ENGINEERING STANDARDS :

refers to two aspects -> obligation- responsibility

and blame- responsibility

Obligation-responsibility requires that one exercise

a standard of care in one’s professional work.
Engineers need to be concerned with complying
with the law, adhering to standard norms and
practices, and avoiding wrongful behavior. However,
this may not be good enough.
The standard of care view insists that existing
regulatory standards may be inadequate because
these standards may fail to address problems that
have yet to be taken adequately into account.
Blame-responsibility.
This is a fundamentally negative and backward-looking concept
of responsibility.

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to focus on the blaming end

of this evaluative spectrum.

We seem more readily to notice shortcomings and failures than

the everyday competent, if not exceptional, performance of
engineers
• THE STANDARD OF CARE
“ An engineer is not liable, or responsible, for
damages for every error. Society has decided,
through case law, that when you hire an
engineer, you buy the engineer’s normal
errors. However, if the error is shown to have
been worse than a certain level of error, the
engineer is liable. That level, the line between
non-negligent and negligent error, is the
‘‘standard of care.’’
- Joshua B. Kardon
case – 17 : Hyatt Regency Walkway disaster.
why those in charge of the construction of the
Kansas City Hyatt Regency hotel were charged
with professional negligence in regard to the
catastrophic walkway collapse in 1981 ?
Case 6- Citicorp
Show how it is quite possible for regulations to
fail to keep pace with technological innovation
?
• BLAME-RESPONSIBILITY AND CAUSATION
The inquiry that followed the loss
of Challenger Columbia Space shuttle
Accident of 1986 suggests that the crew found
much wrong with NASA's internal culture.
Explain .
If organizations can be causes, can they also
be morally responsible agents, much as
humans can be?
LIABILITY
A practical way of examining moral responsibility is to
consider the related concept of legal liability for
causing harm. Legal liability and moral responsibility is
usually associated with negligently causing harm. In
law, a successful charge of negligence must meet four
conditions:
1. A legal obligation to conform to certain standards of
conduct is present.
2. The person accused of negligence fails to conform to
the standards.
3. There is a reasonably close causal connection
between the conduct and the resulting harm.
4. Actual loss or damage to the interests of another
results
DESIGN STANDARDS ( Case 6 – Citicorp & Case 27 – Pinto )

Engineers have the freedom to adapt their designs to local, variable

circumstances. This often brings surprises not only in design but
also in regard to the adequacy of formal standards of practice.
Design operates on the edge of ‘‘the new and the untried, the
unexperienced, the ahistorical.

Thus, as engineers develop innovative designs (such as

LeMessurier’s Citicorp structure), we should expect formal
standards of practice sometimes to be challenged and found to be
in need of change—all the more reason why courts of law are
unwilling simply to equate the standard of care with current formal
standards of practice.

Ford Engineers suggested alternate designs with protective buffer

but was not considered by the company as it satisfied existing
standards. What were the consequences ?
THE PROBLEM OF MANY HANDS
If a harm has resulted from collective inaction, the degree of
individual responsibility of each member of a putative group
for the harm should vary based on the role each member
could, counterfactually, have played in preventing the
inaction, this the principle of responsibility for inaction in
groups.
IMPEDIMENTS TO RESPONSIBLE ACTION

• Self-Interest : Managers sometimes advance their careers by being

associated with successful and on-schedule flight.

• Self-Deception : NASA managers seem to have convinced

themselves that past successes are an indication that a known
defect would not cause problems, instead of deciding the issue on
the basis of testing and sound engineering analysis

• Fear - Even when we are not tempted to take advantage of others

for personal gain, we may be moved by various kinds of fear—fear
of acknowledging our mistakes, of losing our jobs, or of some sort
of punishment or other bad consequences

• Ignorance - An obvious barrier to responsible action is ignorance of

vital information
• Egocentric Tendencies -A common feature of human experience is
that we tend to interpret situations from very limited perspectives
and it takes special efforts to acquire a more objective viewpoint.
This is what psychologists call egocentricity.

• Microscopic Vision – we see things only in the narrow field of

resolution on which the microscope is focused. We gain accurate,
detailed knowledge at a microscopic level. At the same time, we
cease to see things at the more ordinary level.

• Uncritical Acceptance of Authority - Most engineers are not their

own bosses, and they are expected to defer to authority in their
organizations

• Groupthink - Engineers mostly work in groups and there are

situations in which groups come to agreement at the expense of
critical thinking .
Janis symptoms of groupthink

1. an illusion of invulnerability of the group to failure

2. a strong ‘‘we-feeling’’ that views outsiders as adversaries or
enemies and encourages shared stereotypes of others
3. rationalizations that tend to shift responsibility to others
4. an illusion of morality that assumes the inherent morality of the
group and thereby discourages careful examination of the moral
implications of what the group is doing
5. a tendency of individual members toward self-censorship,
resulting from a desire not to ‘‘rock the boat’
6. an illusion of unanimity, construing silence of a group member as
consent
7. an application of direct pressure on those who show signs of
disagreement, often exercised by the group leader who intervenes
in an effort to keep the group unified;
8. mindguarding, or protecting the group from dissenting views by
preventing their introduction