If the situation arose, would you give up your seat on a bus for a blind person? Would you open a door for someone who needed assistance or even help an elderly person cross the street? There are no written laws in the United States Constitution that state you should open a door for a pregnant woman or keeping the door held open for the person walking behind you. Yet, people do. What binds us to do so? Overtime, we as humans have come to adopt and except a common code, a code of ethics. This code tells someone what they perceive to be right or wrong based on personal learning, beliefs and self moral; telling him/her what to do in certain moral holding situations. In the realm of business, law and medicine certain codes of ethics are present and likewise for engineering too. However, these codes of ethics aren’t just assumed and gathered overtime. These professional codes were organized for a multitude of reasons, one of the most important being public safety. A dilemma occurred in which an engineer did not follow the ABET engineering code of ethics, which ultimately sparked a controversial article response from Michael Davis with the headlining title: “Thinking Like an Engineer”. Davis argues in his article that it is essential to abide and follow the engineering code of ethics and that engineers should in fact also support and hold professional responsibilities above and beyond that of their code of ethics. And in doing so “…it will help protect them and those they care about from being injured…and…assure each engineer a working environment in which it will be easier to resist [social/economic] pressure…”1. Much like Davis, I too agree that engineers should support and hold professional responsibilities by creating a positive and encouraging work environment while also putting the public’s welfare over that of his/hers own business in order to achieve the ultimate goal of keeping the community and world safe.
The Research paper on Professional and Ethics Case Studies
Programmers in this company are encouraged to write about their work and to publish their algorithms in professional journals. After months of tedious programming, Jean has found herself stuck on several parts of the program. Her manager, not recognising the complexity of the problem, wants the job completed within the next few days. Not knowing how to solve the problems, Jean remembers that a co- ...
Davis’ first argument to why engineers should take into account professional responsibilities is to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public”1 over that of the engineer’s own companies sake. Why is this important? Imagine a world where faulty buildings and bridges were constructed only to crumble to pieces taking the lives of many because overtime safety precautions were eliminated in order to save money. What’s to stop those engineers from continued failed construction in the future if responsibilities aren’t taken? More innocent lives could be taken just because a company wants to turn a profit by eliminating some safety precautions. The dilemma that caused Davis to question professional responsibilities is known to be the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion where faulty O-rings were discovered on the rocket boosters but still were disregarded in order to launch on schedule: even though it was well known that the faulty O-rings could potentially cause the Challenger to explode. The Vice President of Engineering assigned to the building of the Challenger Shuttle boosters, Robert Lund, initially postponed the launch due to the faulty O-rings but was asked to reconsider and “take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.”1 Lund was asked to reconsider because Morton Thiokol, the company responsible for the building of the rocket boosters for the Challenger Shuttle, was under a lot of heat because of numerous delayed launches, profit cuts, and political pressure from then President Ronald Reagan.
The Term Paper on Health and Safety Policy of Dublin Bus
This safety statement has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Sections 19 & 20 of the Safety, Health & Welfare at Work Act, 2005. This Safety Statement specifies commitment, lines of responsibility and accountability for safety together with a list of Risk Assessments within the organisation. In July 2007 new and revised “General Application Regulations 2007” were ...
In the case of Davis’ argument, Lund thinks like a manager, putting logistics and reputation above all instead of safety. Putting safety second to business potentially will backfire and create huge company consequences that could quite possibly drive them into the ground. Last April, another event happened that would forever change the engineers look at cutting costs: the BP Oil Spill. On January 5th, 2011 the White House oil spill commission released a report that concluded, “Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money).” In the case of these companies, they thought by cutting a few corners here and a few corners there, they could save money and time. To these corporations, turning a bigger profit was more important than the safety of the public and now almost a year later the corporations, the public, and the environment are still reaping the consequences of their actions.
Davis’ last argument was that it would help secure and create a better working environment where engineers could feel safe making the judgments and decisions they think are right. If pressured, an engineer could almost literally be forced to make the wrong decision, causing potential danger to the public. In the case of the Challenger explosion, it was known that Robert Lund and his team of engineers at first had delayed the launch because they did not feel that the O-rings would withstand under the enormous pressure. What if, in response to Lund’s decision, Gerald Mason (Lund’s boss) told him: “…we hired an engineer, an engineer with common sense, one who understood just how much weight a rational person gives a code of ethics in decisions of this kind. Be reasonable. Your job and mine are on the line. The future of Thiokol is also on the line. Safety counts a lot. But other things do, too. If we block this launch, the Space Center will start looking for someone more agreeable to supply boosters…”1 Sure, Lund could have stayed strong to his beliefs about the O-rings after this point, but the tremendous amount of pressure that this puts on his shoulders is almost too much for one person to bare.
The Term Paper on Ethics In Public Administration
Ethics is not a new topic in public administration, and the amount of information on the subject demonstrates the importance of ethics in the field. For instance, a recent article examined the impact of New Public Management on ethics and found that the framework for NPM has a definite impact of the ethical decisions of administrators (Maesschalk, 2004). Currently, ethics seems an especially ...
How could an engineer do his job if the judgments he’s making are constantly questioned? Davis states that “an engineer could, of course, still object “personally” and refuse to do the job. But if he did, he would risk being replaced by an engineer who would not object. An employer or client might rightly treat an engineer’s personal qualms as a disability, much like a tendency to make errors. The engineer would be under tremendous pressure to keep “personal opinions” to himself and get on with the job. His interests as an engineer would conflict with his interests as a person.”1 Engineers think the way they do because they were trained and taught to put the engineering code of ethics above all and when you question their decision making, like delaying a shuttle launch, you’re questioning their education and even worse their moral ethics.
In everyday life, ethics guide us to do what we perceive as the right thing. Ethics don’t tell us to rob a bank; in fact, we know that if we did rob a bank we will probably get caught and have to take responsibilities for our actions. Engineers have to hold responsibilities for the decisions they make even if they are unfortunate in the way they turn out. In the case of the Challenger Shuttle explosion, although unlucky, I feel as if you have to find Robert Lund responsible. Lund was fully aware of the disastrous O-rings and still went ahead with the mission putting the shuttle at jeopardy and the general public too. He was the chief engineer on the shuttle and should have made the right decision in accordance to the engineering code of ethics, regardless of outside business and political pressure. As an engineer, if you create a positive and encouraging work environment while also putting the public’s welfare over that of your own business, you achieve the ultimate goals of keeping the community safe and maintaining a working environment that everyone feels safe to make judgment calls in; if a fellow engineer knows that you’ve made the same call in the past, he’s going to feel more comfortable in making that same call in backing you up or even in the future.
Bibliography
1. Davis, Michael. “‘Thinking Like An Engineer’: The Place of a Code of Ethics in the Practice of a Profession.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.2 (1991).
The Business plan on The Ethics Of Student Faculty Business Deals
The Ethics of Student-Faculty Business Deals The Akamai Corporation has meant big money for one Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and one of his students. Back in 1995, Tom Leighton, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, started playing around with ways to use complex algorithms to ease congestion on the Web. He enlisted several researchers, including one of his graduate ...
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2. Reuters, Thomas. “BP and Others Blamed in Massive Gulf Spill – U.S. News – Environment – Msnbc.com.” Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News – Msnbc.com. 5 Jan. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2011. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40932419/ns/us_news-environment/>.
