Engineers Ethics To Engineering Ethics A Decade in Japan: Kiyoshi SHIBATA

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Engineers Ethics to Engineering Ethics; a Decade in

Japan
Kiyoshi SHIBATA
Chiba Institute of Technology
2-17-1 Tsudanuma, Narashino-shi
275-0016, Japan
+81-47-478-0344

kyshibt@sky.it-chiba.ac.jp

ABSTRACT
The introductory period of Japanese engineering ethics education
was briefly reviewed, and Japanese engineers attitude and its
effect on engineering ethics was discussed , comparing those in
the United States. Then, based on the survey of published
textbooks and syllabus for engineering ethics course in Japan, the
elements in the engineering ethics were extracted, and
approaching directions depending on who and to whom teaches
was analyzed. Various approaches should be determined,
depending on the students specialty, interest, and grade.
However, consideration for the side effects of technology would
be most important. Social context of the engineering, in other
words, aim of the application of each technology, should be
focused in engineering ethics. Of course, to be an ethical engineer
is desirable, but ethical technology is essential. In that sense, it is
also essential to educate ordinal non-engineering people to what is
ethical technology/engineering.

Keywords
Engineering ethics, Engineering Education, Syllabus, Design,
Compliance, Japanese engineer, STS

1. INTRODUCTION
In the past decade, most engineering departments in Japanese
universities
and
technical
colleges
have
introduced
engineering/engineers ethics into their curriculum. There are two
main reasons for the introduction and rapid spread of engineering
ethics. The first is the collapse of reputation in safety legends in
Japanese engineering products in mid 1990s. Japanese engineers
used be regarded as highly trust-worthy people and engines for the
economic success of Japan. However various technological
accidents or disasters destroyed the trust in engineers. For
example, molten sodium used in fast reactor Monju was leaked
because of primitive and incorrect miss-design and important
information on that accident was not disclosed. The 1990s also
witnessed the recruiting of highly educated scientists with
advanced knowledge by a cult group involved in terrorism.

The earthquake in 1995 destroyed highway bridges, although


engineers had insisted that they would never collapse. As a result
of such technological accident, Japanese engineers lost their
prestige. therefore, it became necessary to rebuild their credibility.
Second, the Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education
(JABEE; established in 1999) introduced engineering ethics into
programme in order to exchange international mutual recognition
with accreditation agencies abroad. JABEE has defined
engineering ethics as an understanding of the effects and impact
of engineering on society and nature as one of the seven items in
its learning and educational objectives criteria for accreditation [6].
In this paper, the trends in Japanese engineering ethics education
are reviewed on the basis of curriculum that are publicly available
on web-site and in published textbook.
In addition to the engineering ethics, various courses have been
offers, such as Engineers Ethics, Ethics in Engineering, Legal and
Ethical Issues in Engineering or Ethics of Techno-scientist, which
deal with similar subjects. In this paper, the term Engineering
Ethics is used to represent these educational activities in a broad
sense.

2. JAPANESE ENGINEER AND ETHICS


2.1 Starting Engineering Ethics Courses in
Japan
According to a survey by conducted by Shirabe [10] in 2003,
more than 70% of civil and electronic engineering departments
had introducing or been preparing to introduce the engineering
ethics course. The engineering ethics education in Japan had
been started by introducing that in US. The first Japanese
textbook of Engineering Ethics was a translation of Harris et al.s
textbook in 1998[3]. More than five American textbooks on
Engineering Ethics were translated in three years.
The Institution of Professional Engineers, Japan contributed a lot
towards the introduction of engineering ethics in Japan. Many
engineering societies established a code of ethics or ethical
committees around 2000, as listed in Table 1. Note that Japan
Society of Civil Engineers framed the principles and code of
practice in 1938, in which the ethics was included as one of the
components.

WEE2011, September 27-30, 2011, Lisbon, Portugal.


Editors: Jorge Bernardino and Jos Carlos Quadrado.

160

Table 1 Establishment of an ethical code and committee in


Japanese major engineering societies
Engineers Society
The Institute of Professional Engineers, Japan

Code
1961

Committee
1961

Information Processing Society of Japan


The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan
Architectural Institute of Japan
The Japan Society of M echanical Engineers

1996
1998
1999
1999

2004
2000

Japan Society for Civil Engineers


Japan Society for Engineering Educations
The Chemical Society of Japan
Atomic Energy Society of Japan
The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan
The Japan Society for Precision Engineering

1999
2000
2001
2002
2003

1999
1999
2001
2002

The Japanese industry is keen on ethical issue as well. According


to a survey conducted by Kurata in 2003[7], 76.7% of 133 firms
had established code of ethics or conduct and 31.6% had
introduced ethical education as their employees training program.

