ENGINEERING

MANAGEMENT
PPE-312
14-11-19
HERBERT HOOVER (ON ENGINEERING)
• “The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other
professions is that his works are out in the open where all can
see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He
cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He
cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the
lawyers….He cannot, like the politician, screen his
shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the
people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he
did it. If his works do not work, he is damned forever.”
SIX PILLARS OF CHARACTER
• Trustworthiness : quality of dependability and includes honesty integrity, loyalty,
and promise-keeping.
• Respect : treating others (superiors, subordinates, clients, contractors) in a
manner to enhance their dignity.
• Responsibility : comprises accountability, pursuit of excellence and self-restraint.
• Justice and Fairness : be objective and impartial, do what is right, pursuit of
excellence
• Caring : when ethical decisions are made, the impact to all concerned should be
minimized.
• Civic Virtue (accepting appointments, give time and money to social causes)
and
• Citizenship : obligation to community which extends beyond self interest.
 ETHICS:
• Personal ethics is a foundation of
professional ethics.
• Principles,
Morale, • There is a difference between
professional ethics and personal ethics.
Believes,
Standards, • Obvious difference; professional ethics
has to do with the ethical standards
…etc accepted by a professional community.
 ETHICS:
• Engineering Ethics: is about
• how we have to act and live as an
engineer,
• Principles, • what we have to consider when
making decisions,
Morale, • according to what standards are these
Believes, actions right or wrong.
Standards,
Shortly Engineering ethics is how
…etc engineers morally act as an Engineer.
This is professional ethics NOT
personal ethics.
 ETHICS, MORALS, AND THE LAW
• Morals Classification of Actions:
• Principles of right and Unethical
wrong
Ethical
• Ethics
• A set of moral principles
guiding behavior and
action Legal Illegal

• Laws
• Binding codes of conduct;
formally recognized and
enforced
• Company Policies
Unethical Ethical but
but Legal Illegal
 ETHICS

• "While students come to college knowing a good deal about ordinary morality, they generally do
not come to college knowing much about the ethics of their profession. (Because) Professional
ethics differs from profession to profession and cannot be deduced from ordinary morality or
philosophical theory." ...
• "While we can assume our students have a pretty good understanding of morality and want to
behave decently, we cannot assume that they know, for example, whether to put their client's
welfare (or their employer's welfare) or the public welfare first.
• For lawyers, the client's welfare generally has priority
• What is it for Engineers?.”
 The study of the moral values, issues, and decisions involved in
engineering practice. The moral values take on forms including
responsibilities, ideals, character traits, social policies, and
relationships desirable from individuals and corporations engaged in
engineering.

“An engineer has to be well qualified, well informed & committed to

his obligations to the society”
 ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH ETHICS
• Ethics is not just Black and White, but predominately grey from the deciders point of view.
• Ethical decisions viewed by others tends to be Black and White.
• Ethics is not a matter of majority vote but of private conscience.
• Loyalty causes ethical confusion
• Client, employer, self, family, public - Who comes first?
• Protect Public Health or keep your job - Nerve Agent Disposal Engineer in
Utah (Whistle Blower Laws)
• Loyalty to friend or to self?
• To take a job transfer or not - Family before employer?
 ETHICS AND ENGINEERING
• Where the ethical issues can arise:
• Conceptualization, Design, Testing, Manufacturing, Sales, Service
• Supervision and Project Teams
• Project timelines and budgets
• Expectations, opinions, or judgments
• Products: Unsafe or Less than Useful
• Designed for obsolescence
• Inferior materials or components
• Unforeseen harmful effects to society
 Fundamental Aspects of engineering ethics
(An Engineer)
Should identify & enlist the types of ethical issues that he or she is
likely to confront in his or her engineering career.
Should clarify the related concepts theories & standards involved
Should guide & help in confronting & resolving ethical & moral
dilemmas.
Should stimulate critical & responsible reflection & useful discussion
on these issues.
It is a study of related questions about the moral ideas, character,
policies & corporations involved in the activity related to the
technology.
“Engineering ethics has many senses”
Micro-ethics :
Deals about some typical and everyday problems which play an
important role in the field of engineering and in the profession of an
engineer.
Macro-ethics :
Deals with all the societal problems which are unknown and suddenly
burst out on a regional or national level.
Dealing with an Ethical Problem :
• Recognizing a problem or its need.
• Gathering information and defining the problem to be solved or goal to
be achieved.
• Generating alternative solutions or methods to achieve the goal.
• Evaluate benefits and costs of alternate solutions.
• Decision making & optimization.
• Implementing the best solution.
 ETHICS
• "Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible
pretense that he is justified by the goodness of the end. All good ends can be worked out by
good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once and left alone.”,
Charles Dickens in Barnaby Tudge, 1841
• Many people have been fired for Travel Expense Fraud

