GE6075 PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN ENGINEERING LTPC3003

OBJECTIVES:
 To enable the students to create an awareness on Engineering Ethics and Human Values, to instill Moral and
Social Values and Loyalty and to appreciate the rights of others.
UNIT I HUMAN VALUES 10
Morals, values and Ethics – Integrity – Work ethic – Service learning – Civic virtue – Respect for others – Living
peacefully – Caring – Sharing – Honesty – Courage – Valuing time – Cooperation – Commitment – Empathy – Self
confidence – Character – Spirituality – Introduction to Yoga and meditation for professional excellence and stress
management.
UNIT II ENGINEERING ETHICS 9
Senses of ‘Engineering Ethics’ – Variety of moral issues – Types of inquiry – Moral dilemmas – Moral Autonomy –
Kohlberg’s theory – Gilligan’s theory – Consensus and Controversy – Models of professional roles - Theories about right
action – Self-interest – Customs and Religion – Uses of Ethical Theories UNIT
III ENGINEERING AS SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION 9
Engineering as Experimentation – Engineers as responsible Experimenters – Codes of Ethics – A Balanced Outlook on
Law.
UNIT IV SAFETY, RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS 9
Safety and Risk – Assessment of Safety and Risk – Risk Benefit Analysis and Reducing Risk - Respect for Authority –
Collective Bargaining – Confidentiality – Conflicts of Interest – Occupational Crime – Professional Rights – Employee
Rights – Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – Discrimination
UNIT V GLOBAL ISSUES 8
Multinational Corporations – Environmental Ethics – Computer Ethics – Weapons Development – Engineers as Managers
– Consulting Engineers – Engineers as Expert Witnesses and Advisors – Moral Leadership –Code of Conduct – Corporate
Social Responsibility
TOTAL: 45 PERIODS
OUTCOMES:
 Upon completion of the course, the student should be able to apply ethics in society, discuss the ethical issues
related to engineering and realize the responsibilities and rights in the society.
TEXTBOOKS:
1. Mike W. Martin and Roland Schinzinger, “Ethics in Engineering”, Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 2003.
2. Govindarajan M, Natarajan S, Senthil Kumar V. S, “Engineering Ethics”, Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi,
2004.
REFERENCES:
1. Charles B. Fleddermann, “Engineering Ethics”, Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2004.
2. Charles E. Harris, Michael S. Pritchard and Michael J. Rabins, “Engineering Ethics – Concepts and Cases”,
Cengage Learning, 2009
3. John R Boatright, “Ethics and the Conduct of Business”, Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2003
4. Edmund G Seebauer and Robert L Barry, “Fundamentals of Ethics for Scientists and Engineers”, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2001
5. Laura P. Hartman and Joe Desjardins, “Business Ethics: Decision Making for Personal Integrity and Social
Responsibility” McGraw Hill education, India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi 2013
6. World Community Service Centre, ‘ Value Education’, Vethathiri publications, Erode, 2011
Web sources:
1. [Link]
2. [Link]
3. [Link]
4. [Link]
 UNIT I HUMAN VALUES
Morals, values and Ethics – Integrity – Work ethic – Service learning – Civic virtue – Respect for others – Living
peacefully – Caring – Sharing – Honesty – Courage – Valuing time – Cooperation – Commitment – Empathy – Self
confidence – Character – Spirituality – Introduction to Yoga and meditation for professional excellence and stress
management.

1. MORALS, VALUES AND ETHICS

MORALS
Morals are the welfare principles enunciated by the wise people, based on their experience and wisdom. They
were edited, changed or modified or evolved to suit the geography of the region, rulers (dynasty), and in
accordance with development of knowledge in science and technology and with time.

 Morals are foundational concepts defined on both an individual and societal level
 At the most basic level, morals are the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.
 Morals are guiding principles that every citizen should hold.

VALUES
 A value is defined as a principle that promotes well-being or prevents harm. Values are our guidelines for our
success—our paradigm about what is acceptable.” Personal values are defined as: “Emotional beliefs in principles
regarded as particularly favourable or important for the individual. Values are individual in nature.
 Values are comprised of personal concepts of responsibility, entitlement and respect
 Values are shaped by personal experience, may change over the span of a lifetime and may be influenced by
lessons learned.
 Values may vary according to an individual’s cultural, ethnic and/or faith-based background.
 In spite of all the change around you, decide upon what you will never change: your core values.
 Take your time to decide what they are but once you do, do not compromise on them for any reason. Integrity is
one such value.

TYPES OF VALUES

The five core human values are: (1) Right conduct, (2) Peace, (3) Truth, (4) Love, and (5) Nonviolence.

1. Values related to RIGHT CONDUCT are:

 SELF-HELP SKILLS: Care of possessions, diet, hygiene, modesty, posture, self reliance, and tidy appearance
 SOCIAL SKILLS: Good behaviour, good manners, good relationships, helpfulness, No wastage, and
good environment, and
 ETHICAL SKILLS: Code of conduct, courage, dependability, duty, efficiency, ingenuity, initiative,
perseverance, punctuality, resourcefulness, respect for all, and responsibility
2. Values related to PEACE are:
 Attention, calmness, concentration, contentment, dignity, discipline, equality, equanimity, faithfulness,
focus, gratitude, happiness, harmony, humility, inner silence, optimism, patience, reflection, satisfaction,
self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-control, self-discipline, self-esteem, self-respect, sense control,
tolerance, and understanding
3. Values related to TRUTH are:
 Accuracy, curiosity, discernment, fairness, fearlessness, honesty, integrity (unity of thought, word, and
deed), intuition, justice, optimism, purity, quest for knowledge, reason, self-analysis, sincerity, sprit of
enquiry, synthesis, trust, truthfulness, and determination.
4. Values related to LOVE are:
 Acceptance, affection, care, compassion, consideration, dedication, devotion, empathy, forbearance,
forgiveness, friendship, generosity, gentleness, humanness, interdependence, kindness, patience,
patriotism, reverence, sacrifice, selflessness, service, sharing, sympathy, thoughtfulness, tolerance and
trust
5. Values related to NON-VIOLENCE are:
(a) PSYCHOLOGICAL: Benevolence, compassion, concern for others, consideration, forbearance, forgiveness,
manners, happiness, loyalty, morality, and universal love
(b) SOCIAL: Appreciation of other cultures and religions, brotherhood, care of environment, citizenship,
equality, harmlessness, national awareness, perseverance, respect for property, and social justice.

PERSEVERANCE

 It is defined as persistence, determination, resolution, tenacity, dedication, commitment, constancy,

steadfastness, stamina, endurance and indefatigability. To persevere is described as to continue, carry on,
stick at it (in formal), keep going, persist, plug away, (informal), remain, stand firm, stand fast, hold on
and hang on. Perseverance builds character.

ACCURACY

It means freedom from mistake or error; conformity to truth or to a standard or model and exactness.
Accuracy is defined as correctness, exactness, authenticity, truth, veracity, closeness to truth (true value)
and carefulness. The value of accuracy embraces a large area and has many implications. Engineers are
encouraged to demonstrate accuracy in their behavior through the medium of praise and other incentives.
Accuracy includes telling the truth, not exaggerating, and taking care over one’s work.
DISCERNMENT

 It means discrimination, perception, penetration, and insight. Discernment means the power to see what is
not obvious to the average mind. It stresses accuracy, especially in reading character or motives.
Discrimination stresses the power to distinguish or select what is true or genuinely excellent. Perception
implies quick and often sympathetic discernment, as of shades of feelings. Penetration implies a searching
mind that goes beyond what is obvious or superficial.
Evolution of Human Values

The human values evolve because of the following factors:

 The impact of norms of the society on the fulfilment of the individual’s needs or desires.
 Developed or modified by one’s own awareness, choice, and judgment in fulfilling the needs.
 By the teachings and practice of Preceptors (Gurus) or Savoir or religious leaders.
 Fostered or modified by social leaders, rulers of kingdom, and by law (government).

PERSONAL ETHICS

 Simply put, all individuals are morally autonomous beings with the power and right to choose their
values, but it does not follow that all choices and all value systems have an equal claim to be called
ethical.
 Actions and beliefs inconsistent with the Six Pillars of Character - trustworthiness, respect, responsibility,
fairness, caring and citizenship - are simply not ethical.

PERSONAL ETHICS - Everyday examples

 Software piracy
 Expense account padding
 Copying of homework or tests
 Income taxes
 Borrowing” nuts and bolts, office supplies from employer
 Copying of Videos or CD‟s
 Plagiarism
 Using the copy machine at work
RELIGION AND ETHICS

The “Golden Rule” is a basic tenet in almost all religions: Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Confucian, Buddhist, Muslim.

