How Should We Foster the Professional Integrity of Engineers in Japan? A Pride-Based Approach

Abstract

I discuss the predicament that engineering-ethics education in Japan now faces and propose a solution to this. The predicament is professional motivation, i.e., the problem of how to motivate engineering students to maintain their professional integrity. The special professional responsibilities of engineers are often explained either as an implicit social contract between the profession and society (the “social-contract” view), or as requirements for membership in the profession (the “membership-requirement” view). However, there are empirical data that suggest that such views will not do in Japan, and this is the predicament that confronts us. In this country, the profession of engineering did not exist 10 years ago and is still quite underdeveloped. Engineers in this country do not have privileges, high income, or high social status. Under such conditions, neither the social-contract view nor the membership-requirement view is convincing. As an alternative approach that might work in Japan, I propose a pride-based view. The notion of pride has been analyzed in the virtue-ethics literature, but the full potential of this notion has not been explored. Unlike other kinds of pride, professional pride can directly benefit the general public by motivating engineers to do excellent work even without social rewards, since being proud of themselves is already a reward. My proposal is to foster a particular kind of professional pride associated with the importance of professional services in society, as the motivational basis for professional integrity. There is evidence to suggest that this model works.

A Practical Approach to Identifying Ethical and Social Problems During Research and Development: A Model for a National Research Project of Brain-Machine Interface

“…We believe that in both cases segmented and nested structures should be present. Although in Japan there are some who feel that the education of engineers must be reformed to include an ethical component (Iseda 2008), many ethical problems are clearly complex and cannot be easily addressed via education alone.…”

Section Vi Individual Approaches to Fostering Integrity in Research

“…1 A student finishes a PhD working on a problem that has aspects that are directly patentable and that can solve a major problem in the disk drive industry. He or she arrives at the new job with a major disk drive manufacturer, and discovers that the work done as a student, which is in the midst of the patent process at the university, will solve a problem at his new company.…”

“…Engineering ethics education in Japan faced similar problems when fellow teachers and I tried to set up a positive image of engineering responsibility. Looking for something close to integrity, we come up with the notion of hokori ( ) which means "pride" or "self-esteem" in Japanese (Iseda 2008). Having pride is of course different from having integrity, but they share a positive attitude toward ethics and motivate people to set higher standards for themselves.…”

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“…But while this professional identity articulated in formal codes of ethics has been central to engineering in the U.S. over the last century, this approach has not been followed by the engineering communities of all other countries. Each country has a subtly unique identity for engineers, and each identity comes with distinct societal roles, distinct approaches to engineering education, and distinct requirements for licensing and other legal constraints on the practice of engineering (requirements which vary widely, ranging from the non-existent to the strict) (see, for example Hamilton 2000;Iseda 2008). In short, the view of engineers' roles and responsibilities in society varies with time and place, and hence so do perceptions of, and requirements for, engineering ethics education.…”