Notes

Moral responsibility is one of the core concepts in engineering ethics and consequently in
most engineering ethics education. Yet, despite a growing awareness that engineers should be
trained to become more sensitive to cultural differences, most engineering ethics education is
still based on Western approaches. Innovations are often the result of research and development
(R&D) processes,
which are typically carried out in small to medium project teams. The given objective is usually
to solve a (technical) problem by applying or developing technology.
The focus of current thinking about engineering ethics education is no longer on preventing
disasters or upholding a code of conduct. Instead, the focus has been shifted to ensuring broad
social responsibility of engineering (Fuentes et al. 2016; National Academy of Engineering
2005; Zandvoort et al. 2013). Studies of engineering students’ understanding of ethics, however,
show that engineering students still understand the social responsibility of engineering in a
narrow and rigid way (Cech 2014; Culver et al. 2013; Garibay 2015; Lee et al. 2015).
Moreover, students’ understanding of ethics and social responsibility tended to decrease
through higher education (Cech 2014; Garibay 2015).
The introduction of innovations is therefore often driven by technology rather than
societal need, which has often been described as performing experiments on society for the main
reason that effects of innovations are usually hard to predict (Kroes 2016). However, this
approach leads to the challenge that undesirable effects are just detected towards or at the end of
an innovation’s R&D process. From an engineering perspective, the analysis of undesirable
effects in an R&D project of technical systems and products is usually limited to technical
failures and their causes, for example due to the use of standard engineering methods such as
failure mode and effects analysis according to IEC 60812 (2018).
AMICAI offers a method for the continuous analysis of innovation-based problems
during the R&D process from the very early stages. AMICAI is used to analyze problems of
subsequent use or application of the innovation. This involves identifying and classifying
problems and prioritizing them by means of a risk analysis. The following description refers to
the implementation of AMICAI from scratch, usually at a very early stage of the R&D process of
an innovation.
Wearables represent a new opportunity for governing individual behavior. Whether this
will manifest primarily as self-governance as some have argued (Rose 2007a,b; Topol 2011) or
merely as a transfer of individual sovereignty to industry and/or the state, will rest on how these
technologies are designed and regulated, and how persuasive they are. The discourse surrounding
standards for avoiding risk through
Design and regulation has so far focused on data security, privacy, accuracy, and to some
degree, physical harm; while standards for avoiding risk related to construction of knowledge,
social control, medicalization of wellness, and erosion of choice, have not been as widely
considered. This may be in part because it is unclear how responsibility for addressing these
social implications should be assigned, whose moral authority can be trusted to do it, and what
values should play a role. Although engineers are centrally located in reflecting on and
responding to ethical implications of wearable design and deployment, it is also critical that
government regulatory bodies such as the FDA and the FTC place a higher emphasis on these
types of risks, especially for consumer wearables.
Requirements engineering must address issues of power, politics and human social
values. Critical Systems Thinking frameworks have been developed to make visible and reflect
on such concerns, but have not been taken up in RE. This article asked: What is the role of
Critical Systems Heuristics
in Requirements Engineering? Critical Systems Heuristics can be used for structuring early
explorations of requirements in a project designing an embedded device that supports elderly
people at home. The role of the CSH framework was to provide an effective framing for
developing a reflexive understanding of stakeholders and concerns; revising high-level purposes,
goals and measures of success to represent the interests of those affected; probing from multiple
perspectives how different project and system
scopes can and should be justified; and exploring that human, social and economic values should
drive the project.
The world population is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by the year 2050 (Azadi et al.
2015), with more than 3.9 billion people living below the poverty line around the world (Poncet
2008). In addition, according to United Nations reports, on average, about 1.3 billion people in
the world (14%) lack adequate access to food, a number which will increase by 2050 (Fader et
al. 2013). In order to meet
the food needs of the growing population, food production and distribution must be improved
greatly in the next decades, despite drought, limited access to arable lands and climate change
(Jacobsen et al. 2013).