 “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

 “Treat others as you would like them to treat you” (Christian).
 “Hurt not others with that which pains you” (Buddhist)
 “What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow men” (Judaism)
 “No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself” (Islam)
MORALITY AND ETHICS

Concerns the goodness of voluntary human conduct that affects the self or other living things
Morality (Latin mores) usually refers to any aspect of human action
Ethics (Greek ethos) commonly refers only to professional behaviour
Ethics consist of the application of fundamental moral principles and reflect our dedication to fair
treatment of each other, and of society as a whole.
 An individual’s own values can result in acceptance or rejection of society’s ethical standards because
even thoughtfully developed ethical rules can conflict with individual values.
ASPECTS OF ETHICS

There are two aspects to ethics:

 The first involves the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil and propriety from impropriety
 The second involves the commitment to do what is right, good and proper. Ethics entails action.
Morality is different from Ethics in the following ways:

[Link] MORALITY ETHICS

More general and prescriptive based on customs and Specific and descriptive. It is a critical reflection
1
traditions. on morals
More concerned with the results of wrong action, when More concerned with the results of a right action,
2
done. when not done.
Thrust is on judgment and punishment, in the name of Thrust is on influence, education, training through
3
God or by laws. codes, guidelines, and correction.
In case of conflict between the two, morality is given top Less serious, hence second priority only. Less
4 priority, because the damage is more. It is more common common. But relevant today, because of complex
and basic interactions in the modern society
Example: Character flaw, corruption, extortion, and Example: Notions or beliefs about manners,
5
crime. tastes, customs, and towards laws.

 As against morals and ethics, laws are norms, formally approved by state, power or national or
international political bodies. Breaking the norms is called crime, and invites specific punishment.
 Our values associate emotions to our experiences and guide our choices, decisions and actions.
 A person’s observations on its environment are filtered through his values to determine whether or not he
should expend energy to do something about his experiences.
 A person who values gold and sees a large bag of gold (a positive value) in his path as he walks, will be
motivated to reach down and pick it up.
 A person who values his life and knows about venomous snakes will retreat from the sound of a rattle
snake (a negative value) from nearby, when he is walking in the desert. Said in another way,
 “Values are the scales we use to weigh our choices for our actions, whether to move towards or away
from something.”Not all values have the same weight or priority.
  Dr. Abraham Maslow illustrated this with his hierarchy of human needs. Survival has a higher priority
than security, which has a higher priority than social acceptance. Self-esteem can only be addressed to the
degree that social acceptance is fulfilled. Similarly, self-actualization can only be pursued to the degree
that self-esteem has been satisfied.
 A person’s beliefs, values and identity are usually acquired unconsciously based on his personal
experience or observations of others’ experiences as to what produces desirable or undesirable results in
the environment.
 A baby’s learning to walk and talk is a clear example of identifying with human adults, valuing the act of
being able to have the mobility and communication ability of an adult and the belief, based on
unconscious observation, that humans can do walk and do talk with each other.
 Physiologists have identified the parts of the human brain that are involved in producing behaviour in
accordance with beliefs and values.
 All information collected by human senses is passed through a net-like group of cells, known as the
Reticular Activating System (RAS), located near the top of the brain stem. The RAS compares the data
received with accepted values, positive and negative (threats), and beliefs stored in memory and
determines whether or not immediate action is required. The results of the RAS’s comparison are
communicated to the ‘amygdala’ near the mid-brain.
 The ‘amygdala’ produces neuro-chemicals that cause emotions consistent with the nature of and
proportional to the match between environment and values and beliefs. The neuro-chemicals initiate the
chemical processes needed for the action to be taken.
 If the emotions produced are strong enough, the perceived information is blocked from reaching the
logical, rational and conscious executive centre of the brain, the pre-frontal lobes. In which case, the
resulting behaviour will be automatic, not necessarily logical or rational, and completely in accordance
with the person’s strongest held beliefs, values and/or identity.
 By positive affirmations, one can modify or create new beliefs about a person’s identity and/or what is
important to him (values). Verbal repetition of statements intended to become new beliefs, and values will
result in these being stored for use by the RAS for comparison with the environment being experienced.
This is the mechanism how the beliefs or values are modified.

ETHICS

 Ethics is the word that refers to morals, values, and beliefs of the individuals, family or the society. The word has
several meanings. Basically it is an activity and process of inquiry.
 It is different from non-moral problems, when dealing with issues and controversies.
 It also refers to a particular set of beliefs, attitudes, and habits of individuals or family or groups concerned with
morals. It is used to mean ‘morally correct’.
 The study on ethics helps to know the people’s beliefs, values, and morals, learn the good and bad of them, and
practice them to maximize their well-being and happiness.
 It involves the inquiry on the existing situations, form judgments and resolve the issues.
 In addition, ethics tells us how to live, to respond to issues, through the duties, rights, responsibilities, and
obligations.
 In religion, similar principles are included, but the reasoning on procedures is limited.
 The principles and practices of religions have varied from to time to time (history), region (geography, climatic
conditions), religion, society, language, caste and creed. But ethics has grown to a large extent beyond the barriers
listed above.
 In ethics, the focus is to study and apply the principles and practices, universally.
 2. INTEGRITY

“Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like.
More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people”.
“Integrity is used to refer to people who act in ways that are consistent with their own code of
principles. It is generally a personal choice to uphold oneself to consistently moral and ethical
standards”.
 State of being entirely whole - Unity of thought, open mindedness and honest.
 Bridge between responsibility in private and professional life.
 Capacity to communicate factual information
 Condition of being free from flaws and defects
 Should be a core quality
 Vital for development of trust
 Mostly integrity involves discovery of truth and its communication
 One of the self direction virtues on commitment and on putting understanding to action.
 Virtues of self respect, pride in the job can be made possible with help of integrity. Maintaining or
practicing integrity needs courage. Courage is obtained when wisdom and integrity join hands
 Leads to consistency of character and operation in different situations and context.
 Moral integrity is defined as a virtue, which reflects a consistency of one’s attitudes, emotions, and
conduct in relation to justified moral values.
What the word “Integrity” means,
 The English word integrity is derived from latin word “integritas” which denotes “the diminished or
unimpaired condition of a thing”.
 A thing that has integrity is good and it need not be improved further.
 Hence the state of full integrity is a state that ought to be preserved if not preserved earlier.
 Any action that leads to a loss of integrity is in need of justification.
Various types of integrity:
 Personal integrity
 Professional integrity
 Business integrity
 Academic integrity
 Research integrity
1. Personal Integrity:
 Person possessing integrity is honest, trustful and cannot be bribed. A person possessing
integrity is trustworthy.
2. Professional Integrity:
 Integrity means moral wholeness a single sense of self across a wide range of circumstances.
 Professional Integrity is essential for maintaining excellence in their professions and for
keeping the public’s trust.
3. Business Integrity:
 Business integrity is the reliability with which the business undertakes its traditions with the
various parties.
 The values of honesty and integrity are the foundation of an organization’s reputation.
Employee working at company need to possess organizational integrity in addition to
personal integrity.
 Organizational integrity assures all employees’ combined efforts align with organizational
values and commitments.
4. Academic Integrity:
 Honesty as an engineer begins with honesty in studying to become an engineer.
5. Research Integrity
 Research should be demonstrated honestly. For example, If an experiment is done, we
should think right about it and also we should report what makes the experiment invalid.
We need to explain all our results and also explain the things that can be eliminated in the
experiment.

