Lecture 20

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Collegiality and Loyalty, Respect for
Authority, Collective Bargaining,
Confidentiality, Conflicts of Interest,
Occupational Crime

Course Code: 316

BTech Final Year
Course Instructor: Dr. K M RAO
 Collegiality
 Collegiality is a kind of connectedness grounded in respect for professional expertise
and in a commitment to the goals and values of the profession
 Collegiality includes a disposition to support and co-operate with one‘s colleagues
The central elements of collegiality are respect, commitment, connectedness and
cooperation
 Respect: Acknowledge the worth of other engineers engaged in producing socially
useful and safe products
 Commitment: Share a devotion to the moral ideals inherent in the practice of
engineering.
 Connectedness: Aware of being part of a co-operative undertaking created by shared
commitments and expertise.
 Cooperation: Professional friendship between individuals who work together toward
shared goals within an organization, even in instances where all individuals may not be
responsible for the same aspects of those shared goals
Loyalty
Loyalty is the faithful adherence to an organization and the
employer. Loyalty to an employer can be either of the two
types:
Agency-loyalty − Agency-loyalty is acting to fulfil one’s
contractual duties to an employer. This is entirely a matter of
actions, such as doing one’s job and not stealing from one’s
employer, irrespective of the motive behind it.
Attitude-loyalty − Attitude-loyalty has a lot to do with
attitudes, emotions and a sense of personal identity as it does
with actions. It can be understood that people who work
grudgingly and spitefully are not loyal; in spite of the fact they
may adequately perform all their work responsibilities and
hence manifest agency-loyalty.
Respect for Authority
In order to meet the organizational goals, the professionals should possess respect for
authority. The levels of authority maintained by the organization provides a means for
identifying areas of personal responsibility and accountability.
The major types of authority are −
 Executive Authority − The corporate or institutional right given to a person to
exercise power based on the resources of an organization.
 Expert Authority − This is the possession of special knowledge, skill or competence
to perform a particular task or to give sound advice.
According to the goals of the company, the hierarchical authority is distributed. A
service oriented or engineer-oriented company concentrates on the quality of the
products which are decided by the engineers as they are the subject matter experts.
Whereas a company when it is customer-oriented company, focuses primarily on the
satisfaction of the customers. Hence the goal of the company decides the power between
a General Manager and a Technical Manager or an Engineer.
 Institutional Authority

 It is the authority exercised within the organization.

 It is the right given to the employees to exercise power, to complete the
task and force them to achieve their goals.
 Duties such as resource allocation, policy dissemination, recommendation,
supervision, issue orders (empower) or directions on subordinates are
vested to institutional authority, e.g., Line Managers and Project Managers
have the institutional duty to make sure that the products/projects are
completed successfully.
 Thecharacteristics features of institutional authority are that they allocate
money and other resources and have liberty in execution.
Collective Bargaining
 Itis the bargain by the trade union for improving the economic interests of
the worker members.
 The process includes negotiation, threatening verbally, and declaration of
‘strike’.
 Itis impossible to endorse fully the collective bargaining of unions or to
condemn.
 There exist always conflicting views between professionalism and unionism
 Collective bargaining is inconsistent with loyalty to employers because it is
against the desires of the employer, uses force or coercion against the
employer and involves collective and organized opposition.
But every instance of such conduct need not be unethical.
Benefits of Collective Bargaining
 Unions have created healthy salaries and high standard of living of
employees.
 They give a sense of participation in company decision making.
 They are a good balance to the power of employers to fire employees at
will.
 They provide an effective grievance redressal procedure for employee
complaints.
Harms Caused by Collective Bargaining
 Unions are devastating the economy of a country, being a main source of
inflation
 With unions, there is no congenial (friendly), cooperative decision making.
 Unions do not promote quality performance by making job promotion and
retention based on seniority.
 They encourage unrest and strained relations between employees and
employers.
THANK YOU