Engineering Innovation: Australian Codes of Conduct and FlowTex

This essay delves into the FlowTex accounting scandal, a case study in engineering ethics. It examines the company's deceptive practices regarding drilling machine production, which led to financial misrepresentation and violations of the Australian Codes of Conduct. The essay highlights the contradiction of the Australian Consumer Law and Competition and Consumer Law. The student, acting as an engineer, proposes organizational policy changes, improved human resource management, and the integration of automated technologies to prevent future ethical breaches and ensure compliance. The essay emphasizes the importance of ethical behavior in maintaining brand reputation, investor confidence, and customer satisfaction. The essay also highlights the importance of ethical conduct and the impact of unethical behaviors on business operations, and suggests steps to rectify the issues and ensure sustainable practices.

Running head: ENGINEERING INNOVATION
Engineering Innovation
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Essay
The essay demonstrated about the accounting scandal at FlowTex, which was a major
manufacturer of drilling machines. The company as found to cheat a number of investors and
also the customers all over regarding wrong information about the drilling machines that have
been manufactured and produced. Due to this, the company was allegedly involved in a major
scandal, which also affected the flow of investments on the company, which not only affected
the codes of ethics, but also hindered successful management of ethical behaviours resulting
from the deceit done by the company (Gu, Xu and Yan 2014). Due to such unethical
behaviours, The Australian Codes of conduct were contradicted, which further resulted in
putting pressure on the company to undertake a course of action for resolving the matter and
ensure ethical behaviours’ management effectively too.
It has often been found that the reputation and image of a brand represents the
reputation earned by the company considered as a major capital stock that add value to the
products and services provided by the company. With any forms of misconduct or unethical
behaviours that have been done by the company by deceiving the investors or shareholders
and the clients, the ethical behaviours were hindered here. The achievement gaps that were
driving the individual misconduct also resulted in inability to meet the desired goals of
providing abundant production of drilling machines, thereby, resulted in potential loss of
valued outcomes along with acceptance of negative valance outcomes too. The misconduct
has arose from issues in various organisational levels, which also contributed to the lack of
focus on needs, priorities and contingencies (Sivard, Shariatzadeh and Lindberg 2014). The
cultural theories of misconduct have also been created at different levels, which could also
affect the norms, beliefs and values along with inappropriate behaviours among the staffs,
which have ultimately resulted in such unethical behaviours and resulted in the deceit.

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The Engineer’s Australian Code of conduct that has contradicted the behaviours has
been the Australian Consumer Law and even the Competition and Consumer law. Both these
Codes of conduct are associated with the prevention of unethical conducts made by the
business organisations in terms of trade or commercial transactions that might have been
misleading or deceptive (Swery t al. 2016). Based on the Australian Consumer Law, it has
been applied by the organisations so as to manage prohibition fir the misleading conduct and
also ensured that no person or business should be involved in misconduct that might mislead
or be deceptive, which might even damage the brand image and reputation largely. To meet
the demands and supplies in the market, the company mentioned the shareholders and clients
about excess drilling machines produced, which was not actually the case and this created a
major scandal involving the company (Wallace and Sheldon 2015). The company was
pressured to meet the constant demands and thus to keep the stakeholders and clients assured,
the company overstated the number of drilling machines produced, furthermore, leading to
deceit and unethical business conduct as well (Law 2014).
Considering the fact that in case I was employed as an Engineer at FlowTex, I would
like to undertake certain actions to remain in compliance with the Australian Codes of Ethics
while at the same time, maintain the standards largely in order to ensure smooth business
functioning as a whole. Firstly, I would like to implement some changes in the organisational
policies and principles so as to make sure that all the employees follow by those to maintain
the ethical codes of conduct, thereby, ensure setting good organisational standards too. This
would also make them realise about the necessity of prohibiting misconduct and unethical
behaviours, so that none of the shareholders and clients were lied about. Moreover, I would
also like to make sure that based on the codes of ethics, there is necessity to build a proper
human resource management framework for keeping employees informed and updated about
the production process, thereby, ensure that they communicate the right information to the

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clients (Scardamaglia 2013). As an Engineer, I would also like to integrate automated
technologies, which could reduce the time consumption and drive the production process,
thereby, result in enhancing the numbers of drilling machines that are produced. By
undertaking all these actions, not only the shareholders or investors would feel influenced and
encouraged to make investments on the company, but would also gain bigger rate of return on
investments made by them in the due time. Also I would like to manage sustainable measures
to facilitate the production level and make sure to regain the existing stature and maintain
proper values and ethics too. The customers would also be benefited as they would get the
desired level of drilling machines and their requirements would be met, thus, keep them
satisfied as a whole.

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References
Gu, S., Xu, B. and Yan, Y., 2014. Electrochemical energy engineering: a new frontier of
chemical engineering innovation. Annual review of chemical and biomolecular
engineering, 5, pp.429-454.
Law, A.C., 2014. 3–CONSUMER LAW.
Scardamaglia, A., 2013. Misleading and deceptive conduct and the internet: Lessons and
loopholes in Google Inc v Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Misleading
and Deceptive Conduct in Australia: Google Inc v Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission [2013] HCA1’(2013), 35(11).
Sivard, G., Shariatzadeh, N. and Lindberg, L., 2014. Engineering innovation
factory. Procedia CIRP, 25, pp.414-419.
Swery, E.E., Meier, R., Lomov, S.V., Drechsler, K. and Kelly, P., 2016. Predicting
permeability based on flow simulations and textile modelling techniques: Comparison with
experimental values and verification of FlowTex solver using Ansys CFX. Journal of
Composite Materials, 50(5), pp.601-615.
Wallace, M. and Sheldon, N., 2015. Business research ethics: Participant observer
perspectives. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(2), pp.267-277.

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