3. WORK ETHIC
Work ethic is a value based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work
and its ability to enhance character.
Understanding work ethics
The term work ethic is ethic is very difficult to explain in just a couple of sentences. However, in
simple words, work ethics are standard measures that control all functioning in a professional
environment. This means, as an employee you are expected to be honest, sincere and diligent about
the work we are assigned. The practices we opt for should be ‘clean’, acceptable and should abide by
concerned laws.
On smaller grounds, you should be understanding, just and true towards other colleagues. As an
employee, we should be perceived as hardworking, reliable, honest, diligent and worthy of the
monetary compensation we receive.
Five characteristics of a good work ethic
In organizations there may be two kinds of employee, some individuals try to get by doing as little
work as possible; other possess a dedication that leads them to give it their all every day. People who
possess a strong work ethic embody certain principles that guide their work behaviour, leading them
to produce high-quality work consistently.
The following five characters ensure the possession of work ethic in an employee:
a) Reliability
b) Dedication
c) Productivity
d) Co-operation
e) Character
Reliability
Reliability goes hand in hand with a good work ethic. If individuals with a good work ethic say
they are going to attend a work function or arrive at a certain time, they do, as they value
punctuality.
Individuals with a strong work ethic often want to appear dependable, showing their employers
that they are workers to whom they can turn. Because of this, they put effort into portraying and
proving this dependability by being reliable and performing consistently.
Dedication
Employees with a good work ethic are dedicated to their jobs and will do anything they can to
ensure that they perform well. Often this dedication leads them to change jobs less frequently, as
they become committed to the positions in which they work.
They also often put in extra hours beyond what is expected, and truly dedicate themselves to their
positions.
Productivity
Since they work at a consistently fast pace, individuals with a good work ethic are often highly
productive.
They commonly get large amounts of work done more quickly than others who lack their work
ethic, as they don’t quit until they’ve completed the tasks with which they were presented.
This high level of productivity shows the fact that these individuals want to appear to be strong
workers. The more productive they are, the more beneficial to the company they appear to those
managing them.
Cooperation
Cooperative work can be highly beneficial in the business environment, something that
individuals with a strong work ethic know well. Because they recognize the usefulness of
 cooperative practices such as teamwork they often put an extensive amount of effort into working
well with others.
These individuals commonly respect their bosses enough to work with any individuals with whom
they are paired in a productive and polite manner, even if they do not enjoy working with the
individuals in question.
Character
Individuals with a good work ethic often also possess generally strong character. This means they
are self-disciplined, pushing themselves to complete work tasks instead of requiring others to
intervene.
They are also often very honest and trustworthy.
To demonstrate their strong character, these workers embody these positives traits daily, likely
distinguishing themselves from the rest.
Factors that demonstrate a strong work ethic
A work ethic is a set of moral principles an employee uses in his job. Certain factors come
together to create a strong work ethic. To experience and maintain a good as well as strong work
ethics in an organization, the following five mandatory factors are to be considered. These are the
factors which influence an employee’s sincerity, and dedication in the work assigned to him, also
strengthens his career and adds in his responsibilities.
A strong work ethic can improve your career-A strong work ethic is vital to a company achieving its
goals. Every employee, from the CEO to entry-level workers, must have a good work ethic to keep
the company functioning at its peak.
Integrity- stretches to all aspects of an employee’s job. An employee with integrity fosters trusting
relationships with clients, co-workers and supervisors. Co-workers value the employee’s ability to
give honest feedback. Client trust the employee’s advice. Supervisors trust on the employee’s high
moral standards and not to steal from the company or create problems.
Sense of Responsibility- A strong sense of responsibility affects how an employee works and the
amount of work she does. When the employee feels personally responsible for her job performance,
she shows up on time, puts in her best effort and completes projects to the best of her ability.
Emphasis on Quality- Some employees do only the bare minimum, just enough to keep their job
intact. Employees with a strong work ethic care about the quality of their work. They do their best to
produce great work, not merely churn out what is needed. The employee’s commitment to quality
improves the company’s overall quality.
Discipline- It takes a certain level of commitment to finish our tasks every day. An employee with
good discipline stays focussed on his goals and is determined to complete his assignments. These
employees show a high level of dedication to the company, always ensuring they do their part.
Sense of Teamwork- Most employees have to work together to meet a company’s objectives. An
employee with a high sense of teamwork helps a team meet its goals and deliver quality work. These
employees respect their peers and help where they can, making collaborations go smoother.
How to increase employee work ethic
A work ethic is typically something ingrained within a person. There are, simply put, lazy people who
are impossible to motivate. However, other factors, both economical and psychological, can affect an
employee’s work ethic. Most people can be encouraged to greater performance, once the right
motivating factors are found. This can be a process of trial and error because each individual may
have different motivators. However, there are some basic guidelines we can follow to increase
employee work ethic.
Step 1: Expect our managers to set a good example.
Make sure they are serving as role models for the rest of our employees.
Step 2: Create a public recognition system.
Rewarding an employee’s good work ethics can be a great motivator for other employees who may
not be as productive.
Employee of the month competitions and special rewards for those who do their job well may
encourage those with a poor work ethic to try harder. Human beings thrive on recognition and feeling
appreciated, and these are very powerful motivating factors.
Step 3: Set clear goals and milestones.
In some cases, employees may feel overwhelmed with a project if they are not entirely sure how to
complete it or if it looks insurmountable.
Break apart projects into tasks that have clear goals. Set milestones with clear target dates so
employees know exactly what we expect of them and how long they have to complete the task.
Step 4: Monitor potential troublemakers.
Almost every office has at least one person who is there for the pay check and not much else. These
people can cause dissension among the ranks and bring down not only the morale of the rest of the
staff, but also the productivity levels for the company.
Weed through new applicants to make sure they will have job dedication. Monitor current
troublemakers, set strict guidelines they must follow or encourage them to seek employment
elsewhere.
Step 5: create a monetary award system.
Some employees will be motivated only by the promise of receiving a bonus or a raise if they
complete certain tasks and improve their performance. While not all companies may have the
resources to give large monetary awards to their employees, even simple gift card challenges and free
products can encourage lackadaisical employees.

Negative Work Ethic

Definition
Negative work ethics may be the behaviour of a single individual or something more systematic;
regardless of the specifics, identifying the signs is the first step toward correcting it.
Companies like to promote positive work ethics because it needs results in happier and more
productive employees, just as it is important to understand a positive work ethic, however, it is
equally important to recognize the signs of a negative work ethic.
Negative Influences of Bad Work Ethics
Lack of Productivity
The most obvious sign of a negative work ethic is lack of productivity. Lack of productivity costs the
company time and money: essentially paying the employee for doing nothing.
Attendance
A positive work ethic means showing up on time every time, and using sick days for their designated
purpose than a vacation by proxy. A negative work ethic, on the other hand, looks to get the most out
of the system.
A good worker, for instance, may arrive late every once in a while, but also stays late to make up the
time. A bad worker will assume that showing up late is normal, and do so beyond the range of what
the company considers acceptable.
Politics
Every company experiences a certain amount of office politics, as different departments compete
for different resources enter into otherwise professional relationships.
Someone with a negative work ethic, however, may let office politics consume him: stoking the
fire of disconnect around a perceived rival and worried more about his comparative standing than
the well-being of the company as a whole. Such employees might even instigate political crises
forcing senior management to spend time and resources calming everyone down rather than
getting along with the business at hand.
Esprit de Corps
A good company seeks to foster loyalty among their workers: making them feels like family
members as much as employees toiling for a salary. Someone with a negative work ethic,
however, fails to engage in office environment. It may be a repeated refusal to participate in
company activities such as picnics or mixers.
How to Deal with Bad Work Ethics in Co-workers
One employee’s bad work ethic can hamper productivity throughout the workplace. A work ethic
is a set of values people have about the benefits and importance of working hard and being
productive. Values are subjective, so a co-worker doesn’t necessarily have a bad work ethic if his
opinions about working aren’t in line with ours.
 However, we should address a fellow employee’s work ethic if he’s making it difficult for us to
complete our job duties. Address the problem with the employee directly first, but sometimes we
have to involve a manager.
Step 1
 Avoid the temptation to wait for a co-worker to figure out that his bad work ethic is
affecting us.
 Speak to the co-worker in private, and explain the problem by giving specific
examples of how his failure to complete work hampered our ability to get our job
done.
 Explain the problem with a teamwork perspective, pointing out how he and others
have an important role to fulfil in the workplace.
Step 2
 Find out if co-worker understands how to complete his assigned tasks when we
discuss work-ethic problems with him.
 Employees sometimes get duties from managers that they don’t have the skills to
fulfil, so they avoid those duties.
 Recommend that a co-worker ask a manager for guidance or training on how to
complete tasks he doesn’t understand. Help him ourself if we can, but don’t do his
job for him.
Step 3
 Bear in mind that a co-worker might not be getting his job done because he has
personal problems that are distracting him.
 Don’t feel compelled to take on a co-worker’s problems, but we can show
understanding by giving him some slack on the job while he sorts out his troubles.
 In such cases, ask him to consider whether taking time off from work would be
beneficial in tackling his problems.
Step 4
 Tell our manager about the problems a co-worker’s bad work ethic is causing if our
other efforts to help him fail.
 Don’t make the issue personal when we tell our manager about the matter.
 Present our manager with business-related reasons the co-workers poor work habits
are affecting the workplace.
 Consider things such as whether the co-worker’s behaviour is creating a backlog of
work for us and others.

Combination of mental characteristic and behaviour that distinguishes a person or a group also it is
the combination of traits and qualities distinguishing the individual nature of a person or thing.
Simply character refers to the distinguishing / unique nature of something.
Character deals with how people think and behave issues such as right and wrong, justice and equity,
and other areas of human conduct.
Moral character or character is an evaluation of a particular individual’s stable moral qualities. The
concept of the character can imply a variety of attributes including the existence or lack of virtues
such as empathy, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviours or habits.
Moral character primarily refers to the assemblage of qualities that distinguish one from another-
although on a cultural level, the set of moral behaviors to which a social group adheres can be said to
unite and define it culturally as distinct from others. Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral
character as “a disposition to express behaviour in consistent patterns of functions across a range of
situations”.

