ETHICS

Ethics is a set of principles or standards of human conduct that govern the

behaviour of individuals or organisations.

OBJECTIVES OF ENGINEERING ETHICS:

1. Stimulate the moral imagination
2. Recognising ethical issues
3. Developing analytical skills
4. Eliciting a sense of responsibility
5. Provide codes of ethics
6. Provide case studies and illustrations
7. Ability and freedom to express one’s concern(whistle blowing)
8. Foster an ethical atmosphere
 MORALITY

Morality is concerned with principles and practices of morals such as:

(a) What ought or ought not to be done in a given situation?
(b) What is right or wrong about the handling of a situation? and
(c) What is good or bad about the people, policies, and ideals involved?

The difference between Ethics and Morality:

Ethics deals with what someone ought to do. Morality describes what someone is
actually doing.
Ethics refer to rules provided by an external source, e.g., codes of conduct
in workplaces or principles in religions. Morals refer to an individual’s own
principles regarding right and wrong.
 .
Difference between Morals and Ethics

ETHICS MORALS: personal compass of right &

wrong.
1. Social system - External.
1. Individual – Internal
2. We do it because society says it is the 2. We do it because we believe in
right thing to do. something being right or wrong.
3. Greek word "ethos" meaning character. 3. Latin word "mos" meaning "custom".
4. Thrust is on influence, education, training 4. Thrust is on judgment and punishment,
through codes, guidelines, and correction.
in the name of God or by laws.
5. 4. In case of conflict between the two,
5. Less serious, hence second priority only. morality is given top priority, because
Less common. But relevant today, because the damage is more. It is more common
of complex interactions in the modern and basic.
society. 6. Example: Character flaw, corruption,
extortion, and crime
6. Example: Notions or beliefs about tastes,
manners, customs and towards laws.
 VALUES

Values are the scales we use to weigh our choices for our actions, whether to move
towards or away from something.
TYPES OF VALUES:
The five core human values are:
(1) Right conduct
(2) Peace
(3) Truth
(4) Love
(5) Nonviolence
 WORK ETHICS

Work ethics is defined as a set of attitudes concerned with the value of work,
which forms the motivational orientation. The ‘work ethics’ is aimed at ensuring
the economy (get job, create wealth, earn salary), productivity (wealth, profit),
safety (in workplace), health and hygiene (working conditions), privacy (raise
family), security (permanence against contractual, pension, and retirement
benefits), cultural and social development (leisure, hobby, and happiness), welfare
(social work), environment (anti-pollution activities), and offer opportunities for all,
according to their abilities, but without discrimination.

Many complex social problems exist in the industrial/business scenario, because:

1. The people desire to be recognized as individuals and treated with dignity, as
living human beings.
2. Economic independence.
3. Pay as well as the pace of work should be in commensurate with the expertise
required, acquired, and utilized in the persons.
4. Privacy (personal freedom) of the employee, including women, is to be
protected.
5. Security during job and upon retirement.
6. Recognition to non-work activities, such as leisure, paid holiday on the day of
visit of a dignitary, social service, and other developmental activities.
7. Hard work and productivity are very essential for the success of an industry.
8. Employee alienation.
9. A different view of work ethics: Work is considered as a necessary evil.
10. As per the Protestant Work Ethics, the financial success is a sign that is favored
by God.
 RESPECT FOR OTHERS

This is a basic requirement for nurturing friendship, team work, and for the synergy
it promotes and sustains. The principles enunciated in this regard are:
1. Recognize and accept the existence of other persons as human beings, because
they have a right to live, just as you have.
2. Respect others’ ideas (decisions), words, and labour (actions). One need not
accept or approve or award them, but shall listen to them first. One can correct
or warn, if they commit mistakes.
3. Show ‘goodwill’ on others. Love others. Allow others to grow.
 LIVING PEACEFULLY

One should adopt the following means to live peacefully, in the world:
1. Order in one’s life (self-regulation, discipline, and duty).
2. Pure thoughts in one’s soul (loving others, blessing others, friendly, and not criticizing
or hurting others by thought, word or deed).
3. Creativity in one’s head (useful and constructive).
4. Beauty in one’s heart (love, service, happiness, and peace).

The following are the factors that promote living, with internal and external peace:
1. Conducive environment.
2. Secured job and motivated with ‘recognition and reward’.
3. Absence of threat or tension by pressure due to limitations of money or time.
4. Absence of unnecessary interference or disturbance, except as guidelines.
5. Healthy labour relations and family situations.
6. Service to the needy
 CARING
Caring is feeling for others. It is a process which exhibits the interest in, and
support for, the welfare of others with fairness, impartiality and justice in all
activities, among the employees, in the context of professional ethics.

