The Swedish industry’s needs of competences in sustainable development

The main topic of the EESD’10 conference is “Learning for transformation”, and it is stated thatengineering education institutions can play a large role in this transformation. It is thus important forsuch institutions to have an understanding of what competences are needed amongst future engineersregarding sustainable development (SD). This paper discusses the need of competences in SD soughtafter by the Swedish industry. It also presents a comparison to the engineering education at ChalmersUniversity of Technology (Chalmers) in order to analyze whether the education at hand meets thecompetence needs within the industry.The paper is based on interviews with SD managers and other relevant personnel at 16 majorcompanies in Sweden and a focus group with people from five different organizations. The companiescover areas such as manufacturing, energy, consultancy, and construction companies based in Swedenwith both domestic and international presence. The paper is also based on an analysis of coursecontents in the 70 environmental and SD courses conducted at Chalmers. Additionally, the interviewsand course content analysis were compared to Chalmers alumni and students’ views on the need of SDcompetences, through two surveys in the form of questionnaires.The results indicate that the Swedish industry demand a higher competence in SD amongst allengineers. The company interviewees mention that all engineers need a better understanding of basicissues regarding SD in order to make relevant choices in their daily work. This is confirmed by thealumni, where 35 % claim that they encounter SD issues sometimes or daily in their work, but at thesame time only 47 % of the above mentioned alumni claim they have enough competence to makedecisions from an SD perspective. The company interviewees and alumni regard environmental issuesand sustainable business development as important SD competences areas. The company intervieweesalso mention communication regarding SD as another integral area. The course content analysis hasshown that environmental issues are focused upon the most in the SD education at Chalmers, andbusiness development and social issues are less focused upon