To assess the transformation experience and its impact on engineering identity in the industry, it is first necessary to note that the twin transformation faces a variety of labour relations and management strategies. The twin transitions require fundamental changes in business models, involving investment in infrastructure, development of new services, and alignment with environmental policies (Llopis-Albert et al., 2021; Philbin et al., 2022). However, few firms have comprehensive strategies, making organizational flexibility essential (Savastano et al., 2019). Strategic responses include decision support systems (Llopis-Albert et al., 2021), integration of mobility management (Gorges and Holz-Rau, 2021), and the mobilization of systemic change agents (Collini and Hausemer, 2024). Integrating digital and green factors into management is considered key to competitive advantage. Change management approaches highlight the importance of proactive strategies, leadership, and capacity building (Collini and Hausemer, 2024; Philbin et al., 2022; Pulignano et al., 2023), though many organizations remain reactive. Evidence on workforce dynamics is limited. Pulignano et al. (2023) show that unions in Germany act proactively, supported by co-determination rights and knowledge regimes, while Belgian unions are more reactive. Professional identities are being reshaped through demands for problem-solving, adaptability, and teamwork, though empirical evidence is scarce. Across studies, the need for new technical and soft skills—including digital literacy, environmental awareness, and interdisciplinary collaboration—is emphasized, with recurring calls for up- and reskilling (Todorovic et al., 2023)

Identity research typically begins by defining organizational identity as a collective self-understanding of an organization (Whetten, 2006). It distinguishes organizational identity (“who we are”) from the “parameters of a defined identity-claim conceptual domain” (what) and associated “phenomenological markers of identity-referencing discourse (how, when, why)” (ibid., p. 219). Organizational identities are developed through processes of socialization, integrating employees into corporate culture and organizational identity—a process that begins not only with onboarding (Farrukh, 2025) but also through employer branding (Ala-Heikkilä and Järvenpää, 2023). The existence and importance of organizational identities often remain opaque until challenged, for example, in mergers and acquisitions (Mühlemann et al., 2022), or when local and global identities collide (Fortwengel, 2021). Caprar et al. (2022) also highlight the “dark sides” of strong organizational identification. While corporate identity has long been discussed as a means of promoting ethical practices (e.g., Sims, 1992), the role of corporate identities in promoting sustainable practices, particularly in sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR), has gained more attention (e.g., Bansal and Song, 2017).

Research at the organizational level reveals diverse identities. Team and departmental identities are shaped by specific goals, norms, and practices (Greco et al., 2022). Team identities are particularly challenged within flexible, project-based and dynamic environments like start-ups and agile organizations (Edmondson and Harvey, 2018), or through remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic (Leonardelli, 2022). Group identities within companies fulfill important functions and have several effects: Shared identities strengthen team cohesion and employee motivation (Dutton et al., 1994) but also create the potential for conflicts between departments or teams (Ashforth et al., 2008). Leaders play a crucial role in shaping and communicating group identities (Haslam et al., 2022), especially during periods of organizational change (Ybema et al., 2016), when tensions between individual and organizational identities arise, requiring managerial responses (Pratt and Foreman, 2000).

As international literature on professional and engineering identities refers mostly to students (Fletcher and Shryock, 2024; Morelock, 2017), the concept of occupational identity is more appropriate, as it arises from belonging to certain occupational groups or fields (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Forming occupational identity as the “conscious awareness of oneself as a worker” can be challenging and stressful, but it contributes to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being (Skorikov and Vondracek, 2011, p. 693).

Engineers primarily identify with their work tasks, skills, company, and professional community (Brown, 2004). However, research in three countries, including Germany, shows sector-specific differences in identification with either the “output” (e.g., automobile industries) or the “process”. In both cases, engineering identity appears to depend on the perception that the “work is particularly challenging and required specialized skills” (ibid., p. 268). Another study on engineers in telecommunication explores the relationship between technology and occupational identity and reveals how the former physical nature of their technology led them to act as “autonomous custodians of ‘living’ machines”, but this key element of their engineering occupational identity diminished with the rise of digital technology (MacKenzie et al., 2017, p. 732).

