahl 2005)	N/A	A broader technical education for engineers – generic	N/A
(Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000)	Explicit with some LO	Mechanical, electrical, and industrial engineering, management, and industrial design	Inter-disciplinary teaming course ‘Introduction to Team-Based Design’
(Bigand, Craye, and Deshayes 2000)	Explicit with some LO	Graduate engineering students	Project activity – a team project of at least 300 h during the first two years
(Bourgault and Lagacé 2002)	Explicit development of project management	Graduate students but also professional engineers and undergraduate students	Full-day seminar simulating a project
(Bowman and Farr 2000)	Explicit development of leadership	Civil engineering students	Engineering leadership design process
(Bowman et al. 2019)	Implicit	Students from computer science, computer systems engineering, engineering management, industrial design, and graphic design	Interdisciplinary capstone projects
(Bramhall and Short 2014)	Explicit with some LO	Two of the multidisciplinary project interventions described in this case study (Sheffield Hallam and London South Bank) focus on the first-year (level 4) undergraduate experience, while the third (Loughborough) cuts across different levels of study	Development project 5 institutions universities involved with mini projects; the overall project aims to develop ‘professional engineering practice’
(Carulli, Bordegoni, and Cugini 2013)	Implicit	Senior designers (product designers and mechanical engineers); 10 working groups and 6 individual product designers – Design & Engineering M.Sc. degree	Innovative framework – development process to support the development of design and engineering education
(Castronovo et al. 2017)	Implicit	34 architectural engineering students, from a 4th year construction class	Three modules of the Virtual Construction Simulator 4 (VCS4) Educational simulation games
(Chang and Miller 2005)	Explicit development of project management and to a certain degree leadership	Manufacturing engineers with industry-sponsored projects	Interdisciplinary course concerning Product life cycle management
(Charosky et al. 2022)	Explicit with explicit LO in PDP for project management and with some LO in CBI for leadership	Telecom engineering students PDP teams 9–12 engineering students CBI teams 2 engineering students in each multidisciplinary group of 5–7 participants	Two courses: PDP product development projects (project based) following a classical product development project approach and CBI challenge-based (challenge based) innovation course using design thinking
(Chowdhury 2013)	Explicit LO for both project management and leadership	Construction management (CMG)	Senior design courses; two semester capstone projects. Real world projects for construction management
(Christodoulou 2004)	Explicit with some LO for project management	Architectural, engineering, and construction (A/E/C)	Interdisciplinary course sequence. Courses and workshops. AEC processes
(Clevenger et al. 2017)	Explicit LO for project management and leadership	Construction engineering and management (CEM) master’s programme	Interdisciplinary graduate programme
(Cobb et al. 2008)	Implicit	Students from UC Berkeley's Engineering, Business, and Information Systems departments, as well as from the Industrial Design programme at the California College of the Arts; 614 students between 1996–2006	Elective New Product Development course part of the graduate-level Management of Technology (MOT) programme at the University of California, Berkeley
(Cok et al. 2015)	N/A	Multi-cultural background of NPD teams; 4 different nationalities of mechanical engineering, industrial design engineering and product design	Virtual NPD teams
(Collofello et al. 2021)	Implicit	EPICS model – several universities	Programme – EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) Working with communities
(Colsa et al. 2015)	Explicit project management	Three types of students of EPM involved: Industrial engineer degree, chemical engineering degree and master’s in organisational engineering	Course – Engineering project management. Development of a real-case project carried out by multidisciplinary groups of three different universities
(Costa et al. 2019)	Explicit with some LO in project management	11 weeks in the first semester of the first year of the undergraduate degree in electrical engineering.	Projects – Involving three different course units, two in mathematics, and the course unit ‘Working Methods in Engineering’
(Daems et al. 2003)	Implicit	Electrical engineering students	Design project. Autonomous rail system intended for people transportation from system specifications down to a fully working system including hardware and software
(Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016)	Implicit	Master students of engineering and marketing with industrial partners	Two different project-based modules
(Farrell et al. 2003)	Implicit	Chemical engineering education – multidisciplinary teams	Realistic industrial problems supported by industrial partners
