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ENGR 302 ENGINEERING ETHICS Spring Semester 2019-20 Deadline: = 15thApril Project Report [CO1;PI_4_6;SO_4] Submitted To Dr. H. A Q1: Why Study Engineering Ethics? (2 full pages) Marks: 20 Submitted By Name, Family Name, Student ID No. Section No: 597
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Engineering ethics Engineering ethics plays an essential role to students and the professionals in the field because it outlines the moral principles to be adhered to while practicing engineering. Importantly, it sets out the various obligations of the engineers when it comes to their clients, society together with their profession(Fleddermann, 2012). Over the past years, a lot of notorious incidences have been witnessed in the engineering field, consequently creating numerous attention in the media, and this has forced the engineers to embrace professional responsibilities. In most cases, the duties in this field impact the health and safety of the public, which extends to business practices and politics(Eckelman et al., 2019). Moreover, a lot of companies have even established offices dealing with ethics that ensures that every employee in the firm can openly express their opinions in matters related to safety, together with corporate business practices. The approach focuses on ways of being productive without affecting the employees negatively(Davis, 2017). Additionally, the offices try to incorporate ethical culture that will help in the management and prevention of ethical problems in the establishments. Therefore, the efforts of various firms signify the importance of studying engineering ethics.
Engineering ethics sensitizes an engineering student to the crucial ethical problems before facing the issues. Significantly, the students go through various cases in the past to know the experiences of other engineers and how they tackled the issues. Consequently, an individual will know how to handle the ethical problem in the future as a professional engineer(Fleddermann, 2012). The student will also be equipped with the appropriate techniques to resolve and analyze arising ethical problems. A person has to know more about moral autonomy to understand the goals of studying engineering ethics(Mitcham & Englehardt, 2019). Notably, moral autonomy is simply an individual’s ability to think critically and independently regarding moral issues. Afterward, the person has to utilize this ability to situations while practicing engineering. Therefore, engineering ethics engages students to embrace moral autonomy as future engineers. An engineer faces several ethical problems. For instance, an engineer cannot knowingly equip a Pinto with wheel lugs that have a low quality steel because it will probably break, a very unethical approach. There will be numerous accidents due to this action because there will be a loss of wheel while driving the Pinto(Editors, n.d.). However, we can view this issue from a different perspective since the ethical issues are very complex and, at times, conflict with the ethical principles. For example, the engineers tasked to work on the Pinto made difficult choices if there were trade-offs to market the Pinto successfully at a reasonable value. Subsequently, the compromises which involved the placement of a gas tank in a Pinto caused the accident in Indiana(Editors, n.d.). The ethical principles of the managers and the engineers were questioned. Therefore, the above case further clarifies the importance of studying engineering ethics as a student.
Reference Davis, M. (2017).Engineering ethics. Routledge. Eckelman, M. J., Basl, J., Bosso, C., Isaacs, J. A., & Eggleson, K. (2019). Case Studies of Product Life Cycle Environmental Impacts for Teaching Engineering Ethics.Next-Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society, 291. Editors, H. com. (n.d.).Fatal Ford Pinto crash in Indiana. HISTORY. Retrieved April 12, 2020, from https://www.history.com/this-day-in- history/fatal-ford-pinto-crash-in-indiana Fleddermann, C. B. (2012).Engineering ethics(4th ed). Prentice Hall. Mitcham, C., & Englehardt, E. E. (2019). Ethics across the curriculum: Prospects for broader (and deeper) teaching and learning in research and engineering ethics.Science and Engineering Ethics,25(6), 1735–1762.
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