Because engineers are both historically characteristic of and crucial to the innovation dynamics in the German automotive sector, this study concentrates on them. Following Oesch (2023), who constructs class not only around social stratification but also around the daily work logic, engineers are technical professionals with tertiary education. We also include the German specific qualification of technicians. These technicians emerge from the system of vocational education and further training (VET) and are classified as belonging to tertiary education according to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) (Cedefop, 2020, p. 17). According to the German Classification of Occupations 2010 (Paulus and Matthes, 2013), they are largely similar to engineers. Of greater importance than formal equivalence is that both groups can be compared primarily in terms of their identity, for example, how their identities are shaped within their technical education “by a strong emphasis on conformity or adherence to rules” (Pierrakos et al., 2019) and how they shape their own work identity (Brown, 2004). Technicians are therefore also included here. German labor market data report 1.13 million engineering specialists in all areas, two-thirds of whom work in production and manufacturing, including technical research. In the field of automotive engineering, there were approximately 57,000 engineers in 2023 (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2024, pp. 57–67). In the same year, the share of engineers and technicians employed in the German automotive sector was 19.2%, or 169,200 individuals (data by Federal Employment Agency, c.f. Krzywdzinski et al., 2025b, p. 90). For the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), in which our large-scale quantitative survey was conducted in 2022, within R&D we find 43.6% technicians and 56.4% engineers. Since the two groups are largely interchangeable, we will refer to them collectively as “engineering” in the following.

With the twin transformation, especially for engineering occupations within the German automotive sector. employment is forecasted to decline (Bauer et al., 2020). As their importance in relation to the new group of IT-heavy tech workers seems to be declining, engineers in the sector are described as an “uncertain elite” (Krzywdzinski et al., 2025b). Despite this, and even though the German industrial union “IG Metall” has made special efforts for years to adress engineers in the sector, their level of unionisation remains lower than that of production workers (Hassel and Schroeder, 2021, p. 112).

Engineers are seen as an “adaptive and productive social force” with cultural attitudes shifting between “revolutionary enthusiasm” and “Bildung [German for formal education] and gentlemanly behaviour” (Torstendahl, 2021, pp. 283–289). They are “innovators” who are “often mediators between labour and capital” and “increasingly the object of innovative practices and technologies” (Meiksins and Smith, 1996, p. 258). They “embody an internally contradictory social relationship. They are workers and extensions of managerial authority […and] increasingly the object of managerial direction” (ibid., p. 259). While Gispen (1988) saw German engineers as “men who occupied the critical positions in [companies] and embodied technological progress” and described the “rise of the German engineering profession, a grand metamorphosis, in which the land of poets and thinkers—and of Junkers, bureaucrats, and mandarins—turned into the world of Siemens, Porsche, Mannesmann, Bosch, Diesel, Daimler-Benz, etc.” (ibid. 550).

Today, the automotive industry faces the question of whether the ecological transformation beyond combustion will be the historical endpoint of this development. “With the turn of the twentieth century, engineers seemed to have arrived in the circle of the elites of bourgeois society […], the boom of the high and late industrial economy had made one of, if not the key figure of contemporary modernity”, but with further industrialization, engineers were “increasingly” associated with the “frictions of industrial modernity” (Sander, 2024, pp. 1–2).

In history, engineering has faced numerous challenges and transitions. IT-driven and organizational standardization of R&D and innovation processes (Perrolle, 1984; Pfeiffer et al., 2010) and the outsourcing of engineering services (Will-Zocholl, 2017) undermined the former status of engineers, sparking recurring discussions of their decline (Torstendahl, 2021). In the automotive sector, decades ago, engineers experienced “enucleation”, the removal of core engineering tasks, loss of autonomy, growing insecurity, and shifts in the materiality of their work (Schmiede and Will-Zocholl, 2011). Historically, losing autonomy is not a new experience for engineers: Before 1900, engineers’ Leitbild (German for guiding principle) was still that of self-employed entrepreneurs, responsible for the whole process–from the first draft to the supervision of the technical realization. After 1900, economic professions increasingly displaced engineers from management positions, while engineers found themselves competing with lower-paid technical drafters (Dienel, 1998, p. 13).

