On the Normativity of Professionalism (original) (raw)

Professional Ethics Without a Profession: A French View on Engineering Ethics

Ibo Van de Poel, David E. Goldberg. (eds.), Philosophy and Engineering. An Emerging Agenda, pp. 161-174, 2010

Bioethics and business ethics have their international conferences, their networks, their international scientific journals, as well as their schools of thought and their internal disagreement. To the contrary, engineering ethics is a little known area of study which gives rise sometimes to scepticism. First developed in the US, this academic field it is now present in many countries. In this article, we intend to make known the progress made and the issues at stake in this area of contextualised ethics: philosophical issues, but also cultural one. We will defend the idea that reflecting upon the ethical issues of engineering is not of interest to engineers alone. However, as it also concern engineers, we will try to describe what could (or should) be the focus of an ethical reflection on engineering for engineers in countries (like France) where the concept of profession does not hold an ethical dimension as it seems to be the case in the US.

Professionalism and Ethics of Engineering

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. Ethics is qualitative. It may change with time, circumstance and environment. Practice of ethics requires proper understanding of the time frame. Many professional engineering organizations have a set of Code of Ethics or Code of Practice to regulate or guide their members. Basically they all center around public welfare, sustainable development, professional competence, truthful and faithful, honorable, responsibly and lawfully. Success of engineering projects not only depends upon the engineering professional, but it also closely related to other non-engineering professionals. In the paper, discussions are presented about engineering ethics for non-engineering professionals.

Practicing Professional Ethics in Engineering: How This Field is Developed and Its Importance

2020

Many associations of engineers around the world have worked to develop rules in an effort to regulate the ethical practice of the engineer's profession. These rules are usually referred as Code of Ethics for Engineers and tries to explain how an engineer must practice his work with professional ethics. The purpose of this paper is to show, in informative form, how this field has developed around the world and to emphasize the importance of implementing these rules during the practice of the profession of engineer.

The Relationship Between Professional and Universal Ethics of Engineers

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 2018

The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between professional and universal ethics of engineers. Methodology:This study used quantitative methods to distribute the questionnaire by using random sampling to get data from 248 respondents of engineers from government and private sectors in Melaka. Respondents were required to valuate agreement to statement about work ethics that used a five-point Likert scale. Meanwhile, the scales used for measuring correlation were given as 0.000-0.2000 "negligible", 0.201-0.400 "low", 0.401-0.600, "moderate", 0.601-0.800 "high", and 0.801-1.000 "very high". The Pearson correlation analysis was used to obtain these correlation results. In this research, we analysed the data collected using SPSS Ver.22 to identify the relationship between professional and universal ethics of engineers in Melaka. Main Findings:The findings showed that all variables of professional of engineers correlated significantly with universal ethics. The significant level (p-value) was found to be less than 0.05, the study findings indicate a significant relationship between independent variables and dependent variable. Results obtained in this study confirmed that there were significant positive relationships between all variables that could influence professional and universal ethics. Implications:This study contributes towards the improvement of Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM'S) existing policy. Based on the study's findings, the policy implication of this study includes: responsible bodies such as the governing institutions of engineers need to ensure that ethical practices are made as the main core in their profession by increasing knowledge and awareness about ethical practices in the engineering profession. Originality:This study only focus on the relationship between professional and universal ethics of engineers and the results will be useful towards the improvement of Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM'S) existing policy.

Analysis of professional ethics in Engineering Degrees

The role of engineering is closely related to its role in society. An engineer may be involved in supervising the work of a team; in negotiations; and always may have special responsibilities to ensure that work is safe, and to ensure it is not damaging the environment. We have analyzed the specific case of ethics in some engineering degrees. In our country, in recent years, the White Books of qualifications for Bachelor's Degrees of the industrial branches, possesses a mention to delivery an optional subject related to ethics and the acquisition of the competence of an ethical and moral responsibility. In the case of the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Salamanca (Spain), this competence is not included as a subject in the definition of the degrees. Ethical responsibility is included in the same group of transversal competences as teamwork or critical reasoning. We have conducted a survey about ethics to different engineering students to get their feedback about the importance of ethical behavior, the ethics and professional responsibility, or the necessity of the associations of engineers (after they finish their studies).

