Most common ethical issues an engineer faces are that providing a quality product at a reasonable cost and safety of the public. At time, clients want more than they are willing to pay for, in this case engineer must decide whether to shorten the design to save money and time or not to take the job they offered. The ethical engineer modules or designs are not only for the safety and low manufacture cost, but also for reduce manufacture cost for the entire design. The professional engineer’s duty is to find the correct manufacture cost and whether the product will be safe to use. Often times, an engineer may experience a situations in which they can’t get the client or manager satisfied of the product. In order to maintain an ethical demeanor in such cases, an engineer may have to refuse to approve the project design. Another ethical issue would be understanding and conflict of interest. Engineers should not sign an agreement to work on former employers or not to sign contract while other engineer still working on the same project. Engineers should not work on a product that will com...
Martin, M.W. and Schinzinger, R. (2005) Ethics in Engineering. 4th ed. New York: McGraw Hill.
Engineers and computer scientist live by a code of ethics in which they are required to uphold. In almost every code of ethics it is stated that each engineer/computer scientist must uphold the safety, health & welfare of the public which is paramount. So, if we consider the Respect for Persons theory. There is without a doubt an ethical responsibility for engineers/computer scientist that must be addressed over the disparity that exposes environmental toxicants distributed un-equally among the population.
William LeMessurier, one of the nation's most distinguished structural engineers, served as design and construction consultant on the innovative Citicorp Tower, which was completed in 1977 in New York. The next year, after a college student studying the Tower design for her thesis had called him to point out a possible deficiency, LeMessurier discovered that the building was indeed structurally deficient. The deficient came from substitution of welded joints to bolted joints. LeMessuerier went through calculation and found out that bolts joints were insufficient to withstand strong quartering winds. LeMessurier’s calculations revealed that 70 mph quartering winds would topple the building. According to the New York City weather records, the likelihood of a storm with 70 mph winds was one in every sixteen years. By taking the tuned mass damper into account, LeMessurier calculated that the probability of failure could be reduced to one in fifty-five years, but that assumed that the power to the building, which was needed to keep the tuned mass damper working, was maintained without dis...
The tragic failure of the Challenger does make for an excellent case study on managment process. Prior to reviewing the course material, I was aware there was a technical and mechanical failure which led to the demise of the spacecraft as well as the crew, but I had no idea that the device which failed was a known problem to the engineers, and known by at least some level of management. It is shocking. Although I was unable to obtain the PDF for Engineering Ethics Case Study: The Challenger Disaster, I found the content of The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: A Study in Organizational Ethics particularly interesting of case studies provided.
Ethical issue faced after the project is completed: After the project is completed following ethical issues may be faced by Project Manager.
Engineers face pressures from their employers to head projects that they do not possess the required certification to lead. Many aspects of civil engineering overlap into other fields of engineering; therefore, civil engineers possess some of the knowledge that an electrical engineer does. This overlap in knowledge frequently causes employers to ask civil engineers to head projects that require electrical engineers in order to save money. Cannon two of the “Code of Ethics” states, “Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence.” (2006) Employers pressure engineers to perform tasks that they do not possess the legal certification to do, in order to save money. Although the engineer possesses the required knowledge to perform this task, the law requires the engineer to deny their employers request; therefore, the engineer has the responsibility to reject their employer request to protect themselves from litigation. Engineers also have the responsibility to perform their duties with honesty. According to the Royal Academy of Engineers, “Engineers are likely to work for the benefit of a number of different groups of people, and in many cases will have a duty to keep these people informed of relevant facts.” (2011, p.14) Engineers sometimes falsify information to save money. Tara Hoke of the American Society of Civil
The Engineering Handbook, Chapter Six: Ethics, Santa Clara University School of Engineering, 27 Feb. 2004, http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/ENGR019_301Winter2004/EngrHandbook_Ethics.pdf.
People intuitively have the desire to make things go their way even when they are being put through very difficult situation that require doing something or believing in something that could be out of their hands. They tend to overly hold favorable views of their abilities in such ways that support their views to the extent of self-deception. They allow themselves to believe that a false feeling, idea, or situation is true just so they can achieve a certain goal that they have in mind. This paper aims to define self-deception and how it differs from lying in addition to finding the relationship between self-deception and ethics through real life examples.
Ethics is the moral behavior that guides our actions; it motivates us in our personal behavior and is relevant in a business setting as well. Many organizations have set forth a set of guidelines known as a “Code of Ethics”. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, being one of these organizations, has set forth their code as a requirement for students and engineer members to adhere to. Heading towards a career in electrical engineering I choose this organization to elaborate on for my ethics project.
I see ethical dilemmas regarding mechanical, electrical, and plumbing situations on a daily basis. The first ethical dilemma I have heard in construction was one where a project manager was allowing some of his workers to take junk scrap metal off of the job for them to sell. At first you would think that this was wrong and that he shouldn’t have been allowing them to do that and that they should all get in trouble. However, in this particular situation it is not unethical because the company doing the work had no plans of using the scrap metal and they were just going to dispose of it and waste it. So what seems unethical here was actually ethical if you knew all the circumstances surrounding the situation.
Bioengineering focuses on the engineering of biological processes and systems in general which leads to a variety of both societal and ethical issues, bioengineering not only includes biomedical engineering but also agricultural engineering, food engineering and biotechnology as a whole which are all fields that are prone to a brighter ethics spotlight. This is due in part because biomedical engineering it itself a new field and there is currently no academic field that covers biomedical engineering ethics.
McLaren, B. (2010, July 22). The ethical responsibility of engineers and the rest of us, too [Web log article]. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-d-mclaren/the-ethical-responsibilit_b_653812.html
Engineering ethics can be described as moral principles that are applied to the engineering practice (Van et al, 2011). Engineering bodies, such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, conducts field examines and set obligations that engineers are supposed to fulfill, to their clients, society and professi...
For better illustration, some engineers whom ignore ethic codes and mistakenly causing unwanted disasters and tragedies happen due to incomplete engineering design and lacking in maintenance. Engineering who less likely to consider ethic code as their responsibility, he or she will lose the sense of humanity and responsibility to public. In this case, an engineer should not sign, coincide or hide any project or plan that are not in conformity with applicable standards of engineering. The document that does not full fill the requirement and safety that signed by engineer will bring great impact as this will have chance to make accidents happens. Therefore, this is an important issue and a basic thing that must exhibit by every engineer so that an engineer strive to serve the public interest at all the times. Besides that, engineers are encouraged to entrench to the environment sustainability, social sustainability and development sustainability in order to protect the greening of the earth for future young generation. Engineer should have ethic when doing the survey and research for a project before approval the document especially
plays vital role in improving society and there are many ethical and moral issues that engineering and computer science professionals will face like the medical, legal and business professions. It is important to understand how to contemplate these issues and increase moral autonomy. Engineering ethics is not only teaching moral behavior knowing about immoral and amoral in a set of beliefs, but also increasing the ability of engineers and other professionals to face boldly with the moral problems arising from technological advancements, changes and other related activities.