With the twin transformation, engineering currently faces diverse challenges (see Fig. 1): Artificial Intelligence is being increasingly integrated into products and used as an engineering tool (Tihlarik, 2024); after Chaos Engineering (Rosenthal and Jones, 2020) and Crowd Engineering (Hertwig et al., 2020), the emergence of Advanced Systems Engineering is again changing the way engineering processes are organized (Albers, 2023; Madni, 2018), further embedding agile methods into engineering (Pfeiffer et al., 2021; Tihlarik and Sauer, 2021). Market volatility and product variants are increasing, making it difficult to specify production processes fully in advance. Specification and implementation are increasingly intertwined, leading to “immature processes” (c.f. Kronen et al., 2023).

Fig. 1.

Factors shaping engineering identities and dividing technological contexts (ICE = internal combustion engine vs. BEV = battery electric vehicle).

Group identities are flexible and context-dependent (Postmes et al., 2005), influenced—strengthened or weakened—by crises, conflicts, and social change. Narratives, myths, and historical events shape group identities (Humphreys and Brown, 2007), especially through social media and virtual communities (Cornelissen et al., 2021). Kels et al. (2023) show that employees in knowledge-intensive occupations can weave professional transitions into their professional identity, even during critical events. Over the course of their professional practices and socialization, knowledge workers often identify more with their professional identity than with their company (Kels, 2018). When their career paths are affected, employees experience transformations as both crises and burdens, unsettling their personal and social identity but also leading to improved professional situations and job satisfaction (Ibarra, 2023). In a meta-study of over 40 studies, Morelock (2017) found engineering students’ skills, such as mathematical and statistical knowledge and innovative thinking, as well as professional network membership, were significant factors. Surprisingly, no clear characteristics indicating a sense of belonging or a particular habitus emerged.

Overall, the state of research shows that a variety of aspects are important for the formation and change of an engineering identity—from skills and socialisation to narratives and change.

As the e-mobility transformation of the automotive sector is both a transformation narrative and a real-life transformation—we will investigate how employees in engineering experience both “old” engineering (not affected by the transformation) and “new” engineering (directly affected by the transformation). Our overall research question is therefore: Does the BEV transformation in the automotive sector change the organizational and professional identity of employees in engineering?

Disruption–first missed, then embraced: In the 2015 interviews, electric mobility was hardly an issue; at that time, the company had not yet announced a strategy change in this direction. Instead, the focus of the interviews was on digitization and Industry 4.0. However, privately, engineers with an interest in ecology complained that management was ignoring a necessary strategy change and that politics were also not setting the right course for the expansion of the charging infrastructure. In 2021/2022, the qualitative material shows how the parallel existence of combustion engine and electric drive, on the one hand, and the strategy of an exclusive conversion to electromobility proclaimed by management at the time of the surveys, on the other hand, led to subjective devaluation experiences and new segmentations in engineering. Where the transformation is experienced as a disruptive replacement, this leads to different perceptions: While for some in engineering, the change towards electromobility cannot happen fast enough, for others, the speed is surprising—less in terms of the technical innovation itself than the winding-down of the old: “What is perhaps surprising is how quickly the classic combustion engine world is now being rammed down. In other words, how quickly people are saying: ‘We don’t need this anymore’. And that is perhaps a dimension that has surprised us all here. And still surprises us” (IV36). Others describe how everything related to electric vehicles is labeled as “the future”, while everything else—including other new drive concepts such as hydrogen or e-fuels—is dismissed as “no future” (IV39).