4. SERVICE LEARNING
  It is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting (youth) service throughout the community.
 The service learning includes the characteristics of the work, basic requirements, security of
the job, and awareness of the procedures, while taking decisions and actions.
 Service learning may be defined as the non-paid activity, in which service is provided on
voluntary basis to the public (have-nots in the community), non-profitable institutions, and
charitable organizations. It is the service during learning.
 This includes training or study on real life problems and their possible solutions, during the
formal learning, i.e., courses of study.
 It is a pedagogy that provided chances to directly interact with local agencies and effect
change in the community.
 National youth leadership council defines service learning as a “philosophy, pedagogy and
model for community development that is used as an instructional strategy to meet the goals.
 In the industrial scenario, adoption, study, and development of public health or welfare or
safety system of a village or school is an example of service learning by the employees.

KEY COMPONENTS

Service-learning combines experimental learning and community service opportunities. It can be

distinguished in the following ways:
 Curricular connections - Integrating learning into a service project is a key to successful
service-learning. Academic ties should be clear and build upon existing disciplinary skills.
 Student voice - Beyond being actively engaged in the project itself, students have the
opportunity to select, design, implement and evaluate their service activity, encouraging
relevancy and sustained interest. In community settings, this is alternatively called youth
voice.
 Student discussion - students discuss their learning experience during in-class discussions.
 Reflection – The balance of reflection and action allows the trainee to be constantly aware of
the impact of their work.
 Community partnership- Partnership with community agencies are used to identify genuine
needs, provides mentorship, and contributes input such as labor and expertise towards
completing the project.
 Authentic community- local community members or service recipients are involved in
determining the significance and depth of the service activities involved.
 Assessment- well structured assessment with constructive feedback through reflection
provides valuable information regarding service learning which aids sustainability and
replication of services.
In 2008, the National Youth Leadership council released service Learning standards for Quality
practice which are as follows:
 Meaningful service
 Link to curriculum
 Reflection
 Investigation
 Diversity
 Partnership
 Progress monitoring
 Action
 Demonstration
 Recognition
To distinguish high quality from low quality service learning experiences, Youth service California
has published “seven elements of high quality service learning” as follows:
 Integrated Learning
 High quality service
 Collaboration
  Student voice
 Civic responsibility
 Reflection
 Evaluation

TYPES OF SERVICE LEARNING

i. Direct service learning:

Person-to-person, face-to-face projects in which service impacts individuals to receive direct
help from students. Eg. Tutoring, working with elders
ii. Indirect service learning:
Projects with benefits to a community as opposed to specific individuals. Eg. Food and
clothing drives, environmental cleaning.
iii. Advocacy service learning:
Working, acting, speaking, writing, teaching, presenting, informing etc. on projects that
encourage action or create awareness on issues of public interest. Eg. Disaster preparedness,
care for environment, violence and drug prevention, promoting reading, safety of oneself.
iv. Research service learning:
Surveys, studies, evaluations, experiments, data gathering, interviewing etc. to find and report
information on topics in the public interest. E.g. Water testing, flora and fauna studies.

EFFECT OF SERVICE LEARNING ON ENGINEERING EDUCATION

 Many engineering educators see service learning as the solution to several problems in
engineering education today.
 Recently, a change in engineering curriculum is done to focus more on practical aspects of
engineering.
 Educators see service learning as a way to both implement a constructivism in engineering
education as well as match the teaching styles to the learning styles of engineering students.
 As a result, many engineering schools have begun to integrate service learning into their
curricula and there is now a journal dedicated to emphasize the importance of service in
engineering.

5. CIVIC VIRTUES
 Virtues are positive and preferred values. Virtues are desirable attitudes or character traits,
motives and emotions that enable us to be successful and to act in ways that develop our
highest potential.
 Virtues are tendencies which include, solving problems through peaceful and constructive
means and follow the path of the golden mean between the extremes of ‘excess and
deficiency’. They are like habits, once acquired, they become characteristics of a person.
 Civic virtues are the moral duties and rights, as a citizen of the village or the country or an
integral part of the society and environment.
 An individual may exhibit civic virtues by voting, volunteering, and organizing welfare
groups and meetings.
 The duties are:
1. To pay taxes to the local government and state, in time.
2. To keep the surroundings clean and green.
3. Not to pollute the water, land, and air by following hygiene and proper garbage
disposal. For example, not to burn wood, tyres, plastic materials, spit in the open,
even not to smoke in the open, and not to cause nuisance to the public, are some of
the civic (duties) virtues.
4. To follow the road safety rules.
 On the other hand, the rights are:
1. To vote the local or state government
 2. To contest in the elections to the local or state government.
3. To seek a public welfare facility such as a school, hospital or a community hall or
transport or communication facility, for the residents.
4. To establish a green and safe environment, pollution free, corruption free, and to
follow ethical principles. People are said to have the right to breathe in fresh air, by
not allowing smoking in public.
5. People have inalienable right to accept or reject a project in their area. One has the
right to seek legal remedy, in this respect, through public interest petition.
George Washington embodied the civic virtues as indispensable for a self-governing administration.
These virtues are divided into four categories:
1. Civic Knowledge
 Citizens must understand what the Constitution says about how the government is working,
and what the government is supposed to do and what not to do.
 We must understand the basis of our responsibilities as citizens, besides duties and rights.
 We must be able to recognize when the government or another citizen infringes upon our
rights.
 It implies that the government requires the participation of the enlightened citizens, to serve
and survive.
2. Self-Restraint
 For citizens to live in a free society with limited government each citizen must be able to
control or restrain himself; otherwise, we would need a police state—that is, a dictatorial
government to maintain safety and order.
 He advocated for morality and declared that happiness is achieved and sustained through
virtues and morals.
 He advocated and demonstrated self-restraint several times in his private and public life, and
naturally he was a great leader.
3. Self-Assertion
 Self-assertion means that citizens must be proud of their rights, and have the courage to stand
up in public and defend their rights.
 Sometimes, a government may usurp the very rights that it was created to protect.
 In such cases, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government (e.g., voting
rights, rights call back).
4. Self-Reliance
 Citizens who cannot provide for themselves will need a large government to take care of
them.
 Once citizens become dependent on government for their basic needs, the people are no
longer in a position to demand that government act within the confines of the Constitution.
 Self-reliant citizens are free citizens in the sense that they are not dependent on others for
their basic needs.
 Only a strong self-reliant citizenry will be able to enjoy fully the blessings of liberty.

6. RESPECT FOR OTHERS

"The true measure of a man is how he treats you when others are not looking."
Showing other people respect is a critical part of maintaining important personal relationships.
Learning to respect people's efforts, abilities, opinions and quick will help keep us happy and
successful in our interpersonal life. Respecting ourself can help us move forward with the confidence
to make a habit of respect and share it with the people around us.
Respect for other individuals can be shown in many forms, but the following four ways may teach us
how to respect others’ opinions, also the need of self-respect in the society, in an organization,
wherever people being together while working, living, and when they meet publicly.
1. Showing gratitude
2. Respecting others opinions
3. Respecting our enemies
4. Respecting ourself.
1. Showing gratitude:
Thank people for their assistance and their support on a regular basis. It is important to
remember all the people who've helped us on your journey.
Show respect by saying thanks. Remember to thank our parents, siblings, co-workers, classmates,
friends, teachers, neighbours.
a) Remember to speak politely to everyone:
Compliment the achievements of others. When others are successful, draw attention to it and
celebrate their ability and their achievement. Learn to recognize when other people put forth extra
effort and achieve something and praise them for it with sincerity.
b) Be sincere:
Always be sincere in our every work, whether it is in our work place or home. Sincere work
definitely gets its reward one day. Sincerity is the first step among the steps to success in life.
c) Respect the abilities of others:
Try to recognize when someone is capable of doing something on his or her own and mind
our own business to show that person the respect he or she deserves.
2. Respecting others opinion:
a) Be a good listener:
Practice active listening to show people that we have respect for their opinions and ideas.
Watch and be quiet when someone else is talking and spend time thinking actively about what they're
saying.
b) Ask lots of questions:
To show respect for other people’s opinions, question them. Ask open-ended, leading
questions that show you're fully engaged with their ideas and that we are listening closely.
c) Learn about the perspectives of others:
Learning to empathize with other people who have very different experiences and
perspectives than our own will help us learn to show respect. Be proud of our own opinions and
perspectives, but don’t assume everyone feels the same way and avoid spotting them in an awkward
position.
d) Respectfully disagree:
When we have to dissent, do it calmly and by treating our conversation with tact. Respect the
perspective of the other person. Don’t insult their opinion or ideas, even if we disagree with them.
3. Respecting your enemies:
a) Don’t judge people before we get to know them:
Give people the benefit of the doubt, even people of whom we might have a bad first
impression.
b) Decide to like people:
It’s too easy to come up with reasons to dislike someone, to disrespect someone, or to dismiss
them. Decide to like them, and it'll be much easier to show respect.
c) Worry about our own backyard:
Don’t get mixed up in other people’s business and create unnecessary enemies.
4. Respecting ourself:
a) Take care of ourself:
To show respect for ourself, try and give ourself the same consideration that you give
everyone else.
b) Avoid self-destructive behaviours:
Drinking to excess on a regular basis or habitually self-deprecating ourself will tear us down
in mind and body. Try to work actively to build ourself up and surround ourself with encouraging,
enlightening, helpful people.
d) Stay healthy:
Make regular visits to the doctor to make sure we are healthy and fit. Exercise regularly and
eat well. Start developing easy routines, even walking a few miles a day or doing some light stretches
to get in touch with our body and maintain it. Cut out junk foods and eat a variety of nourishing foods.
 e) Be ambitious:
Develop plans for ourself and specific steps for carrying them out. Plot an upward trajectory
for ourself to keep ourself moving forward in life and staying satisfied. Show respect for ourself by
being the best version of ourself we can be.