(Gadhamshetty, Shrestha, and Kilduff 2016)	Implicit	Undergraduates in civil, environmental, mechanical, electrical, and biochemical engineering disciplines	Introduction to engineering design; a course
(Gider et al. 2012)	Explicit project management	Young engineering graduates in electrical engineering	The postgraduate course Project Work and Communication in Research and Development; 4 modules
(Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015)	Implicit	Students from all areas in the building sector, including industry exponents	3-day annual workshop
(Goldberg et al. 2014)	Implicit	Biomedical, electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering, computer science, and information technology students	Multidisciplinary capstone design course involving Industrial partners
(Grimheden and Strömdahl 2004)	Implicit	Masters’ programmes in mechatronics and mechanical engineering	Collaborative projects that offer courses in an international educational setting
(Heylen et al. 2007)	Explicit with some LO related to project management	Bachelor of engineering	The course ‘Problem Solving and Engineering Design’
(Hirsch and Yarnoff 2011)	Implicit	Freshmen	Engineering Design and Communication (EDC) course Faculty together with Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
(Huang et al. 2021)	Implicit	Civil/construction and electrical engineering	Instructional model consisting of four components. Simulate a real work environment
(Huerta et al. 2022)	Implicit	Multidisciplinary teams, including STEM majors and business management and accounting majors	Extracurricular club – projects
(Iriondo et al. 2019)	Explicit for project management students	Students from three engineering degrees (multimedia, telecommunications and audiovisual systems) and project management (PM).	Four different technical and management subjects included in the ICT engineering degree; simulated corporate scenario Construction of a video game
(Izquierdo et al. 2016)	Explicit with some LO	Double major in business administration and management/ engineering of technology and telecommunication services	Simulation scenario around real-world problems in the core course Mathematics II
(Jablokow 2008)	Explicit leadership and management	Systems engineering and information science degrees	Core module of three courses using the KAI framework
(Jacques 2017)	Explicit with some LO related to leadership and project management	4th-year university students	Electric go-kart-project with Industrial partners
(Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016)	Explicit with some LO related to leadership and project management	Electrical and electronic engineering, industrial computing, and mechanical engineering	Urban drone project with Start-up company
(Jaeger et al. 2013)	Implicit	Industrial engineering education	Learning and Innovation Factory for Integrative Production Education (LF) Partnership with three universities
(Janakiraman et al. 2021)	Implicit	14 different engineering disciplines including environmental and ecological, electrical, mechanical, electronics, construction, environmental and natural resources, multidisciplinary, industrial, materials, chemical, mechanical, agricultural, biological, and civil engineering	Sustainability engineering course
(Jin et al. 2018)	Implicit	Architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) students	Building design involving Students’ reflective thinking
(Keshwani and Adams 2017)	Implicit	Junior-level engineering students collaborated with junior-level elementary education students	Service learning project. STEM clubs at local elementary schools
(Khandakar et al. 2020)	Implicit	Electrical engineering	Design project – sustainability
(Kim 2015)	Implicit	Industrial engineering	Capstone design course
(Kitts and Quinn 2004)	Implicit	Computer science and electrical engineering	Robotics programme with yearlong projects
(Kobza et al. 2016)	Explicit leadership	Students of industrial engineering management	Summer academy at a student-run international organisation the European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management (ESTIEM)
(Korkmaz 2012)	Implicit	Engineering, construction management, and design	Three-credit course sustainable buildings. Integrated approach to planning, design, and construction – in sustainability – LEED
(Korkmaz and Singh 2012)	Implicit	Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) students.	A three-credit course ‘Special Topics in Planning Design and Construction’
(Laberge 2016)	Implicit	Framework for 12 engineering programmes	Course on teamwork and integration projects
(Lappalainen 2010)	Explicit with some LO related to leadership and management	Engineering students	Integrated language course: 15 themes, one of which is leadership and managerial communications
(Larsen et al. 2009)	Implicit	A group of engineering and industrial design students	Summer school at industrial facilities. Industrial partner and 6 universities
(Lawanto et al. 2019)	Explicit with some LO related to project management	Students from three higher education institutions	Capstone engineering design projects (focus on project, time, team and resource management)
(Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018)	Implicit	Student in communication & computer network	Traditional teaching, flipped classroom and PBL. Active learning methods in the subject of data communication & computer network
(Lima et al. 2017)	Implicit	Students from the 7th semester of the integrated master course on industrial engineering and management (IEM)	Course in a programme; there are other project-supporting courses Professionals from the six companies support the project (company tutors)
(Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012)	Implicit	Civil engineering	Five interdisciplinary student workshops; design-centric education
(Lovgren and Racer 2000)	Implicit	Graduate industrial and systems engineers and undergraduate civil engineers	Series of projects focusing on statistical applications in civil engineering
(Lu et al. 2012)	Implicit	Undergraduate engineering curriculum	Design-centric learning environment; wastewater treatment plant (WWTP)
(Luo and Wood 2017)	N/A	Future needs and complexities in innovation	Impact on education
(MacLeod and van der Veen 2020)	Implicit	Students from applied mathematics, civil engineering and industrial & engineering management	Coursework, modelling cases, interdisciplinary problem-solving project 15 ECTS points Project: Traffic solution for hospital
(Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012)	Implicit	Undergraduate engineering design teams and their graduate student coaches	Capstone design course
(Marra, Hacker, and Plumb 2022)	N/A	12 students	2-year PBL programme
(Martin et al. 2005)	N/A	Chemical engineering graduates	N/A
(Maturana et al. 2014)	Explicit with some LO related to leadership and management	100 students of each informatics and naval engineering.	6-week project within workshop courses. Build a self-balancing ship model
(Mazzetto 2018)	Explicit with a focus on project management	Project management education	Multidisciplinary collaboration experience between courses – PM
(McConville et al. 2017)	Implicit	The game has been used during three consecutive years in a master’s level course	Role-playing game
(McNair et al. 2011)	Implicit	Engineering programmes	Identity development case study in an interdisciplinary design course involving Self-managed work teams
(McQuade et al. 2020)	Implicit	22 chemical engineering undergraduates in four groups	PBL projects Student self-management
(McWhirter and Shealy 2018)	Implicit	Building construction and civil engineering	Bridging sustainable engineering and behavioral science. Envision rating system
(Missimer and Connell 2012)	Explicit LO related to sustainability leadership skills	Sustainability master’s programme	International transdisciplinary programme. MSLS ‘Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability’
(Neill, DeFranco, and Sangwan 2017)	Implicit	Software engineering	SW design course – online
(Neumeyer and McKenna 2016)	Implicit	Each team consisted of 5–9 students enrolled in business, engineering, law, and arts and sciences	Graduate-level interdisciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship course focused on energy and sustainability
(Neumeyer and Santos 2021)	Implicit	Engineering entrepreneurship	Define key competencies that can help the development of pedagogical content for team-based entrepreneurship programmes
(Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010)	Implicit	Twenty students from different countries and two staff members	4-day workshop; extracurricular for some students. Student satellite project (GENSO)
(Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021)	Implicit	Students in the AEC disciplines	Elective senior undergraduate course in a construction engineering programme. Teaching students a collaborative information delivery process in the context of BIM
(O’Shea et al. 2013)	Explicit related to leadership	First-year engineering students	PBL activities and four leadership roles
(Oladiran et al. 2011)	Implicit	Global Engineering Teams (GET)	GET is a multinational, intercultural and geographically dispersed team-based approach to solving practical engineering problems. Virtual collaboration (countries and time zones) and industry partners
(Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010)	Implicit	Interdisciplinary student teams – case one: civil and environmental, materials, mechanical, and industrial systems and industrial design; case two: students from materials, civil and environmental, and biological systems engineering, and one student from business	Design teams. Two case studies – framework identifying key characteristics of distributed and co-located work
(Pazos et al. 2019)	Implicit	Engineering and education students	Working remotely
(Prescott et al. 2012)	Explicit with some LO related to project management	Engineering undergraduates	Course in language enhancement and professional communication centred on engineering multidisciplinary projects
(Rangel et al. 2016)	Implicit	Civil engineering	One of the courses of the integrated master’s in civil engineering. Integrated design concept