• Any unethical practice/habit by our engineering society that you think can easily be change?
 ETHICS CASE

• Putnam is an engineer employed by a computer manufacturer. He is responsible for

the design of some computer equipment and signs off on the drawings. Although his
design has been properly prepared, the manufacturing process is faulty, drives up
cost, and suffers a mechanical breakdown. The manufacturing division suggests
modifications to bring down costs, but Putnam analyzes the recommendations and
finds that they would reduce the reliability of the product that would likely cost the
company more through warranty claims. Putnam's supervisor asks him to sign off on
the changes anyway. Although there is nothing to suggest that there is a product
safety problem, Putnam raises reliability concerns to his supervisor.
• What are Putnam's professional responsibilities in this case? What are the
supervisor's responsibilities? What should Putnam do?
 CASE STUDIES
• Can a firm competing for a project take credit for a previous project, when the project manager and the
key personnel are no longer in its employ? What should be done?
 ACCORDING TO WHAT STANDARDS ARE THESE
ACTIONS RIGHT OR WRONG?

• Case study:
Mary discovers that her plant (factory) is discharging a substance into the river that is not
regulated by the government. She decides to do some reading about the substance and finds
that some of the studies suggest that it is carcinogen. As an engineer, she believes she has an
obligation to protect the public, but she also wants to be a loyal employee. The substance will
probably be very expensive to remove, and her boss advises, “Forget about it until the
government makes us do something. Then all the other plants will have to spend money too,
and we will not be at a competitive disadvantage.” What should Mary do?

16
 CASE STUDIES
• You have just started working for a new company when you boss asks you for information
on your work conducted by a previous employer which is under a secrecy agreement
associated with your departure from that company. Your boss suggests that there is nothing
sacred about such information and that sharing it would make you more valuable to the firm.
What do you do?
 CASE STUDIES
• An engineer under your supervision, in writing a final report for a client, plagiarizes his own
work that was done for another client under confidential contract. What should you do?
 CASE STUDY - CONT.D
• You are auditing a facility as a private consultant. In reviewing production records
you learn that the plant operates substantially beyond its permit limits, emitting as
much as 50 to 70% more pollutants than allowed. However, when you were
performing your official audit the plant was running within the permit limits. When
you point out the over pollution to the plant manager, he offers you a bonus to ignore
this in your report. You have a chance to easily look into your startup;What do you
do?
 CASE STUDY
• Your company is to build a new plant in (pick a 3rd world country). You are in charge of the
project. To get the permit to operate you have to get government approval and the
government minister is asking for cash to make the decision on your permit. What is your
response to the minister?
ACCORDING TO WHAT STANDARDS ARE THESE
ACTIONS RIGHT OR WRONG?

• Consider the cases as a

professional engineer.
• What you have to consider
when making decisions in those
cases.

• According to what standards are

these actions right or wrong in
those cases.
THINGS TO CONSIDER AND STANDARDS:

• What are your OBLIGATIONS /

RESPONSIBILITIES as a professional
engineer?
 THINGS TO CONSIDER AND STANDARDS:

• NSPE Codes (National Society of Professional Engineers)

• As a professional engineer it is your obligation / responsibility to obey NSPE codes.

Therefore;

• Engineering Ethics (NSPE codes): shows you how you have to act and live
as an engineer. What you have to consider when making decisions.
According to NSPE codes these actions are right or wrong.
 WHERE TO FIND NSPE CODES?

• http://www.ie.emu.edu.tr
Lecturers
 Orhan Korhan
IE 355
Outline, NSPE codes etc.

Find 2 books on chemical & polymer engineering ethics?

24
Ethics in Engineering Spring'10
 DIFFERENCES:
• Personal Ethics  Common Morality • Professional Ethics
is the set of moral is the set of standards
is the set of ones own
ideals shared by adopted by professionals in
ethical commitments.
most members of a so far as they see
culture or society. themselves acting as
professionals. It can be
different from personal
ethics and common
morality.

Ethics =Morality
 AIMS OF STUDYING ETHICS

 Moral Imagination: To minimize the chances of being taken by surprise, engineers

must exercise great imagination in considering possible alternatives and their likely
consequences.

 Recognizing (Moral) Ethical Issues:

 Analyzing Concepts:

 Eliciting (Bring out) a Sense of Responsibility:

 Addressing un-clarity, un-certainty, and disagreement.