SHARING
Sharing is a process that describes the transfer of knowledge (teaching, learning,
and information), experience (training), commodities (material possession) and
facilities with others.
For the humanity, ‘sharing’ is a culture. The ‘happiness and wealth’ are multiplied
and the ‘crimes and sufferings’ are reduced, by sharing.
 HONESTY
Honesty is a virtue, and it is exhibited in two aspects namely,
(a) Truthfulness and
(b) Trustworthiness.
Honesty is mirrored in many ways. The common reflections are:
(a) Beliefs
(b) Communication
(c) Decisions (ideas, discretion)
(d) Actions
(e) Intended and unintended results achieved.
some of the actions of an engineer that leads to dishonesty are:
1. Lying
2. Deliberate deception
3. Withholding the information
4. Not seeking the truth
5. Not maintaining confidentiality
6. Giving professional judgment under the influence of extraneous factors
 COURAGE
Courage is the tendency to accept and face risks and difficult tasks in rational ways.
Self-confidence is the basic requirement to nurture courage. Courage is classified
into three types, based on the types of risks, namely
(a) Physical courage
(b) Social courage
(c) Intellectual courage.
The courageous people own and have shown the following characteristics, in their
professions:
(a) Perseverance
(b) Experimentation
(c) Involvement
(d) Commitment
 VALUING TIME
Time is rare resource. Once it is spent, it is lost for ever. It can not be either stored or
recovered. Hence, time is the most perishable and most valuable resource too. This
resource is continuously spent, whether any decision or action is taken or not.

COOPERATION
Co-operation is activity between two persons or sectors that aims at integration of
operations. According to professional ethics, cooperation should exist or be developed,
and maintained, at several levels; between the employers and employees, between the
superiors and subordinates, among the colleagues, between the producers and the
suppliers (spare parts), and between the organisation and its customers.
The impediments to successful cooperation are:
1. Clash of ego of individuals.
2. Lack of leadership and motivation.
3. Conflicts of interests, based on region, religion, language, and caste.
4. Ignorance and lack of interest.
 COMMITMENT
Commitment means alignment to goals and adherence to ethical principles during the activities. First of all,
one must believe in one’s action performed and the expected end results (confidence). It means one should
have the conviction without an iota of doubt that one will succeed. Holding sustained interest and firmness,
in whatever ethical means one follows, with the fervent attitude and hope that one will achieve the goals, is
commitment. It is the driving force to realize success.
EMPATHY
Empathy is social radar. It includes the imaginative projection into other’s feelings and understanding of
other’s background such as parentage, physical and mental state, economic situation, and association.
To practice ‘Empathy’, a leader must have or develop in him, the following characteristics:
1. Understanding others.
2. Service orientation.
3. Developing others.
4. Leveraging diversity.
5. Political awareness.

The benefits of empathy include:

1. Good customer relations
2. Harmonious labour relations
3. Good vendor-producer relationship
 SPIRITUALITY
Spirituality is a way of living that emphasizes the constant awareness and recognition of
the spiritual dimension (mind and its development) of nature and people, with a dynamic
balance between the material development and the spiritual development.
Spirituality includes creativity, communication, recognition of the individual as human
being (as opposed to a life-less machine), respect to others, acceptance (stop finding
faults with colleagues and accept them the way they are), vision (looking beyond the
obvious and not believing anyone blindly), and partnership (not being too authoritative,
and always sharing responsibility with others, for better returns).
Spirituality in the Workplace
1. Verbally respect the individuals as humans and recognize their values in all decisions
and actions.
2. Get to know the people with whom you work and know what is important to them.
Know their goals, desires, and dreams too.
3. State your personal ethics and your beliefs clearly.
4. Support causes outside the business.
5. Encourage leaders to use value-based discretion in making decisions.
6. Demonstrate your own self-knowledge and spirituality in all your actions.
7. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
 PROFESSION, PROFESSIONAL AND PROFESSIONALISM
PROFESSION: Profession is defined as any occupation/job/vocation that requires
advanced expertise (skills and knowledge), self regulation and concerted service to the public
good. It brings high status, socially and economically. The characteristics of a profession are:
1. Advanced expertise
2. Self regulation
3. Public good

PROFESSIONAL: It related to a person or any work that a person does on profession and
which requires expertise (skills and knowledge), self regulation and results in public good.
The term professional means a ‘person’ as well as a ‘status’.

PROFESSIONALISM: It is the status of a professional which implies certain attitudes or

typical qualities that are expected of a professional. Professionalism may be defined as the
service related to achieving the public good, in addition to the practices of the knowledge of
moral ideals.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROFESSIONAL
The characteristics of the ‘profession’ as distinct from ‘non-professional occupation’ are listed as
follows:
1. Extensive Training

