Sustaining Engineering Codes of Ethics for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

How much responsibility ought a professional engineer to have with regard to supporting basic principles of sustainable development? While within the United States, professional engineering societies, as reflected in their codes of ethics, differ in their responses to this question, none of these professional societies has yet to put the engineer's responsibility toward sustainability on a par with commitments to public safety, health, and welfare. In this paper, we aim to suggest that sustainability should be included in the paramountcy clause because it is a necessary condition to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the public. Part of our justification rests on the fact that to engineer sustainably means among many things to consider social justice, understood as the fair and equitable distribution of social goods, as a design constraint similar to technical, economic, and environmental constraints. This element of social justice is not explicit in the current paramountcy clause. Our argument rests on demonstrating that social justice in terms of both inter- and intra-generational equity is an important dimension of sustainability (and engineering). We also propose that embracing sustainability in the codes while recognizing the role that social justice plays may elevate the status of the engineer as public intellectual and agent of social good. This shift will then need to be incorporated in how we teach undergraduate engineering students about engineering ethics.

A Social Licence for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage: How Engineers and Managers Describe Community Relations

“…For the most part, existing empirical studies of how technical professionals relate to "publics" or "communities" have been either subcomponents of larger ethnographic projects (e.g. Choy 2011); oriented towards critique and immediate practical change in areas such as curricula (Brauer 2013;Michelfelder and Jones 2013;Vanasupa, Chen, and Slivovsky 2006) or codes of ethics (Harris 2008); or based on non-interview data (e.g. analysis of student writings- Carew and Mitchell 2002).…”

Development of socially sustainable traffic-control principles for self-driving vehicles: The ethics of anthropocentric design

“…Not taking into consideration behavioral considerations during the development of this technology, we will be unable to accurately predict its impact on economic and environmental impacts. Sustainable design needs to include social considerations, as another design constraint, alongside technical, economic, or environmental constraints [16]. One additional consideration is that self-driving vehicle technology is currently undergoing its foundational development, there should be a high emphasis on developing a long-term vision.…”

Computing ethics: the case for codes of ethics and privacy policies

“…The intent of the various codes of ethics is generally to mitigate these consequences. This does not only apply to the engineering and In analyzing the codes of ethics for the AIChE, ASME and IEEE, Michelfelder and Jones noted that each failed to make reference to sustainability [11].…”

“…Michelfelder and Jones further indicate the AIChE's and the IEEE codes are relatively short while the ASME Code is among the longest of the professional Codes of ethics creating an inherent discrepancy between the organizations [11]. They give insight as to how different societies focus on the same ethical questions but in different ways and manner [11].…”

“…Michelfelder and Jones further indicate the AIChE's and the IEEE codes are relatively short while the ASME Code is among the longest of the professional Codes of ethics creating an inherent discrepancy between the organizations [11]. They give insight as to how different societies focus on the same ethical questions but in different ways and manner [11]. They conclude by saying the American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) codes of ethics focuses more on the ''doing'' of engineering where the ASCE codes of ethics focus more on the work of the civil engineers and their contribution to the society in terms of the work they do, such as building bridges, construction of roads among others.…”