7. LIVING PEACEFULLY

 The world of peace, purity and prosperity is usually remembered with words such as
paradise, heaven and so on. In the world of peace, human beings are like flowers, a
country is like a bouquet of flowers and the world is like a garden of flowers.
 To live peacefully one should install peace within self. Charity begins at home. Then one can
spread peace to family, organization where one works and then to the world including the
environment.
 Whatever may be the job or profession one should have good environment and working
atmosphere to do his job and carry out his responsibilities?
 The workers should have peaceful atmosphere at office as well as at home. The rules and
regulations must also be to a limited extent in order to make the atmosphere peaceful.
 The layout of the business /industries, security of the job and environment with safety are also
required for any professionals to live peacefully.
 Peace is inner silence filled with power of truth. Peace consists of pure thoughts, pure feelings
and wishes. When the energy of thought, word and action is balanced one is said to be in
peace.
 We should adopt the following means to live peacefully.
 Nurture
1. Discipline, duty and self regulation
2. Pure thoughts in ones soul
3. Creativity in one’s head
4. Beauty in ones heart
 GET
1. Good health/Body
 ACT
1. Not hurting and torturing others
 Helping the needy with head, heart and hands
The following are the factors that promote living peacefully
1. Healthy family situations and labor relations
2. Service to the needy with love and sympathy
3. Secured job and motivational speech.
4. Conductive environment.

8. CARING
 Caring is feeling for other. It is a process which exhibits the interest in the welfare of others
with fairness, impartiality and justice in all activities among the employees.
 It includes showing respect to the feeling of others.
 Caring is reflected in activities such as friendship, membership in social clubs and
professional societies and through various transactions in the family, fraternity, community,
country and in international councils.
Nowadays caring for the environment including the fauna and flora has become a necessity for our
survival.

9. SHARING
 Sharing is a process that describes the transfer of knowledge, experience, commodities and
facilities with others.
  The transfer should be genuine, legal, positive, voluntary and without any expectation in
return.
 Through sharing, experience, expertive, misdom and other benefits reach more people faster.
 As we all know, happiness is multiplied and suffering is reduced by sharing.
 Sharing paves the way for peace.
 Commercially speaking, the profit is maximized by sharing.
 Technologically the productivity and utilization are maximized by sharing.
 Code sharing is one of the best examples of sharing which improves productivity.

In the industrial arena, code-sharing in airlines for bookings on air travels and the common
Effluent Treatment Plant constructed for small-scale industries in the industrial estates, are some of
the examples of sharing. The co-operative societies for producers as well as consumers are typical
examples of sharing of the goods, profit and other social benefits.

One story to illustrate the importance of sharing is as follows:

The shouting...the screaming…the fighting. That was the breaking point for me as I poured
out my woes to my mother. “How can I get them to share as well as we did as kids?” I pleaded
Laughter was her reply. “Well, thanks a lot, mom,” I said. “I’m sorry,” she chuckled, “but you didn’t
always share.” She went on to explain about the “Box of Misbehaved Toys.” Every time we fought
over a toy, she would quietly take that and put it into the box.

Yes, I did remember that box. I also remember it wasn’t always fair since one person may
have caused all the commotion. But my mother was consistent. No matter what the reason for the
struggle was, the toy disappeared into the box for one week. No questions asked, and no chance of
parole.

My siblings and I soon learned that sharing a toy was better than losing it. Often, one person
would decide to just wait for a time when no one else was playing with the toy, rather than fight and
lose it. It was not a perfect system, but I tried it anyway That box was a shock to my kids and it was
close to full, within a few days…..As the weeks progressed, I noticed the box was emptier and the
arguing was less. Today, I heard quiet music to my ears as my son said to his sister, “That’s OK, you
can play with it.”

This story illustrates the worthy joy of sharing as compared to the pain of losing.

10. HONESTY
Honesty is a virtue and it is exhibited in two aspects namely
a)Truthfullness
b)Trustworthiness
a) Truthfulness is to face the responsibilities upon telling the truth. One should keep ones word or
promise. By admitting ones mistake committed, it is easy to fix them.
Reliable engineering judgement, maintenance of truth, defending the truth, and communicating the
truth only when it does good to others are some of the reflections of truthfulness.
b)Trustworthiness is maintain integrity and taking responsibility for personal performance. People
abide by law and live by mutual trust they build trust through reliability and [Link]
admit their own mistakes.
Honesty is mirrored in many ways. The common reflections are
a)Beliefs
b)Communication
c) Decision
d) Actions
e) Intended and unintended results achieved

Some of the actions of an engineer that leads to dishonesty are as follows.

1. Lying
It is giving wrong information to the right people.
2. Deliberate deception:
With insufficient data or proof, an engineer may judge or decide just to impress
customers or employers.
3. Withholding the information:
It means hiding the facts during communication to ones superior or subordinate
intentionally.
4. Not maintaining confidentiality:
It is giving right information to wrong people. The engineers should keep information
about the clients confidential and should not discuss them with others.
5. Giving professional judgment under the influence of extraneous factors such as personal benefits.

11. COURAGE
Courage in the tendency to accept and face risks and difficult tasks in rational courage is
classified into three types:

 Physical courage
 Social courage
 Intellectual courage
 In physical courage, the thrust is on the adequacy of the physical strength. People with high
adrenalin may be prepared to face thrilling challenges and will take excellent decisions.
 The social courage involves the changes in the decisions and actions, based on the conviction
for or against certain social behaviors. This requires leadership abilities and empathy to
motivate the followers, for the social cause.
 The intellectual courage is inculcated in people through acquired knowledge and experience.
 One should perform SWOT analysis, SWOT strength, weakness, opportunity and threat.
These will help anyone to face the future with courage.
 Opportunities and threat existing and likely to exist in future are also to be studied and
measures to be planned. This anticipatory management will help anyone to face the future
with courage.
 Facing the criticism, owing responsibility and accepting the mistakes are the expressions of
courage.
 For instance a fire-fighter courageously runs into a burning building because he or she is
protecting life and property. Part of his courage comes from his duty to his job and
community but the rest comes from a courageous instinct that kicks in.
 Ethics is more than just following a set of rules; it is a part of our deeply-held belief system
that makes-up the core of our character. It is worth stepping out in courage and making
personal sacrifices.

[Link] Dhawan, chief of ISRO was reported for his courage of owing responsibility when
the previous space mission failed, but credited Prof. [Link] Kalam when the subsequent mission
succeeded.

The courageous people own the following characteristics.

 Perseverance (sustained hard work)

 Experimentation (preparedness to face unexpected / unintended results)
 Involvement
 Commitment

12. VALUING TIME

 Time is rare resource. Once it is spent, it is lost forever. It cannot be stored or removed.
 The history of great reformers, innovators and achievers stressed the importance of time. The
proverbs “time and tide wait for nobody” and “procrastination is the chief of time” illustrates
this point.
 It refers to making the best use of time as time is always limited.
 Effective time management allows individuals to assign specific time slots to activities as per
their importance.
 An anecdote to highlight the value of time is as follows:
 To realize the value of one year, ask the student who has failed in the examinations.
 To realize the value of one month, ask the mother who has delivered a premature
baby.
 To realize the value of one week, ask the editor of weekly.
 To realize the value of one day, ask the daily wage labors.
 To realize the value of one hour, ask the lovers longing to meet.
 To realize the value of one minute, ask a person who has missed the train.
 To realize the value of one second, ask the person who has survived an accident.
 To realize the value of one millisecond, ask the person who has won the bronze
medal in Olympics.
 To realize the value of one microsecond, ask the NASA team of scientists.
 To realize the value of one nanosecond, ask a hardware engineer.
 So, as an engineer, we should realize the value of time.
 Time management includes the following activities:
 Effective planning of a task
 Setting goals and objectives
 Setting deadlines to finish your works
 Delegation of responsibilities
 Prioritizing activities as per their importance
 Spending the right time on the right activity

13. CO-OPERATION
 It is a team spirit present with every individual engaged in engineering.
 Willingness to understand others, think and act together and putting this into practice is
cooperation.
 It helps in minimizing the input resources and maximizes the output.
 Cooperation should be developed and maintained at several levels:
 Between the employers and employees
 Between the supervisors and sub ordinates
 Among the colleagues
 Between the producers and the suppliers
 Between it organization and its customers
 The absence of cooperation leads to lack of communication and delay between production
and supply. This leads to collapse of the industry over time and an economic loss to the
society.
 The various factors affecting successful co operation are
 Clash of ego of individuals
 Lack of leadership
 Conflicts of interests lack of interest

TYPES OF CO-OPERATION

 Direct Co-operation: it implies direct relationship among the individuals. In this type, people
do like things together. E.g.: playing together, working together, worship together, ploughing
the field together etc.
  Indirect Co-operation: here people do different tasks towards a similar end. Eg: in a college
the principal, lecturers, office assistants, accountants, typist, librarian perform different
functions but they make co-operative effort towards a common goal.