2.2. Japanese Engineers Ethics


As mentioned above, Japanese engineering ethics education was
started through the introduction of American engineering ethics,
which aimed to promote the social status of engineers through the
good practices of individual engineer. When the term engineering
ethic was introduced in Japan, it was translated to engineers
ethics in Japanese. It is quite understandable how the Japanese
considered it to mean ethics of engineer instead of those of
engineering.
However, the attitude of Japanese engineers is quite different from
that of American engineers. Most Japanese engineers are working
in and subject to the standards of private corporations or public
organizations, and have strong loyalty to them. They are
introduced by the companys name or their position in the
company, not by their name. Furthermore, they work very
cooperatively as a team member. In general they have strong
confidence as experts but little conscious as professionals and
contractors in society. They are thought to be highly reliable
individuals but may not be treated well in an economic and social
sense. Most Japanese politicians and executives in big firms are
not engineers, though there have been several successful
engineers such as Soichiro Honda of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. or
Masaru Ibuka of SONY Corporation.
The Institution of Professional Engineers and many other
engineering societies in Japan have established a code of ethics, as
previously mentioned. Although their names in English are
engineers societies, they are actually academic societies rather
than professional societies. The most Japanese engineers belong
to private firms. As a result, they cannot act individually and be an
independent professional, which is a fundamental concept in
American engineering ethics. Individual engineers ethics, in
other words micro-level engineering ethics, do not always work
effectively for all Japanese engineers.

individual engineers. Such heroic engineers, however, are not as


common in Japan.
Some private firms are eager to introduce ethics education into
their employees training program, but these programs are mostly
limited to the micro-level and focus on compliance. Thus, the
macro- and meta-levels are left to education in universities. On
the other hand, Japanese university students have very limited
experience in engineering practices and have little ability to image
up the realty of the job that engineers encounter. Therefore, the
possibility of educating ethical engineer in Japanese university
was widely discussed. The author himself has previously argued
that ethical education of the client or customer would have been
much more effective [9].
As discussed in this section, the American model of an individual
ethical engineer is not always fit into the professional profile of
Japanese engineers. Thus, engineering ethics has not been well
systemized yet, and is just an accumulation of related topics.
Under these circumstances, what should be taught to establish
engineering ethics? How do we teach? Or who is the most suitable
teacher? The searching for another approach to engineering ethics
education has started.

3. ELEMENTS AND APPROACHES IN


THE COURSES
3.1 Key Elements and Directional Approaches
Since the textbook by Harris[3] was translated into Japanese in
1998, numerous textbooks have been published in Japan. Ishihara
[5], and Fujiki and Sugihara [2] published excellent reviews on
the textbooks. According to Ishiharas survey on major textbooks
published up to 2002, he pointed out the necessity of Japanese
case studies, applying risk communication studies and clarifying
the relationship between business ethics and engineering ethics.
Fujiki and Sugihara surveyed 81 books published by August, 2010
and discussed the standpoint of each authors toward the difference
between engineers in Japan and the United States, and emphasized
the necessity of further discussion on the social status and
responsibility of engineers.
In this study, to review the recent extent of engineering ethics in
Japan, key and general elements in about 40 textbooks were
extracted and categorized. These elements do not appear in all
books but are commonly found in many of them. The extracted
elements cover all engineering ethics in Japan.
The key elements were mapped, as shown in Figure 1. They were
positioned according to two axes: individual-institutional and
idealistic-practical; however their positions are not based on
quantitative but qualitative evaluation.
The individualinstitutional axis can be said to be micro-macro.
.

The responsibility of engineers toward their profession is said to


be a very special and unique one, because of the growing
influence of engineering practice and products on society. This
special responsibility is often derived from the social-contract
model, and is emphasized so that individual engineer should take
it seriously. In the textbooks, the story about R. Boisjoly of the
space shuttle Challenger explosion or W.L. Messurier of City
Coop Tower is often referred to as a good example of ethical
161

Individual

major topics addressed under this approach. Business ethics and


Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are closely related to this
approach.

Code of Ethics
Professional Ethics

Moral Theory

Research Ethics
Prevention Engineering
Safety Design

Applied Ethics
Environmental Ethics
IT Ethics, Bio Ethics

Whistle Blowing

Ideal
Engineering History
Science History

Practical

STS

Communication
Accountability

Social context

Managerial Engineering
QC, PC, Labour Safety
Legal Regulation
Intellectual Property,
Product Liability, Technical Standard
Corporate Ethics
CSR

Organizational, Institutional

Figure 1 Elements dealt in engineering ethics education in


textbooks
The position of each element in Figure 1 reflects the target and
background of the education, and the elements are classified by
the four different directional approaches listed in Table 2.