Ethical Issues Facing Engineers and their Profession

Frequently, and in many different countries, the engineering professionals are criticized for a number of occurrences that took place and which adversely affected people or the environment. Everything that engineers do affects the society and its development and, occasionally, the consequences of these actions are not fully thought out, not anticipated, or not fully understood, but the results are undesirable just the same. In order to meet the challenges of the time engineers must be properly prepared to face the moral, legal and ethical ramifications of their actions. Thus, to meet their responsibilities to society at large and the global community, engineers must be equipped with the knowledge and ability to fully and cogently explain their actions as well as the methods to be used to implement their decisions. This is particularly important in presenting the engineering alternatives that are considered so that informed conclusions can be drawn and appropriate decisions drawn involving different segments of the society. Educating young engineers about to enter the practice of their chosen profession how to help arrive to the compromises to be implemented becomes one of the paramount items of contemporary engineering education. Case studies detailing occurrences and accidents that took place, explanations of recalls implemented by major manufacturers or evolving legislation engendered by events that triggered introduction of these, are examined in detail in preparing engineers to face this contemporary challenge. Ethical theories are presented as are codes of ethics that different professional societies developed and which provide the structure for this paradigm of professional practice. Solving conflict of interest problems that are encountered in practice help explain the approaches to risk, safety and reduction of accidents.

Engineering between Professionalisms

Are all professions conspiracies against laity, like George Bernard Shaw indicated in his The Doctor 's Dilemma (1911)? Professions are given authority to put their knowledge and skills to the service of the community, knowledge and skills that are supposed to be exclusive to the profession, and necessary for public wellbeing. Good professional practice must rely on trust, as a way to bridge the asymmetry which results from the difference in knowledge and power. The discussion of whether engineering should be considered as a profession has had a large impact on the development of the engineering ethics discipline. The difficulty of defining what engineering exactly is, makes it difficult to apply to it the indicators of professionalism which function well elsewhere. Finally, a new kind of professionalism seems to emerge in the development of formalised procedures for improving and guaranteeing the quality of professional services. On the one hand, these procedures seem to infringe on professional autonomy, which would be specifically visible in circumstances of uncertainty (and hence: difficult to seize in procedures). On the other hand, keeping up with these procedures requires a level of specialisation comparable with how traditional professions work.

Towards a global Code of Ethics for engineers

2014 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Science, Technology and Engineering, 2014

Theoretically, Codes of Ethics are broad guidelines to professional conduct. These codes are designed to help professionals uphold the highest level of ethical conduct and maintain standards of practice and integrity pertaining to their professional duties. Generally, these guidelines include but not limited to protecting the public interest, demonstrating professional competence, preserving confidentiality, attending to conflict of interest and perpetuating social responsibility. Although different professional engineering societies, in different counties, have different codes of ethics, but they all have some common basic teachings of right and wrong and how to apply it in decisions making process. In this paper, we examine the compatibility of the IEEE code of ethics with thirty two 32 international codes of ethics of professional engineering societies in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America. Our research results show that only four countries have adopted the IEEE code of ethics as is, while the other 28 countries have some variations of it i.e., adopted some articles, ignored some articles and added some of their own. Examining the international articles show that sociopolitical and cultural differences are the main causes of such variations. Finally, our findings shows that a global professional code of ethics is conceivable and can be produced and accepted with minimal conscientious efforts.

2015

Engineering and ethics are, in some aspects, very close together. In fact, more than it is usually recognized. Both of them, the engineer and the individual in society are continually faced to situations that must be dealt with a limited set of resources, a particular code and some accumulated experience. The engineer confronts technical problems while the

On the Normativity of Professionalism (original) (raw)

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