[Link] has divided co-operation into three types such as:

 Primary Co-operation: It is that type of Co-operation in which there is no selfish interest.

Every member works for the betterment of all.
 Secondary Co-operation: here individual co-operates with others for the achievement of
some selfish interests. Each may work in co-operation with others for his own status, power
and prestige.
 Tertiary Co-operation: different groups make mutual adjustments with each other under
certain compelling circumstances. It is purely voluntary in nature. People or groups co-
operate with each other according to their sweet will. The attitudes are very opportunistic and
selfish.

14. COMMITMENT
 Commitment means alignment to goals and adherence to ethical principles.
 A promise is also a form of commitment by someone to do or not do something.
 An ethical commitment is like a duty or a moral obligation.
 Commitment is the basic requirement for any profession
For example,
 A design engineer shall exhibit a sense of commitment to make his product as a beneficial
contribution to the society.
 Only when the teachers is committed to his job the students will succeed in life and contribute
good to the society
 The commitment of top management will naturally lead to committed employees. This is
bound to add wealth to oneself one’s employer society and the nation at large.

Organizational Commitment and Professional Commitment

Organizational Commitment:

 It is made up of more factors such as faith and acceptance of the organizations set of values
and objectives, employee’s wish to strive for the organization and a strong will to keep
working within it.
 It predicts work variables such as turnover, organizational citizenship behavior and job
performance.
 It can be contrasted with other work-related attitudes, such as job satisfaction, defined as an
employee’s feelings about their job, and organizational identification.

Professional Commitment:

 It signifies an attitude reflecting the strength of the bound between an employee and an
organization.
 Teaching is a profession which needs utmost commitment since a teacher not only teaches a
student the subjects also he/she train them to behave morally and mopuld them into a perfect
individual in a society.
 The quality on teaching depends on the level of teachers involvement in relation to the
profession exerted.

Three-component model of Organizational Commitment:

 In 1990, based on observations of several types of organizations. Meyer and Allen develop
“The model of three components of organizational commitment”
 Affective commitment
 Continuity commitment
  Normative commitment
 Affective commitment is based on the individual’s identification with and involvement in the
organization.
 It is an emotional commitment, where people that are in a great deal affectively connected to
an organization stay within it because they want to.
 Continuity commitment is based upon the material and psychological costs involved by
ones leaving the organization, people with such kind of commitment remaining within it
because they are compelled to do so.
 Normative commitment is based upon an ideology or a sense of obligation towards the
organization, on the individual’s moral belief that it is right and moral to continue within the
organization.
 People keep staying within an organization because they think they should. This feeling ob
obligation is the result of internalizing the norms exerted on the individual.

Organizational Commitment may be determined by two categories of factors:

 Individual ones: where we may include variables of inclinations like professional values,
type of personality and demographic variables such as age, gender, educational level, marital
status.
 Organizational factors such as structure of the job, type of organization, professional
experience etc.

15. EMPATHY
 Empathy is social radar. Sensing what others feel about, without their open talk, is the essence
of empathy.
 Empathy begins with showing concern, and then obtaining and understanding the feelings of
others, from others’ point of view.
 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.
This is an essential ingredient for good human relations and transactions.
 Empathy it is distinct from sympathy, pity and emotional contagion.
 To practice ‘Empathy’, a leader must have or develop in him, the following characteristics:
 Understanding others: It means sensing others feelings and perspectives, and taking
active interest in their welfare.
 Service orientation: It is anticipation, recognition and meeting the needs of the clients or
customers.
 Developing others: Getting the feedback, acknowledge the strength and then coach the
individual by giving correct feedback.
 Leveraging diversity: This leads to enhanced organizational learning, flexibility, and
profitability.
 Political awareness: It is the ability to read political and social currents in an
organization.
 The benefits of empathy include:
 Good customer relations (in sales and service, in partnering).
 Harmonious labor relations (in manufacturing).
 Good vendor-producer relationship (in partnering)
 Through the above three, we can maximize the output and profit, as well as minimizing the
loss.
 While dealing with customer complaints, empathy is very effective in realizing the unbiased
views of others and in admitting one’s own limitations and failures.
 According to Peter Drucker, purpose of the business is not to make a sale, but to make and
keep a customer. Empathy assists one in developing courage leading to success.
 TYPES OF EMPATHY:
 Affective empathy also called emotional empathy: the capacity to respond with an
appropriate emotion to another’s mental states.
 It is subdivided into following scales such as Empathic concern which means sympathy and
compassion for others in response to their suffering and personal distress which is a self-
centered feelings of discomfort and anxiety in response to another’s suffering.
 Cognitive empathy: the capacity to understand another’s perspective or mental state.
 It is subdivided into following scales such as Perspective taking which is a tendency to
spontaneously adopt others psychological perspectives and Fantasy which is a tendency to
identify with fictional characters.

16. SELF CONFIDENCE

 Certainty in one’s own capabilities values and goals in self confidence.

 These people are usually positive thinking flexible and willing to change. They respect others.
 Self confidence in positive attitude, where in the individual has some positive and realistic view of himself.
 People with self confidence exhibit courage and unshakable faith in their abilities, whatever may be their
positions.
 They are not influenced by threats and are prepared to face them for any unexpected consequences.
 The people with self confidence have the following characteristics:
 Self-assured standing
 Willing to listen and learn from others
 Frankness to speak the truth
 Respect others efforts
 On the contrary, some leaders expose others when failure occurs and own the credit when success comes.
The factors that shape self confidence in a person are
 Heredity and family environment
 Friendship
 Influence of superiors
 Training in the organization
 Self confidence or having belief in our self has been directly connected to an individual’s social
network, the activities they participate in, and what they hear about themselves from others.
 Positive factors of self confidence have been linked to factors such as psychological health, mattering
to others, and both body image and physical health.
 On the contrary, low confidence level in adolescents has been shown to be an important predictor of
unhealthy behaviours and psychological problems such as suicidal ideation later in life.
 Self confidence can vary and be served in a variety of dimensions. An individual’s self-confidence can
vary in different environments, such as home or in school/workplace.
 During adolescence confidence level of students is affected by age, race, ethnicity, puberty, health,
body, and weight, and body image, involvement in physical activities, gender presentation, and gender
identity. Components of one’s social and academic life affect their self-confidence.

STEPS TO BUILD OUR SELF-CONFIDENCE:

Step 1: Changing our perspective
 Identify our talents
 Take pride in our good qualities
 Recognize our insecurities and discuss it with our friends
 Bounce back from our mistakes
 Adapt a more positive mind-set
 Stop comparing our self to others
Step 2: Taking actions
  Accept compliments gracefully
 Help others
 Stick to our principles
 Get rid of as many sources of negativity as we can
 Make eye contact when we talk to people
 Put care into our appearance
Step 3: Continuing to build our confidence
 Avoid perfectionism since it paralyses us and keep us away from
attaining our goals.
 Always be thankful for what we have
 Address our own addressable flaws
 Spend time with people who make we feel good
 Live in the present moment – Yoga and meditation can help us live in the present moment
and to get more in touch with our mind body.