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 FUNDAMENTAL CANONS
• 1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public
in the performance of their professional duties.
• 2. Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence.
• 3. Engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful
manner.
• 4. Engineers shall act in professional matters for each employer or client as
faithful agents or trustees, and shall avoid conflicts of interest.
• 5. Engineers shall build their professional reputations on the merits of their
services.
• 6. Engineers shall act in such a manner as to up hold, enhance the honor,
integrity and dignity of the engineering profession.
• 7. Engineers shall continue their professional development throughout their
careers, and shall provide for the professional development of those engineers
• Whereas Allah enjoineth upon His men faithfully observe their trusts and their convenience;
that the practice and profession of engineering is a sacred trust entrusted to those whom
Nature is its magnificent bounty has endowed with this skill and knowledge;that every
member of the profession shall appreciate and shall hassve knowledge as to what constitutes
this trust and covenant and;that a set of dynamic principles derived from the Holy Quran
shall guide his conduct in applying his knowledge for the benefit of society.
 BIG PICTURE

• Codes of ethics are not a law

• Ethical behavior is not always protected by law
• Frequently ethical behavior may be perceived as disloyalty
• Many companies realize that ethical behavior is essential for their
long term prosperity
• Ethically aware companies provide
• Provide help to employees facing ethical conflicts
• Allow employees to rise ethical concerns anonymously
• Explicitly prevent any forms of retaliation for reporting unethical
behavior
Characteristics of a profession:

Profession, professional and professionalism:

• Profession is not merely a job or occupation through which one earns a living
• It is a life career which requires special knowledge,extended practical trained and continuous in-
service training,with a clearly defined membership of a particular group evolving its own code
of ethics.
• The practice of the profession should result in ultimate public good.
• A professional engineer is one who earns a degree in engineering at an institutions approved and
recognized by a duly constituted authority like the AICTE
• HE/SHE should be officially registered with a particular society, institutions and properly
licensed as a professional
• To achieve professionalism one must have a sound theoretical knowledge(knowing that) and
sophisticated skills(knowing how)
Models of professional roles:
• Engineering profession or any profession should take care of public safety welfare and
health.
• In order to perform and achieve the goals, an engineer will have to adapt himself to
the following professional roles or models.
• An engineer has to play the role of,
A Savior:
An engineer has to protect and safeguard the society from poverty, inefficiency,
waste, excessive manual and from other harmful effects
A guardian:
An engineer is expected to act as a guardian of the Technological advancements,
knowing the best direction in which the technology should develop and improve .
A bureaucratic servant:
An engineer as an employee has to receive and translate the directive of his superiors.
A social servant :
As a servant of the society ,an engineer provides service with responsibility to the
society and satisfies the desires of the society.
A social enabler and catalyst:
An engineer is needed to help the management and the society by understanding their
own needs and to take decisions about technological developments.
A game player:
Engineer are neither servants nor masters of anyone . They play their part according to
the economic game rules, and come out successful within organizations ,enjoying both the
pleasure of technological achievements and satisfaction of winning.
SIMILARITIES OF ENGINEERING PROJECTS TO STANDARD EXPERIMENTS:

Tests are conducted at the production stage and fine tuning is carried out to bring out the final
product. Thus several features of every kind of engineering practices virtually combine to make it
appropriate to view engineering projects as experiments. Three such important features are,
1. Any project is carried out in partial ignorance; hence engineer has to perform with uncertainties
as he cannot wait till he gets all the relevant exact data from the ocean of scientific laws about
nature and society in order to accomplish the assigned task in time.
2. The final outcomes of engineering projects,like those of experiments ,are generally
uncertain .Unexpected dangers to people being near a nuclear powerplant , the possibility of a
break of LPG storage tank etc., are examples to quote a few.
3. Effective engineering relies upon knowledge gained about products both before and after they
leave the factory.
 Knowledge needed for improving the current products and creating better ones is gained by
study of performance at client site and through continuous process of learning.
Learning from the past:
Learning from the past is a continuous process in all stages from conception to
commissioning of any engineering project. Learning from the past is not effective in organizations
due to lack of channels of communication, misplaced pride ,fear of litigation and plain neglect
There are many examples to illustrate why it is not sufficient for engineers to rely on hand books
alone. Let us see a few
Decades earlier the steamship “Arctic” met with a watery grave due to non-availability of enough
number of life boats and yet this aspect was not taken into account in the case of titanic ship
which also met with similar accident ,a major disaster in sea.
In the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, leaky valves in MIC system had been a problem on at least
six occasion earlier to the accident.
 The same company had a plant at West Virginia, USA where there were 28 leaks of MIC
over the previous five years and an internal memo warning the management had not been
transmitted to the plant in India by Union Carbide.
Therefore Engineering ,just like experimentation demands practitioners to remain alert, well
informed at every stage of project’s history and learn from the past
Contrast of engineering projects with standard experiments:
Engineering differs from standard experimentation in some respects demanding engineers to
take up special responsibilities.
 Experimental control:
It is not possible to have ‘experimental group’ and ‘control group’ similar to standard
experimentation ,as the experimental subjects are human beings in case of engineering projects
 Informed consent :