Experienced uncertainty despite job security: Although no one in Engineering had to worry about their job during the survey period, it was uncertain whether they would be able to stay in their current team or department, and this uncertainty was compounded by highly contradictory statements from managers: “The fact is that we have a transformation goal here, let me say. In other words, we are cutting staff here. In other words, we have a real outflow of expertise that I won’t be able to stop at some point. […] It is a real fact that we are shutting down engine families. That we are reducing development and capacity here. I’m experiencing that for real here. And as I said, if we realize in two or three years that we need a little more combustion engine, then I can’t do it anymore. I can’t turn back what’s happening here right now” (IV36). This is because the drive-specific skills cannot be built up again quickly: “It took me my entire degree […] and my entire working life to be able to use the combustion engine”. After more than twenty years of experience with combustion engines, he feels reasonably proficient and knows where the sticking points are. “When I leave, there’s no one who can replace that. […] Anyone who leaves is a real loss of competence” (IV36). In this context, the interviewee expresses less concern about their personal future and more about the innovative capacity of their department.

Devaluation of the “old”–appreciation of the “new”: In the engineering teams, where the experience of an either-or is more prevalent, this is accompanied by an experience of devaluation that is certainly also perceived from the outside—that is, from other areas of the company, but also socially and even familiarly: “I also notice it every day, people say, well, the engine you are developing now is probably the last combustion engine there will be” (IV37). While everything to do with electromobility is seen as “cool” and innovative per se, what in fact continues to be innovative in the combustion engine sector disappears. The Group is also no longer presenting the combustion topic to the outside world; although the division is highly innovative, nothing is being published and no more specialist conferences are being held. The company simply no longer talks publicly about the combustion engine: “We no longer go public. [The combustion engine] is a necessary evil, but the cool guys are doing electromobility. That’s just how I perceive it” (IV36).

Skeptical confidence: Engineers who have worked closely with combustion engines up to now would therefore be expected to view the transformation with a certain degree of resignation, to perceive the transformation as pressure, and to take a critical view of the ecological sustainability of the path that has been chosen. The statements from engineering employees, presented here only in condensed form, show how multi-dimensional the transformation processes are in concrete terms, how strongly structural-resource-related and communicative-cultural aspects influence each other. These dynamics lead to worry and uncertainty, even if existential concerns such as job loss or financial hardship do not pose a company-wide threat to employees. Overall, there is consistent confidence that their own company will ultimately succeed, despite all the transformative challenges. This even applies to those who are fundamentally more skeptical about electromobility and/or who define themselves professionally in terms of the combustion engine. This confidence persists even despite contradictory communications by the management, which is mainly experienced as top-down: On the one hand, managers ask directly in meetings: “See if you can get a job somewhere else, we only need half the people” (IV38), while other managers in the same area reassure employees, saying “Don’t all run away from me, we still need you!” or “We’ll definitely still need you for the next ten years” (IV38).

Polarizing effects beyond the narrative: But the issue goes beyond a perceived and/or purely corporate-cultural devaluation of areas that belong to the supposedly “old”. It is also about structural issues and the associated allocation of resources. In the OEM studied, each engineering team was assigned to either the old (combustion engine) or the new (electric). In fact, however, many teams develop for both drive worlds (after all, many parts of the car remain the same), but are nonetheless primarily assigned to the “old”, even if they are also increasingly developing for electromobility. The employees therefore do not address this primarily as an experience of devaluation but rather as the result of a well-founded lack of understanding of this discursively experienced classification as “old”—precisely because it is clear to them from a technical perspective that combustion technology will continue to play a role for a long time to come and will remain a field of innovative engineering. There are many such assessments in this case study. By abandoning the usual distinctions (petrol or diesel engine), the “only distinction made now is between […] E or non-E […]”. The interviewee describes how it “shocked” and “unsettled” the entire department to be assigned to the “old”, “although we serve everything—completely, all drive types” (IV39). In such cases of an assignment that is perceived as factually incorrect, there are tangible, objective consequences: Although the workload in these engineering teams has increased significantly, as development is carried out for all drive types, the assignment to the “old” led to a creeping reduction in personnel: positions of employees leaving the company are no longer replaced, and certainly not adequately in proportion to the actual rise in workload.