Engineering has found its way into all areas of human activity and has become one of the
potential driving forces behind global economic development and the creation of new industries.
Engineers in various industries contribute to the development of new technologies that influence
and shape the way we live, in both anticipated and unanticipated ways (Murphy et al. 2015).
Engineers are committed
To changing and improving the world. However, engineering may also pose risks for
public safety, health and welfare. To protect public safety, health and welfare, engineers are
therefore not only responsible for carrying out their work competently and skilfully but they
must also be aware of the broader ethical and social implications of engineering and be able to
reflect on these issues.
Given the need for more diversity in engineering ethics education and the globalisation of
engineering practice, but also given the context-sensitivity that many engineering ethicists
emphasise, it would be interesting to see what a non- Western perspective could add to existing
discussions in the engineering ethics literature. This paper focuses on Confucianism as a
perspective that has so far not been systematically included in the engineering ethics literature.
The current literature on responsibility does not include a systematic study of Confucian moral
responsibility. Also, there are hardly any scholarly papers within the engineering ethics literature
that discuss Confucian ethics as an approach for discussing and analysing ethical dilemmas in
engineering. So far the comparison between Confucianism and Western approaches to
responsibility; what could this Confucian perspective add to the engineering ethics literature, or
more specifically, how should inclusive engineering ethics education be
developed? This paper started with the observation that engineering ethics education is currently
rather narrowly focused on Western approaches.
Our analysis suggests that the gap between Western and at least one Eastern approach,
namely Confucianism, can be bridged. Although there are differences, the Confucian view and
especially a virtue-based Western view on moral responsibility have much in common, which
allows for a promising base for culturally inclusive ethics education for engineers.
However, if the commonalities are emphasized too strongly, there is a risk of using
similar terms for concepts that have quite different meanings. The differences in interpretation of
the concept of family was already mentioned, but the same applies for the listed virtues, which
may have quite different meanings in different cultures. If Confucian texts are used in the
classroom, it may be good to be aware of this to reduce the risk of mainstream Western
approaches colonizing non-Western concepts.

According to the OECD, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development, and other education policy experts all over the world, an urgent reform is needed
to promote education innovation with “competencies” as the core. To investigate the feasibility
to apply competency-oriented education, this pilot study surveyed the competencies of
“collaboration” and “energy” and applied competency-oriented contents into an Engineering
Ethics course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Based on current literature this study developed a comprehensive model to explain and
predict the social risk perceptions of GM food production. The model is called comprehensive
due to the fact that it is multi-dimensional and in addition to dimensions considered in previous
models, it covers aspects such as attitude toward environment, attitude toward technology, level
of religiosity, and social benefit perception.
Hence, the proposed model makes an important contribution to the emerging literature on
risk perception, especially with regard to GM food development. The results suggest that the
comprehensive model has good explanatory power and is robust in predicting risk perception of
GM foods. The model can be used for ex-ante and ex-post risk perception assessment in both
developed and developing countries.
This study reveals that the social benefit perception and psychological attributes of risks
are the most influential factors, implying that increasing the benefit perception and decreasing
psychological attributes of GM crop risks will decrease social risk perception of these foods. So,
it is suggested that by publishing valid scientific articles, providing radio and television
programs, workshops, etc., the public’s
knowledge and awareness of real benefits of GM foods would be increased and the ambiguity
and newness of GM product’s risks and therefore their social risk perceptions would be
decreased. Also, it can be suggested that the engineers try to identify and research on some GM
foods that have more social benefits and fewer risks for introduction in Iran.
Finally, for better understanding of social risk perception of other crucial stakeholders of
GM foods in Iran such as consumers, producers, and agricultural managers, the use of proposed
model is recommended. The model developed by this study and the methodology adopted can be
used to assess the social risk of GM foods in other countries and to have a more informed
adoption or rejection of these foods.
Understanding professional ethics is essential for future scientists and engineers.
A situated and cross-disciplinary approach in engineering ethics education can help
enhance students’ understanding of professional ethics in terms of ethical integrity and social
responsibility. Designing and implementing collaborative ethics education programs such as
dialogue-based activities embedded in collaborative team projects may become a useful situated
and cross-disciplinary approach. Nevertheless, it is too early to make any solid conclusions about
the general effectiveness of peer
ethics advising in engineering student projects based on this study, because the analysis did not
aim at general effectiveness but focused on the process of peer advising in micro-scale, a specific
moment of the discussion in three cases.
Engineering is a practice that must function in an environment of incomplete and
uncertain knowledge. This environment has become even more difficult in an increasingly
complex world. Engineering ethics has to be framed and taught in a way that addresses these
realities.
Embedding values into practice, pragmatism and care provide a broad, reflective, and
corrective framework for engineering ethics that can accommodate the realities in which
engineering operates. It is shown that these two approaches are more consonant with design
methodologies and have a natural fit with design thinking, so they mesh well with what
engineers do and with the complexities of their work today. As humans more and more try to
alter the socio-techno-natural world, e.g., the earth’s climate, the combination of pragmatism and
care will allow enhanced ethical behavior. Alterations to complex adaptive systems will produce
highly uncertain results that require engineers to have a mindset that allows them to act with
humility in the face of significant uncertainty and potential catastrophic failures.
It is possible for pragmatism and care to become part of engineering ethics. In a broader
sense, one can consider an engineering way of thinking that goes beyond today’s boundaries of
engineering and suggests the relevance of weaving the strands of pragmatism, care, and virtue
into engineering practice.
In the age of global technology, paying attention to the context does not lead to a single
solution, but does point out that there are limits to the possible solutions.
The plurality and specificity requirements of the pragmatic method would also indicate
this. Engineers need to be able to perform ethically in professional situations, even under the
contingency that is unavoidable in engineering design. A framework that incorporates the ideas
from pragmatism and the ethic of care can provide a background for engineering ethics that will
allow a more reflective practice founded on a broader view of engineering.
Case studies have been used by engineering ethics educators for several decades,
following a path paved by legal educators in the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately, few of
these cases connect the
micro-ethical decisions of individual engineers with the macro-ethical consequences of their
actions,
leaving intact a long-standing division between ethics and equity in engineering education.