2. Knowledge and Communication Skills

3. Monopoly

4. Autonomy in Workplace

5. Ethical Standards

6. Empathy
 MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL ROLES

1. Saviour

2. Guardian

3. Bureaucratic Servant

4. Social Servant

5. Social Enabler and Catalyst

6. Game Player
 RESPONSIBILITY
Different types of responsibilities exhibited in human transactions are:
1. Moral Responsibility
2. Causal Responsibility
3. Job Responsibility
4. Legal Responsibility
SELF-CONTROL
It is a virtue of maintaining personal discipline. It means a strong will and motivation and
avoidance of fear, hatred, lack of efforts, temptation, self-deception, and emotional
response. It encompasses courage and good judgment also. Self-respect promotes self-
control.
SELF-INTEREST
Self-interest is being good and acceptable to oneself. It is pursuing what is good for
oneself. It is very ethical to possess self-interest. As per utilitarian theory, this interest
should provide for the respect of others also. Duty ethics recognizes this aspect as duties
to ourselves. Then only one can help others. Right ethicist stresses our rights to pursue
our own good. Virtue ethics also accepts the importance of self-respect as link to social
practices.
 SELF-RESPECT
It is defined as valuing oneself in morally suitable ways.
Self-respect includes:
(a) recognition, which means respect to others, their ideas, decisions, ability, and
rights.
(b) appraisal, which means properly valuing ourselves as to how well we face moral
standards and our personal commitments (aims).
An intensive but balanced feeling of self-respect is sense of honour. This includes
intense agony and guilt for wrong doings. Self-control is a virtue of maintaining
personal discipline (self-regulation). Courage is a bye-product of self-respect, which
makes a person face the hardship in rational way
 CASE STUDY: THE CHALLENGER
What happened? The orbiter of the Challenger had three main engines fuelled by
liquid hydrogen. The fuel was carried in an external fuel tank which was jettisoned
when empty. During lift-off, the main engines fire for about nine minutes, although
initially the thrust was provided by the two booster rockets. These booster rockets
are of the solid fuel type, each burning a million pound load of aluminum,
potassium chloride, and iron oxide. The casing of each booster rocket is about 150
feet long and 12 feet in diameter. This consists of cylindrical segments that are
assembled at the launch site. There are four-field joints and they use seals
consisting of pairs of O-rings made of vulcanized rubber. The O-rings work with a
putty barrier made of zinc chromate.
The engineers were employed with Rockwell International (manufacturers for the
orbiter and main rocket), Morton-Thiokol (maker of booster rockets), and they
worked for NASA. After many postponements, the launch of Challenger was set for
morning of Jan 28, 1986. Allan J. McDonald was an engineer from Morton-Thiokol
and the director of the Solid Rocket Booster Project. He was skeptic about the
freezing temperature conditions forecast for that morning, which was lower than
the previous launch conditions. A teleconference between NASA engineers and MT
engineers was arranged by Allan.
 CASE STUDY: THE CHALLENGER (CONT.)
Arnold Thompson and Roger Boisjoly, the seal experts at MT explained to the other
engineers how the booster rocket walls would bulge upon launch and combustion
gases can blow past the O-rings of the field joints.
On many of the previous flights the rings have been found to have charred and
eroded. In freezing temperature, the rings and the putty packing are less pliable.
From the past data gathered, at temperature less than 65 °F the O-rings failure was
certain. But these data were not deliberated at that conference as the launch time
was fast approaching.
The engineering managers Bob Lund and Joe Kilminster agreed that there was a
safety problem. Boisjoly testified and recommended that no launch should be
attempted with temperature less than 53 °F. These managers were annoyed to
postpone the launch yet again. The top management of MT was planning for the
renewal of contract with NASA, for making booster rocket. The managers told Bob
Lund “to take-off the engineering hat and put on your management hat”. The
judgment of the engineers was not given weightage. The inability of these
engineers to substantiate that the launch would be unsafe was taken by NASA as
an approval by Rockwell to launch.
 CASE STUDY: THE CHALLENGER (CONT.)
At 11.38 a.m. the rockets along with Challenger rose up the sky. The cameras
recorded smoke coming out of one of the filed joints on the right booster rocket.
Soon there was a flame that hit the external fuel tank. At 76 seconds into the flight,
the Challenger at a height of 10 miles was totally engulfed in a fireball. The crew
cabin fell into the ocean killing all the seven aboard. Some of the factual issues,
conceptual issues and moral/normative issues in the space shuttle challenger
incident, are highlighted hereunder for further study.
Moral/Normative Issues
1. The crew had no escape mechanism. Douglas, the engineer, designed an abort
module to allow the separation of the orbiter, triggered by a field-joint leak. But
such a ‘safe exit’ was rejected as too expensive, and because of an
accompanying reduction in payload.
2. The crew were not informed of the problems existing in the field joints. The
principle of informed consent was not followed.
3. Engineers gave warning signals on safety. But the management group prevailed
over and ignored the warning.
 CASE STUDY: THE CHALLENGER (CONT.)

Conceptual Issues
1. NASA counted that the probability of failure of the craft was one in one lakh
launches. But it was expected that only the 100000th launch will fail.
2. There were 700 criticality-1 items, which included the field joints. A failure in any one
of them would have caused the tragedy. No back-up or stand-bye had been provided
for these criticality-1 components.
Factual/Descriptive Issues
1. Field joints gave way in earlier flights. But the authorities felt the risk is not high.
2. NASA has disregarded warnings about the bad weather, at the time of launch,
because they wanted to complete the project, prove their supremacy, get the funding
from Government continued and get an applaud from the President of USA.
3. The inability of the Rockwell Engineers (manufacturer) to prove that the lift-off was
unsafe. This was interpreted by the NASA, as an approval by Rockwell to launch.