Hard to manage obstacles: The experience of transformation in engineering also includes the fact that opportunities to draw attention to personal or departmental situations on one’s own initiative are perceived as limited. There is a desire to strengthen communication “from below” across hierarchical boundaries, so that information is not “slowed down” (IV30). In some interviews, management communication is described as inadequate: From the employees’ point of view, they often do not receive statements that are sufficiently clear, and there is also sometimes a lack of substantiated development goals for employees in these areas. Accordingly, employees feel left alone with the development of their professional profile and would like more help identifying work areas corresponding to their interests and paths for future development. In other interviews, however, the company’s communication with employees regarding the upcoming transformation was rated as good: recognizable strategies were clearly communicated, relevant areas were newly established, new jobs were advertised, and employees could obtain internal qualifications and apply for them. However, qualifications and expertise take time, which makes it difficult to keep up with the speed of the transformation. Such contrasting voices recur throughout the qualitative material. The experience of transformation is—how could it be otherwise?—individually different, even in the same areas. The next section will examine whether the BEV-inspired transformation experience shows broader trends that point to a change or even a divide of engineering identities across the sector.

The qualitative in-depth analysis in section 4.1 indicates a strong organizational divide between BEV and ICE engineering but also a substantial overlap between both technologies at the task level of engineering. We will examine whether this contradictory divide has empirically measurable consequences for engineering identities based on quantitative data. Following our overall research question (Does the ecological transformation in the automotive sector change the organizational and professional identity of employees in engineering?), and based on the literature review (section 2) and the qualitative material presented in subsection 4.1, four further research questions are developed to explore whether and how the BEV transformation has consequences for engineering identities:

• First we ask, to what extent are engineering employees more directly engaged with battery-electric mobility at work than other employees, and how did this change between the 2022 and 2024 surveys (RQ1)?

• Second, drawing on qualitative findings that point to disappointment and rupture of identity caused by the company’s handling of the transformation, we ask: How much do engineering employees trust the main actors in labor relations within their company—management and works councils regarding (a) economic decisions about BEVs and (b) decisions on job security and training (RQ2)?

• Third, given that the qualitative material reveals not only irritation and uncertainty due to the technological transformation but also relatively stable identities in relation to the company and the industry, we ask: Do engineer’s identity-related future assessments differ when thinking about their own company versus the automotive industry as a whole (RQ3)?

• Fourth, although the interviewed engineers are strongly focused on their “old” product, they also show openness and enthusiasm for new products in the context of electromobility. However, they express concern about having to leave their current department or team—although at the time of the case studies, there was no reason to fear layoffs. Based on the product and work as key sources of professional identity, we ask: Compared with concerns about job security, how do engineers evaluate the future of (a) their product and (b) their work content/requirements amid the technological shift (RQ4)?

In the next section, we address data from the quantitative surveys of 2022 and 2024, using these four research questions.

We begin with RQ1, asking whether employees in engineering are more affected by electromobility than other workers. In Fig. 3, the bar charts at the top show all three employee groups for both survey dates and illustrate how far they have progressed in their transformation journey, i.e., how much electric mobility has been adopted in the workplace. There are clear differences between engineering and other employees: In 2022, the proportion of engineers working in the field of electromobility was 59.1%, while for other employees, it was only 34.2%. By 2024, this figure had risen slightly, by 1.9 percentage points to 61.0%, for engineers, but sharply, by 14.9 points to 49.1%, for other employees. Engineering employees have therefore made a strong start in electric mobility, but their progress shows signs of plateauing. However, the strong increase among other employees underscores the growing importance of electric mobility across the sector.

Fig. 3.