Ethics and equity are not new content areas to be learned in class, nor are they human
factor design constraints extraneous to the real engineering problem. They are integral to the
personal and professional lives of engineers, connecting micro-ethical dilemmas with macro-
ethical consequences from a range of social locations. Engineering educators, professional
engineers and engineering students across institutional contexts must habitually infuse our
everyday ethical decisions with equity considerations—considering at each step, how our own
values, experiences and beliefs shape our actions and how these actions shape the social
conditions of others. This requires ongoing practice within a diverse community of engineering
educators committed to catalyzing ethical and equitable change in the profession across
epistemological commitments. To borrow the metaphor of structural integrity from our
colleagues in civil engineering, equity is the rebar that affords engineering ethics educators the
strength we need to bring about meaningful social change.
 Autonomous vehicles have the potential to revolutionize transportation networks and
radically transform urban design strategies. Exactly what this future will look like, though, is still
open for debate and scrutiny. Yet while visions of future cities and roadways dominated by
“driverless cars” remain nebulous, their impending realization has garnered a growing technical
and ethical debate.1 Current technical discourse largely focuses on the potential benefits in terms
of safety, easing congestion,
and emissions reductions (e.g., Hoogendoorn et al. 2014; Diakaki et al. 2015; Fagnant and
Kockelman 2014, 2015). Research is also exploring the tangential effects of driving automation
on issues such as vehicle ownership and sharing, land use, energy consumption, air pollution,
and public health (e.g., Duarte and Ratti 2018; Milakis et al. 2017). Taking a more critical
approach, ethical discourse has largely
focused on how vehicles should be programmed to behave in dilemmatic life-and death
scenarios, and what decision-making criteria should be followed (e.g., Bonnefon et al. 2016;
Gogoll and Müller 2017; Lin 2016; Santoni de Sio 2017). The issues under debate are then how
these vehicles should be programmed to operate in such circumstances, who should decide on
this programming, and where the resultant moral and legal responsibility lies.
While important considerations, critiques have nevertheless been raised about this
pathway for ethical discourse, including the over-reliance on viewing autonomous vehicles as a
real-life manifestation of the “trolley problem”.

The extensive specialization and complexities of contemporary scientific research

generate novel and specific contexts in which scientists must apply moral judgments and make
ethically-sound decisions. This decision making process needs professional knowledge and
experience, and should preferably be guided by a professional code of conduct. For any scientific
endeavour to work towards advancing knowledge, empirical experimentations and data
interpretations in the process must be conducted with the utmost integrity and objectiveness.
However, experimenters and data interpreters are human, and are therefore likely to be
subjective, emotional, impressionable or fallible to varying degrees in any given situation.
Furthermore, modern research settings are usually socio-politically complex, highly competitive
and stressful environments. Scientists, particularly the junior ones, may find it difficult to deal
with the emotional, interpersonal and situational intricacies that demand quick but well-reasoned
and morally sound judgements or decisions. The usual avenues for “learning the ropes” are their
supervisors and colleagues. However, such peer learning is often undesirably slow or ineffective,
and some lessons are only painfully learned through mistakes made. In the context of individuals
functioning on diverse teams, a study conducted by Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, and
Malone (2010) identified the “average social sensitivity” (p. 686) of team members as a key
predictor for
team performance, where social sensitivity, akin to empathy, is defined as the ability to
accurately perceive and comprehend the behavior, feelings, and motives of other individuals
(Rothenberg, 1970). Similarly, a study conducted by Google (Duhigg, 2016) on team
composition and performance found that a team's ability to create an atmosphere of
psychological safety, defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking,
was one of only two factors that consistently correlated with team success; the other factor was
conversational turn-taking (Edmondson, 1999). Leading design companies (Battarbee, Fulton
Suri, & Gibbs Howard, 2014; Duhigg, 2016; Hansen, 2010) and
cutting-edge university programs (Stanford d.school, 2017) across the United States have
likewise pointed to empathy as one of the most crucial ingredients for professional success.

Marian Stratina