17. CHARACTER
Character is the combination of personal qualities that make each person unique. Teachers, parents
and community members help children build positive character qualities. For example, the six pillars
of character are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.
Ethics is the study of human actions. It deals with issues such as defining, “right and wrong” as well
as the grey area in between. Ethics seeks answers to questions like what is “good behaviour” and
what should be valued?
Schools often have character education programs that focus on the qualities of character that are
honoured by most cultures and traditions. Character education is the development of knowledge,
skills, and abilities that encourage children and young adults to make informed and responsible
choices.
Ethics are a philosophical reflection of moral beliefs and practices. The Greek and Roman
philosophers were particularly interested in discussions related to ethics. Religions and faiths each
have their own ethical systems to guide their people . Ethical decision making involves the
process of making informed decisions when faced with difficult dilemmas with many alternative
solutions.
Characteristics of Ethical people in the Workplace
Of the many characteristics that business looks for in candidates, ethics is one of the most important.
Human resources officials commonly seek individuals who possess highly defined ethics, as a
strong ethical base improves the likelihood that the worker is a productive. Many of the characteristics
associated with an ethical individual are desirable ones that hope to have in their workforce.
Honesty
Ethical workers value honesty and are honest at all cost. This means that they remain honest even
when being honest isn’t the easiest road to take.
For example, if an ethical employee makes a mistake, he does not lie about the situation in an attempt
to make himself seem less culpable. Having an employee who is overtly honest allows management
trust the employee more implicitly and reply upon him.
Responsibility
Workers who are take ethical responsibility seriously and do all them can to complete the tasks with
which they are charged.
Reliability
When ethical team members say they are going to do something, they follow through. They are
reliable at all times and can be trusted to complete projects of great importance.
Goal- Oriented
Ethical individuals are often goal-focused and able to dedicate themselves fully to their job tasks.
These individuals often recognize the importance of working to better them and improve the overall
success of their company; they are willing to work toward reaching potentially challenging goals.
Job-Focused
Ethical employees remain focused on their jobs at all times, not allowing themselves to become
distracted, as doing so pulls them away from the duties of their occupations. These individuals are
never found working on a task that is not related to the job in question; as they recognize that their on-
the –job is to be spent only doing job related tasks.

18. SPIRITUALITY

Spirituality is a process of personal transformation, either in accordance with traditional religious

ideals, or, increasingly, oriented on subjective experience and psychological growth independently of
any specific religious context.
In a more general sense, it may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity or blissful
experience. It still denotes a process of transformation, but in a context separate from organized
religious institutions, termed “spiritual but not religious”.
What is spirituality?
Spirituality has many definitions, but at its core spirituality helps to give our lives context. It’s not
necessarily connected to a specific belief system or even religious worship. Instead, it arises from our
connection with ourself and with others, development of our personal value system, and our search for
meaning in life.
For many, spirituality takes the form of religious observance, prayer, meditation or a belief in a higher
power. For others, it can be found in nature, music, art or a secular community. Spirituality is
different for everyone.
Meaning of spirituality
One of a great gift of spiritual knowledge is that it realigns our sense of self to something we may not
have even ever imagined was within us. Spirituality says that even if we think we are small and
limited, it simply isn’t so. We are greater and more powerful than we have ever imagined. A great and
divine light exist inside of us. This same light is also in everyone we know and in everyone we will
ever know in the future. We may think we are limited to just our physical body and state of affairs-
including our gender, race, family, job and status in life-but spirituality comes in and says “ There is
more than this”.
Notice that spirit sounds similar to words like inspire and expire. These are two of the main themes of
spiritual journey:
Inspiring spirituality: Allowing us to be filled with inspiration, this also translates into love, joy,
wisdom, peacefulness and service.
Expiring spirituality: Remembering that an inevitable expiration waits to take us away from the very
circumstance we may think are so very important right now.
Spirituality differs from religion
Although religion and spirituality are sometimes used interchangeably, they really indicate two
different aspects of the human experience. We might say that spirituality is the mystical face of
religion.
Spirituality is the wellspring of the divinity that pulsates, dances and flows as the source and essence
of every soul. Spirituality relates more to your personal search, to finding greater meaning and
purpose in your existence. Some elements of spirituality include the following:
 Looking beyond outer appearance to the deeper significance and soul of everything.
 Love and respect for god.
 Love and respect for ourself.
 Love and respect for everybody
Religion is most often used to describe an organized group or culture that has generally been
sparked by the fire of a spiritual or divine soul. Religions usually act with a mission and intention
 of presenting specific teaching and doctrines while nurturing and propagating a particular way of
life.
Spirituality is:
 Beyond all religions yet containing all religions.
 Beyond all science yet containing all science.
 Beyond all philosophy yet containing all philosophy.
Spirituality and stress relief
Some stress relief tools are very tangible: exercising more, eating healthy foods and talking with
friends. A less tangible but no less use useful way to find stress relief is through spirituality.
How can spirituality help with stress relief?
Spirituality has many benefits for stress relief and overall mental health.
Feel a sense of purpose. Cultivating your spirituality may help uncover what’s most meaningful in
your life. By clarifying what’s most important, you can focus less on the unimportant things and
eliminate stress.
Connect to the world. The more you feel you have a purpose in the world, the less solitary you feel
even when we are alone. This can lead to a valuable inner peace during difficult times.
Release control. When we feel part of a greater whole, we realize that we aren’t responsible for
everything that happens in life. We can share the burden of tough times as well as the joys of life’s
blessings with those around us.
Lead a healthier life. People who consider themselves spiritual appear to be better able to cope with
stress and heal from illness or addiction faster.
Discovering your spirituality
Uncovering your spirituality may take some self-discovery. Here are some questions to ask ourself to
discover what experiences and values define us:
 What are our important relationships?
 What do we value most in your life?
 What people give us a sense of community?
 What inspires us gives you hope?
 What brings us joy?
 What are our proudest achievements?
The answers to such questions help us identify the most important people and experiences in our life.
With this information, we can focus our search for spirituality on the relationships and activities in life
that have helped define us as a person and those that continue to inspire our personal growth.

19. INTRODUCTION TO YOGA AND MEDITATION FOR PERSONAL

EXCELLENCE AND STRESS MANAGEMENT

 Yoga and meditation when practiced together strengthen the mind body connection,
improving overall fitness and well being.
 Many styles of yoga combine meditation with the physical routines, which use controlled
breathing throughout the yoga poses.
 We can meditate without practicing yoga by simply relaxing, clearing our mind and
concentrating on controlled breathing. Both yoga and meditation, when used consistently,
have proven health benefits.

Benefits of practicing Yoga

1. Increased flexibility
 Yoga poses focus on stretching and lengthening the muscles.
 Increased flexibility will help us with daily movements such as lifting and
bending.
 2. Emotional boost
 Both yoga and meditation improve mental focus and provide a general
feeling of well being.
 In 2012, a study published in “Alternative Therapies in Health and medicine”
found yoga participants happy and peaceful. Meditation provides an
emotional boost through deep relaxation and it can be done anywhere. We
can give ourself an emotional boost by taking a 10 minute meditation break
right at our desk.

3. Better diet
 Studies suggest that practicing yoga improves fitness and body awareness,
leading to better eating habits. This in turn leads to increased self esteem and
the desire to take care of our body.

4. Improved health
 Adding yoga or meditation to our life will improve the quality of our life.
Improved health means we can participate in more physical activities and just
feel better in the things we do daily.

What is Meditation?

Meditation is a practice that has been associated with almost all religions and civilizations
across the world. Since it is so closely associated with religion, many people take meditation to be the
same thing as praying.

Benefits of Meditation

Meditation has two important benefits:

1. Meditation prevents stress from getting into the system.
2. Meditation releases accumulated stress that is in the system.

Both of these happen simultaneously, leaving one refreshed and joyful.

Physical Benefits of Meditation

With Meditation, the physiology undergoes a change and every cell in the body is filled with
more prana (energy). This result in joy, peace, enthusiasm as the level of prana in the body increases.
1. Lowers high blood pressure.
2. Reduces anxiety attacks.
3. Decreases any tension related pain such as tension headaches, ulcers, insomnia, muscle and
joint problems.
4. Increases serotonin production that improves mood and behavior.
5. Improves the immune system.
6. Increases the energy level as we gain an inner source of energy.

Mental Benefits of Meditation

Meditation brings the brainwave pattern into an Alpha state so that the mind becomes fresh,
delicate and beautiful.

With regular practice of meditation,

1. Anxiety decreases
2. Emotional stability improves
3. Creativity increases
4. Happiness increases
5. Intuition develops
 6. Gain clarity and peace of mind
7. Problems become smaller
8. Meditation sharpens the mind by gaining focus and expands through relaxation.
9. A sharp mind without expansion causes tension, anger and frustration.
10. An expanded consciousness without sharpness can lead to lack of action.
11. The balance of a sharp mind and expanded consciousness brings perfection.
12. Meditation makes us aware so that our inner attitude determines our happiness.

Other Benefits of Meditation

1. Emotional steadiness and harmony
It calms us whenever we feel overwhelmed, unstable or emotionally shut down.

2. Meditation brings harmony to the creation

3. Consciousness evolves
 With the assimilation of meditation into daily life, our consciousness evolves.
 As time goes on, we are able to experience the higher and refined states of
consciousness.
 When our consciousness evolves and expands, the disturbances in our life
become negligible. We start living in the moment and let go of the past.

