Loyalty to

corporations, respect
for authority,
collegiality, and other
teamwork virtues are
enormously important
in engineering.
An Ethical Corporate Climate
An ethical climate is a working
environmental that is conducive to
morally responsible conduct. Within
corporations it is produced by a
combination of formal organization
and policies, informal traditions and
practices, and personal attitudes and
commitments.
 According to Sociologist
Robert Jackall “what is right in
the corporation is what the guy
above you wants from you.
That’s what morality is in the
corporation.”
 Loyalty and Collegiality
Loyalty to an employer can mean
two things:
Agency-loyalty is acting to fulfill
one’s contractual duties to an employer.
Attitude-loyalty, by contrast, has
as much to do with attitudes, emotions,
and a sense of personal identity as it
does with actions.
 Managers and Engineers
Respect for authority is important
in meeting organizational goals.

Executive Authority – the

corporate or institutional right
given to a person to exercise power
based on the resources of an
organization.
 Expert Authority – the possession
of the special knowledge, skill, or
competence to perform some task or to
give sound advice.
Respect Authority – when they
accept the guidance and obey the
directives issued by the employer having
to do with the areas of the activity
covered by the employer’s institutional
authority, assuming the directives are
legal and do not violate norms of moral
decency.
 Managing Conflict
Seven most common conflicts
confronted by engineering project
managers, in order of priority of
overall intensity (as perceived by
managers), as follows:
1. Conflicts over schedules.
2. Conflicts over which projects and
departments are most important to
the organization at a given time.
3. Conflicts over personal resources
made available for projects.
4. Conflicts over technical issues , in
particular over alternative ways to solve
a technical problem within cost,
schedule, and performance objectives.
5. Conflicts over administrative
procedures, such as the extent of the
manager’s authority, accountability
procedures and reviews, and
administrative support.
6. Personality conflicts.
7. Conflicts over cost.
Four widely applicable principles for
conflict resolution.

1. “People: Separate the people from

the problem.”
2. “Interest: Focus on interests, not
positions.”
3. “Options: Generate a variety of
possibilities before deciding what to
do.”
4. “Criteria: Insist that the result (of
conflict resolution) be based on some
objective standard.”
 Maintaining confidentiality and
avoiding harmful conflicts of interest
are especially important aspects of
teamwork and trustworthiness.
 Confidentiality: Definition
The duty of confidentiality is the
duty to keep secret all information
deemed desirable to keep secret.

Privileged information literally means

“available only on the basis of special
privilege.”
Proprietary information – is information
that a company owns or is the proprietor of,
and hence is a term carefully defined by a
property law.
Trade Secret - which can be virtually
any type of information that has not
become public, which an employer has
taken steps to keep secret, and which is
thereby given limited legal protection
in common law that forbids employees
from divulging it.
Patents – legally protect specific
products from being manufactured
and sold by competitors without the
express permission of the patent
holder.
Confidentiality and Changing
Jobs
The obligation to protect
confidential information does not
cease when employees change jobs.
 Confidentiality: Justification

The primary justification is to

respect the autonomy (freedom, self-
determination) of individuals and
corporations and to recognize their
legitimate control over private
information concerning themselves.
 Additional justification include
trustworthiness: once practices of
maintaining confidentiality are
established socially, trust and
trustworthiness can grow.
 Conflicts of Interest
Because of the great variety of
possible outside interests, conflicts of
interest can arise in innumerable ways,
and with many degrees of subtlety
1. GIFTS, BRIBES, AND KICKBACKS. A
bribe is a substantial amount of money
or goods offered beyond a stated
business contract, and where the
advantage is unfair or otherwise
unethical.
2. INTERESTS IN OTHER COMPANIES.
Some conflicts of interest consist in
having an interest in a competitor’s or
subcontractor’s business.
3. INSIDER INFORMATION. An
especially sensitive conflict of interest
consists in using “inside” information
to gain an advantage or set up a
business opportunity for oneself, one’s
family, or one’s friends.
 Moral Status of Conflicts of
Interest
Employee conflicts of interest
occur when employee have interests
that if pursued could keep them from
meeting their obligations to serve
interests of the employer or client for
whom they work.
 Engineers have several types of
moral rights, which fall into the
sometimes overlapping categories of
human, employee, contractual, and
professional rights.
 As humans, engineers have
fundamental rights to live and freely
pursue their legitimate interest.
As employees, engineers have
special rights, including the right to
receive one’s salary in return for
performing one’s duties.
As professionals, engineers have
special rights that arise from their
professional role and the obligations it
involves.
 Professional Rights

Three professional rights have

special importance :

1. Right of Professional Conscience – is

the moral right to exercise professional
judgment in pursuing professional
responsibilities.
2. Right of Conscientious Refusal – is
the right to refuse to engage in
unethical behavior and to refuse to do
so solely because one views it as
unethical.
3. Right to Recognition – Engineers
have a right to professional
recognition for their work and
accomplishments.
 Employee Rights
Employee rights are any rights,
moral or legal, that involve the status of
being an employee.
1. Privacy
2. Equal Opportunity: Nondiscrimination
3.Equal Opportunity: Sexual
Harassment
4.Equal Opportunity: Affirmative Action
 Whistleblowing occurs when an
employee or former employee conveys
information about a significant moral
problem to someone in a position to
take action on the problem, and does so
outside approved organizational
channels.
 The definition has four main parts:

1. Disclosure 3. Agent
2. Topic 4. Recipient

The definition also allow us to

distinguish between open and
anonymous whistleblowing.
1. Open whistleblowing.
2. Anonymous whistleblowing
 Moral Guidelines
It is permissible to whistleblow
when the following conditions have
been met.
1. The actual or potential harm
reported is serious.
2. The harm has been adequately
documented.
3. The concerns have been reported to
immediate superiors.
4. After not getting satisfaction from
immediate superiors, regular channels
within the organizations have been
used to reach up to the highest levels
of management.
5. There is reasonable hope that
whistleblowing can help prevent or
remedy the harm.
 Protecting Whislteblowers
Laws, when they are carefully
formulated and enforced, provided two
types of benefits for the public, in
addition to protecting the responsible
whistleblower:
1. Episodic benefits
2. Systemic benefits