(Riis et al. 2017)	Implicit	Global business engineering 3rd semester	Plan-Do-Check-Act experiment in a business engineering semester Tacit-explicit experiential learning
(Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019)	Implicit	30 chemical engineers	English for specific purposes (ESP) classroom
(Sankaran et al. 2021)	Implicit	Clinical and engineering teams, which included nonclinical undergraduate and graduate students.	Patient safety project. M-safety Lab – a patient safety learning laboratory
(Schäfer and Richards 2007)	Implicit	Engineering graduate students	Design project with design stages; water supply. Sustainable innovation with industry partners
(Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001)	Explicit with some LO related to leadership	Engineering undergraduate students	Minor in engineering communication and performance; five courses comprise the minor
(Seidel, Marion, and Fixson 2020)	N/A	N/A	Design thinking Essay
(Simpson et al. 2004)	Implicit	Students in industrial and manufacturing engineering, and from other engineering disciplines (e.g. mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering), and students from the business school studying marketing, management, finance, and accounting	Two-semester undergraduate course, IME Inc. Integrating design, manufacturing and production into the engineering curriculum
(Sirinterlikci and Mativo 2005)	Explicit with some LO related to project management	Engineering, technology, arts students	Cross-disciplinary course (mini lessons) Animatronics
(Soares et al. 2013)	Implicit	Mechanical, industrial electronics and computers, polymer, industrial management	Innovation and entrepreneurship integrated project supported with courses; teams compete. Industrial partners
(Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014)	Implicit	Architectural engineering	Multidisciplinary team pilot programme. Industry professionals
(Songer and Breitkreuz 2014)	Implicit	Framework: Engineering students as global citizens	Service learning projects –
(Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020)	Implicit	Undergraduate/graduate architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) programme	4-month course – lections, laboratory, presentations and project
(Steingrimsson et al. 2017)	N/A	Capstone design teams	Tool to support students. The digital ecosystem is compared to tools for project management, team communication, and requirement management
(Stone, Gorrell, and Richey 2018a)	Explicit to a certain degree – measuring leadership	Aerospace engineering education	Multi-university design capstone course named ‘Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering’ or AerosPACE Validate a method for organising teams to maximise team performance. Working with industry partner
(Stone et al. 2018)	Implicit	Student design engineers from 8 different universities	Product development process with design teams; distributed, not co-located. Industrial partners aerospace
(Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020)	Implicit	First-year engineering students	Main component of three courses is a group-based technical project. Involving a makerspace
(Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020)	N/A – however, students experienced the development of specific project management skills	Engineering students – 11 participants interviewed	CDIO framework – transformational aspect of learning working with the Grand Challenges
(Traylor et al. 2020)	N/A	Student engineering design teams	Research. Ten student engineering team findings
(Van den Beemt et al. 2020)	N/A	Student engineers	Interdisciplinary engineering education. Literature review
(Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018)	Explicit project management for management students	Project management and service marketing skills from management students, a user-based design from product design students and problem-solving and software development skills from computer science students	The Interdisciplinary Service Innovation Programme – a first-time endeavour participated by three courses in the BS Product Design programme. Scrum methodology
(Wittig 2013)	Implicit	Cohort of engineering students; volunteers	Projects with community. Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB)
(Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)	Explicit model of leadership	14 engineering majors	Engineering competition teams (ECTs) and students’ leadership identity development (LID)
(Xu, Cees, and Cai 2016)	Implicit	Aerospace engineering education	Conceptual model across countries and disciplines. Concurrent engineering
(Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009)	Explicit measuring leadership	Engineering students in self-managed teams	Concept to measure leadership
(Zotova et al. 2021)	Explicit with some LO for project management	SW in the fire safety field	MOOC – massive open online courses

Appendix 2.

Lists of different designations used for the non-technical competences in the reviewed articles.

