Resource Person: Rizwan Younis

UMT, Lahore

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 Meanings of Responsibility


1. Obligations.
 Responsibilities are obligations-types of actions that are morally
mandatory. Some obligations are incumbent on each of us, such
as to be honest, fair, and decent.
 Other obligations are role responsibilities, acquired when we
take on special roles such as parents, employees, or
professionals.
 Thus, a safety engineer might have responsibilities for making
regular inspections at a building site, or an operations engineer
might have responsibilities for identifying potential benefits and
risks of one system as compared with another.
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 Meanings of Responsibility


2. Accountable.
 Being responsible means being morally accountable.
 This entails having the general capacities for moral agency,
including the capacity to understand and act on moral
reasons.
 It also entails being answerable for meeting particular
obligations, that is, liable to be held to account by other
people in general or by specific individuals in positions of
authority.

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 Meanings of Responsibility


3. Conscientious:
 Conscientious means integrity; to be morally admirable
engineers.
 They diligently try to do the right thing, and they largely
succeed in doing so, even under difficult circumstances.
 In this sense, being responsible is a virtue-an excellence of
character. Of course, no one is perfect, and one might be
conscientious in some areas of life, such as one’s work, and
less conscientious in other areas, such as raising a child.

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 Meanings of Responsibility


 The preceding meanings all concerned moral
responsibility, in particular as it bears on professional
responsibility.
Moral responsibility is distinguishable from causal, job,
and legal responsibility.
 Causal responsibility consists simply in being a cause of some
event. (A young child playing with matches causes a house
to burn down, but the adult who left the child with the
matches is morally responsible.)
 Job responsibility consists of one's assigned tasks at the place
of employment.
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 Meanings of Responsibility


 And legal responsibility is whatever the law requires-
including legal obligations and accountability for
meeting them.
 The causal, job, and legal responsibilities of engineers
overlap with their moral and professional
responsibilities, although not completely. In particular,
professional responsibilities transcend narrow job
assignments.

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 RESPONSIBILITIES


In practice engineers’ Responsibilities include much
more than preventing and responding to accidents. In
fact, during professional career of an engineer there are
many responsibilities.

Responsibilities include both

A.Internal – responsibilities to employers and
B.External – responsibilities to the outside world

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 A. Internal responsibilities of engineers


(Responsibilities to employers)
In today’s competitive world, the success of any
organization relies on its team-play. Working effectively as
an engineer for a project requires the ethics of team-play.
Team-play involves virtues of:
1. Collegiality
2. Loyalty
3. Respect for authority and
4. Collective Bargaining.
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1. Collegiality


Collegiality can be defined as “a kind of
connectedness grounded in respect for professional
expertise and in a commitment to the goals and
values of the profession”.
It is the tendency to support and cooperate with the
colleagues.

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Elements of collegiality


1. Respect to the ideas and work of others: This results in support
and cooperation with one’s colleagues. One gets back the
support and cooperation in return, and this is mutually
beneficial.
2. Commitment to moral principles: Commitment is towards
moral decisions, actions, goals of the organization and
values of the profession.
3. Connectedness: It means the shared commitment and
mutual understanding. It ensures the absence of egoism and
paves way for progress for both.

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 Aspects of collegiality


Positive aspects of collegiality:
a.It is an influential value to promote the aims of professions.
Therefore it strengthens an engineer’s motivation to live up to
professional standards.
b.It is more valuable as many individuals jointly working for the
goodness of the public and society.
Negative aspects of collegiality:
a.It may be misused or distorted.
b.It may generate more groups of self-interest, rather than groups of
shared devotion to the public good.
c.It may focus on corporate goal of maximizing profit at the expense
of the public good. 12
 2. Loyalty


 It is the quality of being true and faithful in one’s support.
 It is more a function of attitudes, emotions and a sense of identity.

Two senses of Loyalty

1. Agency loyalty and
2. Identification loyalty
(Attitude loyalty)

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Senses of loyalty


Agency loyalty
It is an obligation to fulfill his/her contractual duties to the employer. The
duties are specific actions one is assigned, and in general cooperating with
others in the organization.
It consists of several obligations to employers. But, for the engineers, the
paramount obligation is still “the safety, health, and welfare of the public”.
Identification loyalty
In contrast to agency loyalty, identification loyalty is much concerned with
attitudes, emotions and a sense of personal identity as it does with actions.
This is more a virtue than an obligation. It is all right when the organization
work for productivity or development of community.
Working together in falsification of records or serious harm to the public, does
not merit loyalty. 14
3. Respect for authority


Authority can be defined as the legal right to command action by
others and to enforce compliance.
The authority fixes the personal responsibility and accountability
uniquely on each person. This is necessary to ensure progress in
action.
Types of authorities:
1.Institutional authority
2.Expert Authority

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Types of authorities


1. Institutional authority
The characteristics features of institutional authority are that they
allocate money and other resources and have liberty in execution.
It is the right given to the employees to exercise power, to complete the
task and force them to achieve their goals.

