Engineering profession ethics

D.R. Lynch, A Human Rights Challenge to the Engineering Profession. Ethical Dimensions and Leadership Opportunities in Professional Eormation, in Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Salt Lake City (2004) Session 2140... 

Several faculty members felt the ethics course that students took in the first year was not useful and generally not practice-based. Instead, ethics should be inserted across the curriculum when it is appropriate. In addition, one faculty member argued that an ethics course in the first year is not effective since students are novices about the engineering profession. He suggested that a course on ethics and society should be offered at the seruor level after the students have been exposed to industry practices and projects. Finally, across the board, faculty felt the importance of social... 

Since the late nineteenth century, several noteworthy sociological changes have occurred in the engineering profession in the United States. These changes have made contemporary engineers considerably more likely to face ethical issues in their work than previously. ... 

In short, because of a number of transformative sociotechnical developments in the engineering profession in the United States over the last 125-150 years, engineers today are more likely than ever to find themselves faced with challenging ethical issues at work. That makes it all the more important that they be equipped to address such issues in an ethically responsible manner. 

The codes of ethics of various field-specific engineering professions, as well as of the multi-disciphnary National Society of fhofessional Engineers (NSPE), can he found at http //www. onhneethics.org/Resources/ethcodes/EnglishCodes.aspx... 

This Statement of Ethical Principles sets a standard to which members of the engineering profession should aspire in their working habits and relationships. The Statement is fully compatible with the principles in the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser s Universal Ethical Code for Scientists, with an emphasis on matters of particular relevance to engineers. The values on which it is based should apply in every situation in which professional engineers exercise their judgement. 

The development of drones is evidence of the insidious presence of warism within some sections of the engineering profession. Furthermore, such development poses a growing threat to the ethical practice of engineering, for the increasing automation of such weapons increases the role of engineers in warfare engineers become the essential professionals for such warfare, more necessary than even military personnel as conventionally understood. However, the case of drones makes apparent two important themes if the ethical practice of engineering is to succeed in the future ... 

Our next set of questions were related to the implications of engineers in society. We asked if engineers have a social value, if they see themselves as an executive profession or if they also have a social responsibility in the outcome and the conception of the project. The answers tend to consider that the social component must be present in engineers profession. However, some comments are more related to the concept of civil or penal responsibility than to the broad macro-ethic conception. Thus, the presidents put the emphasis on legislation, and allusions to promote the welfare described before seem restricted to the safety and liability of a determinate project. So engineers seem circumscribed to their working environment... 

The question then becomes how can the engineering profession effectively respond to these three challenges, that is, to the challenge of peace, of poverty and underdevelopment, and of environmental sustainability As responses will depend upon the underlying ethical foundation for the engineering profession as described in the ethical codes, the next section of this work will examine engineering codes of conduct and seek to place them in an historical context. 

A shift to a morally deep world-view in engineering would have a profound impact on the sense of ethical responsibility that the engineering profession would embrace. The next section will provide several examples of application of a morally... 

As with all other attempts at integrating an ethical foundation into the engineering profession, it is not the particular ethical theory, which provides a correct answer, as ethical dilemmas do not have right and wrong answers. If such answers existed, we would simply not use the term dilemma. 

ASCE s White Men as Full Diversity Partners (2002) offers an excellent overview of the white male tradition - and the ensuing codification of values and ethics in the civil engineering profession. Some of the characteristics of the white male culture that were identified include ... 

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