Table

Key word	Frequency occurrence of the key word	Articles
Professional skills or professional competences/competencies (33 articles)	23	(Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015)
	10–17	(Charosky et al. 2022; Gider et al. 2012; Huerta et al. 2022; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
	2–6	(Chowdhury 2013; Cok et al. 2015; Collofello et al. 2021; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Lima et al. 2017; MacLeod and van der Veen 2020; Marra, Hacker, and Plumb 2022; Maturana et al. 2014; McQuade et al. 2020; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Pazos et al. 2019; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Zotova et al. 2021)
	1	(Albayrak 2017; Bramhall and Short 2014; Christodoulou 2004; Costa et al. 2019; Goldberg et al. 2014; Jaeger et al. 2013; Lappalainen 2010; Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018; Lu et al. 2012; McConville et al. 2017; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Oladiran et al. 2011; Rangel et al. 2016; Riis et al. 2017; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020)
Soft skills (25 articles)	29	(Iriondo et al. 2019)
	24	(Arce et al. 2022)
	6–9	(Huang et al. 2021; Kobza et al. 2016; Oladiran et al. 2011; Soares et al. 2013; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020)
	2–4	(Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Farrell et al. 2003; Gider et al. 2012; Mazzetto 2018; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
	1	(Bowman and Farr 2000; Cok et al. 2015; Costa et al. 2019; Jin et al. 2018; Khandakar et al. 2020; Larsen et al. 2009; Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012; Missimer and Connell 2012; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018)
Teamwork skills or competences or competencies (21 articles)	2–5	(Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Khandakar et al. 2020; Laberge 2016; Lovgren and Racer 2000; Maturana et al. 2014; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; O’Shea et al. 2013; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020; Zotova et al. 2021)
	1	(Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Gadhamshetty, Shrestha, and Kilduff 2016; Huerta et al. 2022; Janakiraman et al. 2021; Larsen et al. 2009; Lu et al. 2012; Neumeyer and Santos 2021; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001; Simpson et al. 2004; Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009)
Transversal skills or competences or transferable skills or competences (14 articles)	6	(Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018; Lima et al. 2017; Soares et al. 2013)
	2–5	(Arce et al. 2022; Costa et al. 2019; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015)
	1	(Bramhall and Short 2014; Castronovo et al. 2017; Charosky et al. 2022; Cok et al. 2015; Colsa et al. 2015; Iriondo et al. 2019; Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010; Schäfer and Richards 2007)
Meta-cognitive skills or meta-cognitive competences (10 articles)	16	(Marra, Hacker, and Plumb 2022)
	1–3	(Arce et al. 2022; Heylen et al. 2007; Lawanto et al. 2019; MacLeod and van der Veen 2020; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
twenty-first century skills (5 articles)	1–3	(Arce et al. 2022; Cobb et al. 2008; Izquierdo et al. 2016; Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019; Zotova et al. 2021)
Organisational skills or organisational competences (4)	2	(Rangel et al. 2016)
	1	(Iriondo et al. 2019; Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012; Maturana et al. 2014)
Generic engineering competences or generic competences (7 articles)	4	(Neumeyer and Santos 2021)
	2–3	(Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Prescott et al. 2012)
	1	(Charosky et al. 2022; Rangel et al. 2016; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
Entrepreneurial competencies (3 articles)	20	(Neumeyer and Santos 2021)
	1–2	(Kobza et al. 2016; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
Innovation competences (2 articles)	75	(Charosky et al. 2022)
	1	(Gider et al. 2012)
Processual skills (1 article)	1	(Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015)

Appendix 3.

List of occurrences of concepts related to management found in the articles.

Table

Key word	Frequency of occurrence of the key word	Articles
Management (109 articles)	70	(Lawanto et al. 2019)
	51–57	(Bender and Longmuss 2003; Bourgault and Lagacé 2002; Mazzetto 2018; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021)
	40–46	(Clevenger et al. 2017; Colsa et al. 2015; Jablokow 2008; Steingrimsson et al. 2017; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018)
	32–39	(Barut, Yildirim, and Kilic 2006; Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Chowdhury 2013; Christodoulou 2004; Gider et al. 2012; Jin et al. 2018; Riis et al. 2017)
	20–29	(Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012; Bowman et al. 2019; Charosky et al. 2022; Costa et al. 2019; Kim 2015; Kobza et al. 2016; Lima et al. 2017; McConville et al. 2017; Neumeyer and McKenna 2016; Neumeyer and Santos 2021; Seidel, Marion, and Fixson 2020; Soares et al. 2013; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