2. Expert authority/Authority of leadership:

It is (a) the possession of special knowledge, skills and competence to
perform a job thoroughly,
(b) The advice on jobs, and
(c) Is a staff function. 16
4. Collective bargaining


International Labor Organization has defined collective
bargaining as “negotiation about working conditions and
terms of employment between an employer and one or more
representative employee’s with a view to reaching
agreement”
Process of collective bargaining
1.Presenting the character of demands by the union on
behalf of the constituent elements.
2.Negotiations at the bargaining table
3.Reaching an agreement
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Arguments over Unions
There are two arguments in favor of and against unions.
In favor of unions
It

plays a vital role in achieving high salaries and improved standard of
living of employees.
Gives employees a greater sense of participation in organization
decision making.
Can act as counterforce to any radical political movements that
exploit the employees.
Against unions
It
Shatter the economy of a country by placing distorting influences on
efficient uses of labor.
Remove negotiation between employers and employees.
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 B. EXTERNAL RESPONSIBILITIES


(Responsibilities to the outside world)
The responsibilities to the outside world include:
1.Confidentiality
2.Conflict of Interest and
3.Occupational crimes.

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1. Confidentiality


It is widely accepted that the engineers have an
obligation to keep certain information of the
employer/client secret or confidential.
In the same way, engineers have an obligation to keep
proprietary information of their employer/client
confidential.

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 Confidentiality (Contd.)


Confidential information is information deemed desirable to be kept
secret.
Terms related to confidential information are:
1. Privileged information – information available to an employee who is
working on a special assignment.
2. Proprietary information – PROPERTY or OWNERSHIP - a new
knowledge established within the organization that can be legally
protected from use by others
3. Trade secrets – these are given limited legal protection against
employee or contractor abuse.
4. Patents – legally protect specific products from being manufactured
and sold by competitors.
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 Confidentiality (Contd.)


Types of information should be kept confidential are:
Information about the unreleased products.
Test results and data about the products
Design or formulas for products.
Data about technical processes.
Organization of plant facilities.
Business information

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2. Conflicts of interest


An individual has two or more desires that all interests
cannot be satisfied given the circumstances.
Professional conflicts of interest are situations where
professionals have an interest, if pursued, could keep
them from meeting one of their obligations to their
employers.

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Types of Conflicts of Interest


i. Actual Conflicts of Interest – loss of objectivity in
decision-making and inability to faithfully
discharge professional duties to employer.
ii. Potential conflicts of interest – may corrupt
professional judgment in the future, if not in the
present.
iii. Apparent conflicts of interest – there are situations
in which there is the appearance of a conflict of
interest.
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 4. Occupational crime


Occupational crimes are illegal acts made possible through one’s
lawful employment.
It is the secretive violation of laws regulating work activities.
When committed by office workers or professionals, occupational
crime is called ‘white collar crime’.
These crimes are motivated by personal greed, corporate
ambition, misguided company loyalty etc.
These crimes intrude on various aspects such as professionalism,
loyalty, conflicts of interest and confidentiality.
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 Examples of occupational crime


1. Price Fixing:
While fixing price for a product/service, sometimes all competitors
come together and jointly set the prices to be charged. These are called as
“Pricing Cartels”.
In order to avoid these crimes laws are enforced which forbids
companies from jointly fixing prices.

Case Illustration:
In 1983,in American state of Washington, six electrical contractors
along with eight company presidents and vice presidents were indicted
on charges of bids for building public power plants.
Laws are enforced which forbids companies from jointly fixing prices.

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 Examples (Contd.)

2. Endangering Lives:

Workers are employed without disclosing the effects of the harmful
health effects and safety hazards. Due to this, workers are exposed to
serious health problems.

Case Illustration:
Manville Corporation, the largest producer of asbestos
in U.S, knew that asbestos dust was harmful for their employees
health. It could cause a lung disease named “Asbestosis” and an
incurable cancer named “Mesothelioma”.
The company kept this as secret from the employees and the public.
During 1940-1979, over 27 million workers were exposed to asbestos
and more than 10,000 workers have died. 27
 Examples (Contd.)


3. Industrial Espionage:
Espionage means Spying.
It refers to secret gathering of information in order to influence
relationships between two entities.
Acquisition of other’s secret to one’s advantage is Espionage.
The vital information are secretly gathered/theft through espionage
agents called spies.
The information may be intellectual properties such as designs,
prototypes, formulae, software codes, passwords, manufacturing
process, marketing plans, supplier/contractor details etc.

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 
Thank you

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