The bar charts illustrate the diffusion of BEV technologies at engineering workplaces compared to all other workplaces and how this changed between 2022 (left) and 2024 (right). The boxplots compare trust in management and in the works council with regard to economic decisions (left) and decisions on job security and further training (right) for both survey dates (2022 in gray; 2024 in black).

Also in Fig. 3, gray boxplots represent 2022, while black boxplots represent 2024, allowing comparison across the three employee groups. Four vizualisations are presented: on the left, trust levels in economic decisions regarding electromobility made by (a) the works council (top) and (b) management (bottom); on the right, trust levels in decisions on job security and further training, again distinguishing between the works council (top) and management (bottom). Values for each boxplot (mean, standard deviation, median, and the median delta between 2022 and 2024) are shown to the right of each figure. These boxplots reveal notable developments in employee confidence in decisions on electric mobility (BEV) between 2022 and 2024. In 2022, trust levels in both management and the works council are relatively high for both topics, with the mean values and medians close to 0.5 in each case.

Trust in economic decisions: In 2022, BEV engineers exhibit the highest overall trust in management, with a median of 0.70, and in the works council, with a median of 0.55. Trust in both actors declined among all respondents in 2024 with regard to economic efficiency. The strongest loss of trust is evident among noBEV engineering employees toward the works council, with their value slipping by –0.18 to a median of only 0.32 (and thus the lowest overall trust value across all boxplots). However, BEV engineers also show a substantial loss of trust, of –0.15, the second largest, in management.

Trust in decisions on job security and further training: On this issue, too, all employees in 2022 begin with balanced trust levels in both players. Once again, BEV engineers are the most positive, not only placing the highest overall trust in the works council, with a median of 0.67, but also—although still the best value compared to the other two groups—clearly more trust than in management (median 0.54). On these issues, too, there is a generally modest loss of trust between 2022 and 2024, with trust in management even increasing slightly among BEV engineers and other employees—with one exception: here, too, the trust of noBEV engineers drops sharply toward the works council, declining from a median of 0.58 in 2022 to 0.38 in 2024.

At both survey points, all three employee groups trust management slightly more than the works council regarding economic decisions. However, BEV engineers and other employees trust the works council slightly more than management in matters of job security and training decisions. Even on these social issues, noBEV engineers trust management more than the works council at both survey dates. Standard deviations indicate different perceptions within the groups.

Fig. 4 shows bar charts comparing BEV engineers, noBEV engineers, and all other employees in 2022 (left) and 2024 (right), with a focus is on future assessments. Responses are rated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from “very pessimistic” to “rather pessimistic” and “rather optimistic” to “very optimistic”. The optimism delta between the two survey dates shows the combined change in optimism values (displayed to the right of the bar charts). For RQ3, we focus on the two bar charts above the line in Fig. 4 on the automotive sector’s future and on the respondents’ own production site.

Fig. 4.

Bar charts compare employee attitudes in BEV and noBEV engineering with all others regarding five different future assessments. The 4-point Likert scale ranges from “very pessimistic” to “very optimistic”. The change between 2022 (left) and 2024 (right) is reported.

Future of the automotive sector as a whole: BEV engineers were most optimistic in 2022 (60% optimistic), while noBEV engineers were significantly more skeptical (45.2% somewhat optimistic) and thus also less positive than other employees (55.9% optimistic). By 2024, optimism had declined significantly across the board but most sharply among BEV engineers (delta: –28.8), although it remained higher in absolute terms than among other groups. NoBEV engineers and “others” also showed noticeable declines (delta: –17.5 and –15.4, respectively), but in 2022, all other groups were more pessimistic than the two engineering groups.

Future of their own site: Here, too, BEV engineers show pronounced optimism in 2022, at 66.3% (optimistic), putting them just behind the even more optimistic “others” (67.3%), but ahead of the noBEV engineers, who are still predominantly positive (54.8% optimistic). In terms of location, BEV engineers also suffer the sharpest decline in optimism in 2024, with a score of –22.1 points, while noBEV engineers also lose considerable optimism (delta –13). By contrast, “others” remain the most optimistic group in 2024, with 67.3% (rather/very) optimistic and the smallest decline (delta –8.4).