	10–19	(Adair and Jaeger 2014; Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Bigand, Craye, and Deshayes 2000; Bowman and Farr 2000; Bramhall and Short 2014; Castronovo et al. 2017; Cobb et al. 2008; Cok et al. 2015; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Goldberg et al. 2014; Grimheden and Strömdahl 2004; Huerta et al. 2022; Iriondo et al. 2019; Jacques 2017; Korkmaz 2012; Laberge 2016; Lappalainen 2010; Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018; Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012; Lu et al. 2012; Luo and Wood 2017; MacLeod and van der Veen 2020; Martin et al. 2005; McNair et al. 2011; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Oladiran et al. 2011; O’Shea et al. 2013; Prescott et al. 2012; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Simpson et al. 2004; Stone et al. 2018; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021; Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009; Zotova et al. 2021)
	6–9	(Albayrak 2017; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Carulli, Bordegoni, and Cugini 2013; Farrell et al. 2003; Izquierdo et al. 2016; Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016; Jaeger et al. 2013; Janakiraman et al. 2021; Lovgren and Racer 2000; Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012; Marra, Hacker, and Plumb 2022; McQuade et al. 2020; Missimer and Connell 2012; Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010; Pazos et al. 2019; Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020; Xu, Cees, and Cai 2016)
	1–5	(Arce et al. 2022; Asio, Cross, and Ekwaro-Osire 2018; Collofello et al. 2021; Daems et al. 2003; Gadhamshetty, Shrestha, and Kilduff 2016; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Heylen et al. 2007; Hirsch and Yarnoff 2011; Huang et al. 2021; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Khandakar et al. 2020; Kitts and Quinn 2004; Korkmaz and Singh 2012; Larsen et al. 2009; Maturana et al. 2014; McWhirter and Shealy 2018; Neill, DeFranco, and Sangwan 2017; Rangel et al. 2016; Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019; Sankaran et al. 2021; Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001; Songer and Breitkreuz 2014; Stone, Gorrell, and Richey 2018a; Traylor et al. 2020; Wittig 2013)
Project management (73 articles)	43–44	(Lawanto et al. 2019; Mazzetto 2018)
	32	(Bourgault and Lagacé 2002)
	21–27	(Colsa et al. 2015; Gider et al. 2012)
	10–16	(Bigand, Craye, and Deshayes 2000; Bowman et al. 2019; Clevenger et al. 2017; Kim 2015; Steingrimsson et al. 2017)
	6–8	(Bender and Longmuss 2003; Charosky et al. 2022; Costa et al. 2019; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Iriondo et al. 2019; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Oladiran et al. 2011; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Soares et al. 2013; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
	2–5	(Adair and Jaeger 2014; Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012; Albayrak 2017; Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Bowman and Farr 2000; Bramhall and Short 2014; Castronovo et al. 2017; Chowdhury 2013; Christodoulou 2004; Collofello et al. 2021; Daems et al. 2003; Goldberg et al. 2014; Heylen et al. 2007; Huang et al. 2021; Huerta et al. 2022; Jacques 2017; Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016; Khandakar et al. 2020; Kitts and Quinn 2004; Korkmaz 2012; Loncar-Vickovic et al. 2012; Lovgren and Racer 2000; Lu et al. 2012; MacLeod and van der Veen 2020; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Riis et al. 2017; Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001; Seidel, Marion, and Fixson 2020; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Sotelino, Natividade, and do Carmo 2020; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)
	1	(Carulli, Bordegoni, and Cugini 2013; Cobb et al. 2008; Cok et al. 2015; Farrell et al. 2003; Gadhamshetty, Shrestha, and Kilduff 2016; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Hirsch and Yarnoff 2011; Jablokow 2008; Jaeger et al. 2013; Janakiraman et al. 2021; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Kobza et al. 2016; Korkmaz and Singh 2012; Neill, DeFranco, and Sangwan 2017; Neumeyer and McKenna 2016; O’Shea et al. 2013; Paretti, Richter, and McNair 2010; Simpson et al. 2004; Stone et al. 2018; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018)
Time or resource management (29 articles)	13	(Lawanto et al. 2019)
	5–7	(Charosky et al. 2022; Costa et al. 2019; Marra, Hacker, and Plumb 2022)
	2–4	(Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Bramhall and Short 2014; Cobb et al. 2008; Huerta et al. 2022; Izquierdo et al. 2016; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Prescott et al. 2012; Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Simpson et al. 2004; Soares et al. 2013; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020)
	1	(Arce et al. 2022; Barut, Yildirim, and Kilic 2006; Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Kobza et al. 2016; Laberge 2016; Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012; Mazzetto 2018; McConville et al. 2017; Neumeyer and McKenna 2016; Steingrimsson et al. 2017; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018)
Team management (12 articles)	6	(Lawanto et al. 2019)
	2–3	(Janakiraman et al. 2021; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Soares et al. 2013; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)
	1	(Albayrak 2017; Collofello et al. 2021; Goldberg et al. 2014; Grimheden and Strömdahl 2004; Prescott et al. 2012; Stone et al. 2018; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
Knowledge management (8 articles)	44	(Bender and Longmuss 2003)
	3–4	(McNair et al. 2011; Xu, Cees, and Cai 2016)
	1	(Jablokow 2008; Kim 2015; Luo and Wood 2017; Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos 2010; Riis et al. 2017)

Appendix 4.

