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A. Moral Responsibility
Moral responsibility is an idea that applies to individual engineers, groups of
engineers, and the corporations in which most engineers do their work. A
professional must be responsible morally, in creating internal good or good
outcomes, and eliminating /minimizing un- intended side-effects, from engineering
and technology.
In terms of moral responsibility, responsibility is defined by the following
terms:
1. Obligations. Responsibilities are obligationstypes of actions that are
morally mandatory. Some obligations are incumbent on each of us, such as to
be honest, fair, and decent. Other obligations are role responsibilities,
acquired when we take on special roles such as parents, employees, or
professionals.
Thus, a safety engineer might have responsibilities for making regular
inspections at a building site, or an operations engineer might have
responsibilities for identifying potential benefits and risks of one system as
compared with another.
2. Accountable. Being responsible means being morally accountable. This
entails having the general capacities for moral agency, including the capacity
to understand and act on moral Professionalism reasons. It also entails being
answerable for meeting particular obligations, that is, liable to be held to
account by other people in general or by specific individuals in positions of
authority.
We can be called on to explain why we acted as we did, perhaps
providing a justification or perhaps offering reasonable excuses. We also hold
ourselves accountable for meeting our obligations, sometimes responding
with emotions of self-respect and pride, other times responding with guilt for
harming others and shame for falling short of our ideals.
3. Conscientious,. Morally admirable engineers accept their obligations and
are conscientious in meeting them. They diligently try to do the right thing,
and they largely succeed in doing so, even under difficult circumstances. In
this sense, being responsible is a virtuean excellence of character. Of
course, no one is perfect, and we might be conscientious in some areas of
life, such as our work, and less conscientious in other areas, such as raising a
child.
4. Blameworthy/Praiseworthy. In contexts where it is clear that
accountability for wrongdoing is at issue, responsible becomes a synonym
B. Causal Responsibility
It is being a cause of some event. For example, a child playing with matches
cause a house to burn. The child is causally responsible, but the parent who left the
child with matches, is morally responsible.
C. Job Responsibility
It consists of assigned tasks at the place of employment and achieving the
objectives.
D. Legal Responsibility
It is the response required by law and includes legal obligations and
accountability to meet them. Many of these responsibilities overlap with moral
responsibility.
Dimensions of Engineering
Engineers encounter both moral and technical problems concerning
variability in the materials available to them, the quality of work by coworkers at all
levels, pressures imposed by time and the whims of the marketplace, and
relationships of authority within corporations.
The idea of a new product is first captured in a conceptual design, which will
lead to establishing performance specifications and conducting a preliminary
analysis based on the functional relationships among design variables. These
activities lead to a more detailed analysis, possibly assisted by computer
simulations and physical models or prototypes. The end product of the design task
will be detailed specifications and shop drawings for all components.
Manufacturing is the next major task. It involves scheduling and carrying out
the tasks of purchasing materials and components, fabricating parts and
subassemblies, and finally assembling and performance-testing the product.
Selling comes next, or delivery if the product is the result of a prior contract.
Thereafter, either the manufacturers or the customers engineers perform
installation, personnel training, maintenance, repair, and ultimately recycling or
disposal.
The mentioned problems above may have arose from the following reaons:
1. Lack of vision, which in the form of tunnel vision biased toward traditional
pursuits overlooks suitable alternatives, and in the form of groupthink promotes
acceptance at the expense of critical thinking.
2. Incompetence among engineers carrying out technical tasks.
3. Lack of time or lack of proper materials, both ascribable to poor management.
4. A silo mentality that keeps information compartmentalized rather than shared
across different departments.
5. The notion that there are safety engineers somewhere down the line to catch
potential problems.
6. Improper use or disposal of the product by an unwary owner or user.
7. Dishonesty in any activity and pressure by management to take shortcuts.
8. Inattention to how the product is performing after it is sold and when in use.