All comparison groups assess their location’s future more positively than the industry’s at both survey points. BEV engineers were initially more optimistic but experienced the sharpest declines, while noBEV engineers remain consistently skeptical. Growing uncertainty, especially among BEV engineers, suggests initially elevated expectations followed by significant transformation-related challenges.

With regard to RQ4, we also look at Fig. 4 but this time at the lower three bar charts. Here, too, the focus is on future expectations but now in relation to the product, work content, and job security. There are also clear differences in future expectations among employee groups, both across topics and over time.

Let’s first look back at 2022: Here, too, BEV engineers are consistently more optimistic than their noBEV colleagues on all three topics. Both groups view the future in terms of work content/requirements as the most positive: The vast majority of BEV engineers (80%) are rather or very optimistic about the future in 2022, while the noBEV engineers are clearly less optimistic, although the vast majority (71%) are still optimistic (albeit only as optimistic as all other employees, at 69.2%).

While noBEV engineers in 2022 are equally optimistic about their future in terms of the product and their job, at 58.1% each, BEV engineers are significantly more positive about the product, at 66.5%, and even more optimistic about job security, at 76.3%.

The differences between the first and second surveys paint an ambiguous picture: on the one hand, all groups show a negative trend across all three future topics, though with varyng magnitudes. Once again, the biggest negative shifts are found among BEV engineers: Compared to 2022, they show an optimism delta of –21.4 for job security in 2024, closely followed by –19.0 for work requirements. NoBEV engineers, on the other hand, are relatively relaxed about their jobs (their optimism only drops by 0.9 points), but they lose 10.5 points in optimism each about products and job content.

Four research questions were developed based on the literature review (section 2) and qualitative insight into an engineering community presented here, where divisions arise more from management decisions than from technology in the workplace (section 4). The aim of the quantitative evaluations was, on the one hand, to show how engineering is affected by the ecological transformation—exemplified by BEV adoption—in comparison to all other employees. On the other hand, they examined the possible effects of the transformation on the identity of employees in engineering.

For several reasons, this study remained deliberately descriptive: First, the concepts of organizational and professional identity not only overlap in the literature but are not clearly operationalized. Second, it can be assumed that in a highly complex industry such as the automotive sector, engineering tasks are highly differentiated and that the organizational dichotomy arbitrarily imposed by management (see section 4) into “old” (no BEV/ICE) and “new” (BEV) is as inconclusive as it is scientifically flawed for the questions pursued here and can therefore serve only as a first approximation. Third, the state of research on engineering identity as a specific form of professional identity is heavily focused on students. How organizational changes and/or even technological transformations (and especially their possible failure) affect experienced employees who have been working in engineering for a long time is still a largely open field of research.

Although the 2015 data reflect an environment that has since fundamentally changed, this limitation notwithstanding, the comparative perspective across 2015 and 2024 constitutes an important contribution, as it illustrates how engineers’ perceptions shift under conditions of profound industry change. Although the data do not form a true panel (i.e., they do not track exactly the same engineers over time), the rare availability of comparable surveys from the same OEM provides a unique opportunity to capture how engineers’ work is framed before and after a major technological transformation.

Whether the categories of trust and future expectations used here are suitable or even sufficient variables in this context remains an open research question and cannot be answered solely on the basis of the material presented here. However, fundamental studies of the mechanisms linking organizational and professional identity within changing contexts would be necessary to investigate future transformations and their effects more validly. Finally, it should not be underestimated that the constellations in this case study of the German automotive industry can only be generalized to other sectors and/or countries to a limited extent: On the one hand, the German model of co-determination is too specific and perhaps most vividly reflected in the automotive industry. On the other hand, the self-image of German engineering has very specific historical roots, and these distinctive features continue to influence university education and work structures in German engineering to this day, despite globalization.