List of occurrences of leadership and different concepts of leadership in the articles.

Table

Key word	Frequency occurrence of the key word	Articles
Leadership (80 articles)	358	(Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)
	127	(Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009)
	105	(Kobza et al. 2016)
	51–55	(Bowman and Farr 2000; Jablokow 2008)
	40	(O’Shea et al. 2013)
	30	(Missimer and Connell 2012)
	20–27	(Ahn, Pearce, and Kwon 2012; Charosky et al. 2022; Chowdhury 2013; Lappalainen 2010; Mazzetto 2018; Songer and Breitkreuz 2014)
	10–15	(Asio, Cross, and Ekwaro-Osire 2018; Clevenger et al. 2017; Laberge 2016; Martin et al. 2005; McNair et al. 2011; McWhirter and Shealy 2018; Stone, Gorrell, and Richey 2018a; Traylor et al. 2020)
	6–9	(Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Bergendahl 2005; Bourgault and Lagacé 2002; Collofello et al. 2021; Gnaur, Svidt, and Thygesen 2015; Huerta et al. 2022; Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016; Keshwani and Adams 2017; Korkmaz and Singh 2012; Lovgren and Racer 2000; Maturana et al. 2014; McQuade et al. 2020; Sankaran et al. 2021; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Stone et al. 2018; Tien, Namasivayam, and Ponniah 2020; Vicente, Tan, and Yu 2018; Wittig 2013)
	2–5	(Adair and Jaeger 2014; Arce et al. 2022; Barut, Yildirim, and Kilic 2006; Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Bramhall and Short 2014; Cobb et al. 2008; Colsa et al. 2015; Fain, Wagner, and Vukasinovic 2016; Gider et al. 2012; Hirsch and Yarnoff 2011; Izquierdo et al. 2016; Jacques 2017; Janakiraman et al. 2021; Larsen et al. 2009; Leite, Hoji, and Abdala 2018; Manuel, McKenna, and Olson 2012; Neumeyer and McKenna 2016; Oladiran et al. 2011; Prescott et al. 2012; Rangel et al. 2016; Seat, Parsons, and Poppen 2001; Seidel, Marion, and Fixson 2020; Soares et al. 2013; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020)
	1	(Albayrak 2017; Cok et al. 2015; Costa et al. 2019; Farrell et al. 2003; Huang et al. 2021; Iriondo et al. 2019; Jaeger et al. 2013; Jin et al. 2018; Korkmaz 2012; Lima et al. 2017; Lu et al. 2012; Nikolic, Castronovo, and Leicht 2021; Riis et al. 2017; Saienko, Olizko, and Arshad 2019; Solnosky, Parfitt, and Holland 2014; Van den Beemt et al. 2020)
Shared leadership (5 articles)	21	(Zafft, Adams, and Matkin 2009)
	2–3	(McNair et al. 2011; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)
	1	(Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; O’Shea et al. 2013)
Collective leadership (3)	2	(Kobza et al. 2016; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)
	1	(Missimer and Connell 2012)
Rotating leadership (3)	1	(Becerik-Gerber, Ku, and Jazizadeh 2012; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Kobza et al. 2016)
Transformational leadership (2)	6	(Songer and Breitkreuz 2014)
	1	(Laberge 2016)
Problem-solving leadership (1)	16	(Jablokow 2008)
Emergent leadership (1)	1	(Traylor et al. 2020)
Entrepreneurial leadership (2)	2	(Kobza et al. 2016; Taheri, Robbins, and Maalej 2020)
Team leadership (9 articles)	5–6	(Barzdenas, Grazulevicius, and Vasjanov 2017; Cobb et al. 2008; Jacques, Bissey, and Martin 2016; Traylor et al. 2020)
	1–2	(Asio, Cross, and Ekwaro-Osire 2018; Bhavnani and Aldridge 2000; Jacques 2017; Kobza et al. 2016; Riis et al. 2017; Schäfer and Richards 2007; Songer and Breitkreuz 2014; Stone, Gorrell, and Richey 2018a; Wittig 2013; Wolfinbarger et al. 2021)