Engineering experimentation closely parellels medical testing of new drugs and techniques
on human beings .
As human beings are involved in all engineering products,they have moral rights to know
about the facts i.e. informed consent.
A success ‘Informed consent’ for experimentation has two main elements:
• Knowledge :
All the information needed to make a reasonable decision.
• voluntariness:
They must enter into the experiment without force .fraud and deception
 Conditions for ‘informed consent’:
o The consent must be given voluntarily
o The consent must be based on the information presented to them in understandable form.
o The consent must be competent to process the information and make rational decisions.
o The information should be widely disseminated
o A group representing many subjects may offer consent.
 Knowledge gained through experimentations:
Engineering projects are experiments that are not necessarily designed to produce very much
knowledge.
 Engineer as responsible experimenter:
 Conscientious: (Conscientiousness)
 The engineer should exhibit a ‘conscientious’ commitment to live by moral values.
 Engineers should act as guardians of the public interest and to guard the welfare and safety of
those affected by engineering projects.
 He should not force his own views upon the society.
 The social experimentation involved in engineering should be restricted by participant’s consent.
A comprehensive perspective:
 An engineer should be aware of the experimental nature of any project undertaken by him.
 He should put in a reasonable effort to monitor them.
 The public hopes that the engineer must undertake some preventive measures in the development of
technology.
 Engineers should bear in mind that solution to the problem is achieved by adopting preventive
technology.
 The engineer should have personal involvement and keep in touch with the course of handed over
project.
Moral autonomy:
 The engineer should exhibit personal involvement in all steps of project.
 Moral beliefs and attitudes must be integrated into core of
 an individual’s personality in a manner that leads to committed actions.
 Moral autonomy suffers because of the influence by groups ,society and the deadline fixed to
complete the project which puts constraints on the autonomy of an engineer.
 It is further affected adversely when there is no moral support or protection from professional
society.
Accountability:
o It is the willingness to submit one’s action to moral scrutiny and be open and responsive to the
critical assessments of others.
The accountability is affected in engineering due to several reasons:
 Each person making only small contribution to something much larger leads to a lessened sense of
personal accountability.
 Diffusion of accountability takes place in larger institutions in which most engineers work are
designed to delimit areas of personal accountability within hierarchies of authority.
 Pressure to take up new projects before handing over the running ones makes the engineer meet
the schedule somehow.
 The engineer’s preoccupation with legalities makes one wary of becoming morally involved in
matters beyond one’s strictly defined role.
Codes of ethics:
• A code also serves as a statement from the profession to the public as to what to expect from its
member ,thus promoting public trust in the professional .
• The code of ethics are established by professional engineering organizations and professional
societies.
• A code of ethics provides a frame work and serves as guidelines for ethical judgement to a
professional and helps to resolve ethical issues.
• It is not a legal document but it emphasizes commitments to safety,public health and
environmental protection.
• All profession are expected to have a code of ethics and members of the profession are expected
to adhere to it.
Roles of codes:
 Inspiration and guidance:
The code provide a healthy framework and guidance so the engineers are inspired
and motivated by support found in code of ethics.
 Support:
The code can act as legal support for engineers who act ethically against the odds
they face in the organizations.
 Deterrence and discipline:
Codes form the basis for identifying unethical act and facilitate possible actions by
society. For eg, Medical council of India takes action on its members for misconduct and error
by withdrawing the license to practise. This puts pressure on professionals to act ethically.
 Education and mutual understanding:
Professionals can adopt ethical culture in any organizations by the education by which
he has been exposed to ethics.
 Contributing to the profession’s public image:
Codes help engineers to acquire positive image amongst public about the ethically
committed profession they are in and to serve effectively and engineers acquire greater powers
of self regulations.
 Protecting the status quo:
Codes help in promoting an agreed minimum level of ethical conduct .All member
should be treated at par when they commit mistakes.
 Promoting business interests:
Nobody, even if they are not members of the society ,should be prevented from
quoting for doing a job.
Codes and the experimental nature of the engineering:
 The desirable primary functions in engineering codes are the supportive functions which
enable the engineers to express freely their views,especially about safety.
 Inspiration ,guidance and educational functions of the codes help to promote mutual
understanding among those affected by them.
 Disciplinary function occupies secondary importance as law and legal procedures are in
general available.
 Public image,status quo and business interests occupy the next position.
“codes need not to be treated as ‘sacred documents’”
Limitations of codes:
 New developments in technology and transition of social /organizational structures into new
ones ,when combined,result in
 unpredictable conditions. Therefore the codes are often restricted to general and vague
wording.
 Different entries in codes conflict with each other sometimes landing the professionals in
dilemma.
 Therefore the engineers must make reasonable assessments of the options keeping the public
interest in mind before taking final actions.Codes cannot serve as the final moral authority for
professional conduct.
 Codes convey the public the view that none of the codes is ‘really right’ and the ethical conduct
is more relative than it is.