Table 2 Directional approaches in engineering education


approaches

elements
Traditional ethics,
Applied ethics(Environment, Information, Bio)
Theoretical ethics Research ethics
Code of ethics/proctice of engineers society, Profesional
ethics(Physician, Lawer, )
Whistle blowing
Compliance

Design

CSR, Coperate ethics, Business ethics


Product liability, Intellectual properties, Legal regulation,
Technical standard
Prevention engineering, Safety design
M anagerial engineering(QC, PC, Labor safety)
Technology assessment
Interaction b/w science, techlonogy and society

STS

The last one is the STS approach. STS is acronym of Science,


Technology and Society, or Science and Technology Studies, and
a trans-disciplinary approach for discussing the issues that science
and technology brings in society. The history of technology and
science is another major resource used in this approach.

History of science and technology


Consumers' ethics

The theoretical ethics approach, including classical moral theory,


focuses on establishing a rational action standard for each
engineer who is facing conflicts. In some textbooks, classics in
ethics, such as Aristoteles or Kant, are briefly introduced, while in
some others, relatively deep discussions on philosophy and
technology are provided. The negative effects of new technology
are often discussed from the stand point of applied ethics.
The design approach emphasizes engineering practice that avoids
mistakes and unintentional accidents, by developing each
engineers skill and consciousness. Hatamura [41] proposed new
methodologies for preventing accidents or failures on the basis of
inter-disciplinary analysis. He and his co-workers have collected
more than 100 cases to develop a data base [4], which became a
good resource for the case study of this approach.
The compliance approach focuses on studying regulation rules
and technical standards which each engineer should know well.
Product liability, intellectual property, and quality control are the

3.2 Approaching Directions by Teachers


Next, the type of contents and approaches used by each instructor
takes is analyzed by collecting and extracting key elements of the
syllabus, which are available on various websites. Sixty six
syllabus were analyzed in this work.
The frequency at which these key elements appear in the syllabus
is shown in Figure 2. This figure only indicates rough tendencies,
since the numbers were not strictly or subjectively counted. Safety
design, business ethics, whistle blowing, intellectual properties
and product liability were frequently found in the syllabus. The
results indicate that the prevention engineering is widely adopted
in Japanese engineering ethic courses.
In terms of the approaches discussed in the previous section, the
design approach and compliance approach are employed most of
the courses, while ethics approach and STS approach are offered
in a limited number of courses.

Public Comunication
Social Context
History of Technology and
STS
Case Study
Code of Ethics
Conf lict in Enterprise
Risk/Crisis manegenment
Conf lict in Enterprise
Whistle browing
Corporate Ethics
Quality/Production Management
Intellectual Properties
Product Liability
Regal Aspect
Communicatoin Skil
Engineers Duty
Quality managementi
Saf ety
Risk
Accident
Environmant & Resources Issue
Othres
Engineers Ethics
Resxearch Ethics
Bio Ethics
Inf ormation Ethics
Environmantal Ethics
Moral Theory
Prof essional Ethics
Social Contract
Normal Action
Moral Theory
0

Figure 2

10

15

20

25

30

35

Frequency of the keywords in the syllabus


162

There are almost no specialists in engineering ethics education in


Japan. The teachers of these courses are classified into three
groups. One is scholar of humanities, such as an ethicist or
philosopher. Almost all of them are teachers in universities. The
second is engineers in industry. They are mostly part-time
instructors, who are invited from industry, or professors who have
a long industrial experience. The last group is engineering
scientists, teaching engineering at universities. Among 66 courses,
14 were identified as the humanities scholars, 17 as engineers in
industry, and 25 as engineering scientists.
Figure 3 shows the relative composition of the four approaches by
each teacher type. Again this figure does not illustrate statistically
significant results, but only tendency.
Ethics & Applied Ethics
Engineering Design
Compliance
STS
Total
Engineering Scientists

Professors of engineering are of course involved in engineering


ethics and show a similar tendency as the engineers in industry in
the choice of approach. They may feel more comfortable teaching
innovative technology in prevention engineering rather than
established regulation to insist on their originality. Some, however,
seem to be embarrassed by the selection of teaching materials.
The author has heard several of them saying that omnibus-type
courses would be preferable, in which several teachers take part
depending on their specialties and interests.
As far as the teaching method is concerned, group discussion has
been introduced in about one third of the classes that were
investigated. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has
been encouraging the ability in discussion to promote the
development of new technologies and business. Written report
assignments, presentation based on group discussions and
examinations are employed as the bases for evaluation. Group
discussions, debates, presentations and writing assignments have
been used as methods for introducing business skills. It is possible
to assess the students study performance, but quite difficult to
assess the performance of the education over a long term. There is
no clear evidence that there has been a drastic decrease in
engineering accidents or miss-conduct among engineers. It is still
too early to evaluate the effect of engineering ethics education.

4. FROM ENGINEERS ETHICS


ENGINEERING ETHICS

Engineers in Industry
Humanities Scholars

0%

50%

100%

Figure 3 Preferred approaches by the teacher background


Industrial engineers and engineering scientist employed design
and compliance approach whereas engineers in industry seem to
have a preference for the compliance approach that might be
because of importance in their daily practice.
Humanities scholars prefer theoretical ethics as it can be predicted
easily and shows some affinity toward the STS approach. It is
obvious that they are not experts in design practice. In the
textbooks written by ethical scholars, classical ethical theories are
almost always included, but as far as approaches found in the
syllabus are concerned, even the ethicists do not spend much time
teaching such classical theories. The discussion on the applied
ethics for environmental, information or biological technologies
may be useful to imply the ethical way of thinking.
Engineers in industry often engage in education, teaching
practical engineering skills such as prevention technology or
safety design. They are keen about the importance of legal aspects
such as product liability, intellectual properties and safety
standards. The author has a hypothesis, although it cannot be
validated, that regulatory documents are well established and easy
to include in educational materials in the compliance approach. At
the same time, many of them emphasize individual effort. This
may be because highly ethical engineers are hired as instructors of
such courses. The number of engineers in industry who take the
STS approach is quite small.

TO

As discussed above, various approaches have been taken towards


engineering ethics education in Japanese universities. Since the
need for engineering ethics education rose rapidly, ad hoc
response was required, when engineering ethics was introduced in
Japan. The engineering ethics education was started by
professionals who were available and interested, and they chose
what they viewed as the best possible way in each course. Each
approach and element is, of course, important, useful and
meaningful. However, emphasis should be carefully placed on
tailoring the elements and approaches, depending on student
backgrounds, majors, grades, future plans and quality of work.
Currently, there is no clear guideline for constructing an adequate
study programme.
Consideration of the side effects of technology on society should
be one of the most important elements. Communication between
the general public and engineers should be developed to respond
to the anxiety and lack of trust of the general public. According to
the governmental survey in 2008, 69.6% of the Japanese public
felt that progress in science and technology move was too fast to
catch up with it [8]. In the social context of engineering, in other
words, the aim of the application of each technology should be
focused on engineering ethics. Of course, to be an ethical engineer
is desirable, but ethical technology is essential. Therefore, it is
important to educate non-engineering people on what is ethical
technology/engineering. Ethical requirements imposed by society
will make engineers and engineering more ethical. In that sense,
engineering ethics education based on the STS approach for nonengineering people is another important task. An understanding
ethics in engineering should be established and possessed by both
engineers and ordinal public.
Engineers should learn about a societys cultural and ethical
profile, economic situation, and historical background, and
discuss the conflict that has been generated by technology and
society, including how to solve them. These measures will shift
163

the focus of engineering ethics education from retroactive to


proactive.
The desired aim of public education is not to promote an
understanding of science, but to facilitate the discussion on what
is desirable science and technology, and engineering. Ethical
requirements from society will make engineer and engineering
more ethical. To accomplish this, the concept of public
engagement in science and technology policy, such as the
Consensus Meeting or Science Caf, has been introduced in some
engineering ethics course in Japan. Answering the question What
kind of world we want to live in? should be the ultimate goal of
engineering ethics.

5. REFERENCES
[1] Association for the Study of Failure,
http://www.shippai.org/index1.php, May 22, 2011
[2] Fujiki,A. and Sugihara,K., On the transition of the textbooks
of engineering ethics from 1998 to 2010 in Japan, Journal of
Engineering Ethics, Vol.7, (2010),pp23-71
[3] Harris,C.E, Pritchard,M.S., Rabins,M.J. Engineering Ethics;
Concept and Cases Ver.3. Wadsworth, 2008

[4] Hatamura,Y., Structure and Expression of Failure


Knowledge Databese,
http://www.sozogaku.com/fkd/en/index.html, May 22, 2011
[5] Ishihara,K., A Survey of textbooks on engineering ethics,
Journal of Japanese Society for Science and Technology
Studues,Vol.2,(2003) , pp138-148
[6] Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education,
http://www.jabee.org/english/OpenHomePage/Criteria_Bach
elor_2009.pdf, , May 22, 2011
[7] Kurata, N., Engieers ethics and corporate ethics, IEEJ
Journal, Vol.124,(2004),pp638-641
[8] Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology, Japan, WHITE PAPER ON SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY 2004
http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpaa200401/in
dex.html, May 22, 2011
[9] Shibata. K. and Yagi, K., Is engineering ethics to develop
super-engineers? Materia Japan, Vol.42,(2003), pp693-695
[10] Shirabe, M., Current status and future task in engineering
ethics education in university, IEEJ Journal,
Vol.124,(2004),pp634-637

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