4. Personal Transformation
 Meditation can bring about a true personal transformation. The questions that
arise in the mind are as follows:
1. What is the meaning of Life?
2. What is the purpose of Life?
3. What is this world?
4. What is love?
5. What is knowledge?

:
:
 As we live through answering them, we will witness that life is transformed to a
richer level.

Stress Management

 Modern life is full of stressful situations, fatigue from long hours and little sleep,
allergies, anxiety disorders etc.
 Regular yoga practice helps to reduce stress responses in our body, according to a
study in the 2010 issue of “Psychosomatic Medicine”.
 Meditation is also an effective stress reducer that is used to reduce anxiety, panic
disorders and agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder.
 The rest obtained by meditation is deeper than the rest obtained by sleep. The
deeper our rest, the more dynamic our activity would be.
 UNIT -2

ENGINEERING ETHICS

Introduction
Engineering ethics is the activity and discipline aimed at

(a) Understanding moral values that ought to guide engineering profession or practice,

(b) Resolving moral issues in engineering, and

(c) Justifying the moral judgments in engineering.

It deals with set of moral problems and issues connected with engineering. Engineering ethics is
defined by the codes and standards of conduct endorsed by engineering (professional) societies with
respect to the particular set of beliefs, attitudes and habits displayed by the individual or group.

Another important goal of engineering ethics is the discovery of the set of justified moral
principles of obligation, rights and ideas that ought to be endorsed by the engineers and apply them to
the concrete situations.

Engineering is the largest profession and the decisions and actions of engineers affect all of us in
almost all areas of our lives, namely public safety, health, and welfare.

SCOPE

The scope of engineering ethics is as follows:

a) Ethics of a workplace which involves the co-workers and employees in an organization.

b) Ethics is related to the product or work which involves the transportation, warehousing and use,
besides the safety of the end product and the environment outside the factory.

APPROACH

There are conventionally two approaches in the study of ethics:

1. Micro ethics-Which deals with decision and problems of individuals, professionals, and companies.

2. Macro ethics-Which deals with the societal problems on a regional/national level.

For example: Global issues, collective responsibilities of groups such as professional societies and
consumer groups.

1. Sense of Engineering Ethics

There are two different senses (meanings) of engineering ethics, namely

 Normative sense
 Descriptive sense.

The normative sense includes the following:

1. Knowing moral values, finding accurate solutions to moral problems and justifying moral judgments
in engineering practices,

2. Study of decisions, policies, and values that are morally desirable in the engineering practice and
research, and

3. Using codes of ethics and standards and applying them in their transactions by engineers.

The Descriptive sense-refers to what specific individual or group of engineers believe and act, without
justifying their beliefs or actions.

2. Variety of Moral Issues

Engineering disasters draw the attention and caution about compromising safety beyond the level of
acceptable risk. Examples are as follows,

 Challenger explosion,
 Accident at nuclear plants and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island ,
 Accident at Chemical plant at Bhopal,
 The Exxon Valdez oil spill,
 Natural disasters such as earthquakes in Gujarat and Iran,
 Indiscriminate us of asbestos.

Micro-Ethics: Typical and everyday problems in an engineer’s life or an entire engineering office.

Macro-Ethics: Societal problems which are not addressed until they unexpectedly resurface on a
regional or national scale.

Major ethical issues:

The decision to report to higher authorities demands careful judgement about the nature of the moral
problems and about the consequences of such a decision. Some of the examples are as follows,

 A junior engineer on a building site was given the task of developing plans, which should be
checked by a senior. But the plans were not checked and simply stamped and sent for work. The junior
engineer reported this to his immediate superior but he dismissed the protest. Where the junior engineer
should should go now?
 A civil engineer frequently walked through a building site for which he had no responsibility but
noted several problems with safety and with the quality of work. What should he do?
 A senior consultant engineer who followed the correct procedures in the development of major
city center building has come to know that there were serious design faults in the foundation of the
building. What should he do?

These few cases demonstrate that the critical issues are involved. The need to report may involve
criticism of the actions of colleagues of an organization.

 Whose responsibility is it to report to higher authorities?

 What will be the effects on the professional, his family and career, on the organization, etc.?
 Are there any alternatives to such reporting?
To whom he should report-to his professional body, to government, to senior management, to concerned
pressure groups or to the press.

The principal features of such reporting are as follows,

 The information is conveyed outside approved organizational channels and the person may be
under pressure from supervisor not to report it.
 The information sent to a group may be new to them
 The information may be a significant moral problem concerning the organization. For example,
Criminal behavior, injustice to workers, threats to public safety etc.,

Analysis of issue in ethical problems:

The first step in solving any ethical problem is to completely understand all the issues involved.

Once these issues are determined, a solution to the problem becomes apparent.

The issues involved in understanding ethical problems can be split into three categories,

 Normative
 Factual
 Conceptual

The reasons for people including the employers and employees, behaving unethically may be classified
into three categories:

1. Resource Crunch:

Due to pressure, through time limits, availability of money or budgetary constraints, and technology
decay or obsolescence.

Pressure from the government to complete the project in time (e.g., before the elections), reduction in
the budget because of sudden war or natural calamity (e.g., Tsunami) and obsolescence due technology
innovation by the competitor led to manipulation and unsafe and unethical execution of projects.

Involving individuals in the development of goals and values and developing policies that allow for
individual diversity, dissent, and input to decision –making will prevent unethical results.

2. Opportunity:

(a) Double standards or behavior of the employers towards the employees and the public.

(b) Management projecting their own interests more than that of their employees. Some organizations
over-emphasize short-term gains and results at the expense of themselves and others.

(c)Emphasis on results and gains at the expense of the employees,

(d) Management by objectives, without focus on empowerment and improvement of the infrastructure.

3. Attitude:

Poor attitude of the employees set in due to

(a) Low morale of the employees because of dissatisfaction and downsizing,

(b) Absence of grievance redressal mechanism,

(c) Lack of promotion or career development policies or denied promotions,

(d) Lack of transparency,

(e) Absence of recognition and reward system, and

(f) Poor working environment

Giving ethics training for all, recognizing ethical conduct in work place, including ethics in performance
appraisal, and encouraging open discussion on ethical issues, are some of the directions to promote
positive attitudes among the employees

To get firm and positive effect, ethical standards must be set and adopted by the senior management,
with input from all personnel.

3. Types of Inquiries
Engineering ethics combines inquiries into values, meanings, and facts.

 Normative inquiries, which are most central, seek to identify the values that should guide
individuals and groups.
 Conceptual inquiries seek to clarify important concepts or ideas, whether the ideas are
expressed by single words or by statements and questions.
 Factual or descriptive inquiries seek to provide facts needed for understanding and resolving
value issues.

Normative Inquiries

 Engineering ethics involves normative inquiries aimed at identifying and justifying the morally
desirable norms or standards that ought to guide individuals or groups.
 Normative questions are about what ought to be and what is good. Some examples of normative
questions:
(i) How far does the obligation of engineers to protect public safety extended in given
situations?
(ii) When, if ever, should engineers be expected to blow the whistle on dangerous practices of
employers for whom they work?
(iii) Whose values ought to be primary in making judgements about acceptable risks in a design
for a public transport system: those of management, senior engineers, government, voters, or
some combination of these?
(iv) Which particular laws and organizational procedures affecting engineer are morally
warranted?
(v) What moral rights should engineers be recognized as having in order to help them fulfill their
professional obligations?
For these practical questions, normative inquiries have the theoretical goal of justifying
particular moral judgement.
Conceptual Inquiries

Conceptual inquiries are directed toward the clarifying the meaning of concepts, principles, and issues in
engineering ethics. For example,

(i) What does “safety” mean and how is it related to idea of “risk”?
(ii) What does it mean when codes of ethics say engineers should “protect the safety, health and
welfare of the public”?
(iii) What is a bribe?
(iv) What is a profession and what defines professionals?

Conceptual issues have to do with the meaning or applicability of an idea.

In engineering ethics, this might mean defining what constitutes a bribe as opposed to an acceptable
gift, or determining whether certain business information is proprietary.

In the case of bribe, the value of the gift is probably a well-known fact. What is not known is
whether accepting it will lead to unfair influence on a business decision. For example, conceptually it
must be determined if the gift of tickets to a sporting event by a potential supplier of parts for your
projects is meant to influence your decision or just is a nice gesture between friends. Of course, like
factual issues, conceptual issues are not always clear-cut and will often result in controversy.

Once the factual and conceptual issues have been resolved, at least to the extent possible, all that
remains is to determine which moral principle is applicable to the situation. Resolution of moral issues is
often more obvious. Once the problem is defined, it is usually clear which moral concept applies and the
correct decision becomes obvious. In our example of a “gift” offered by a sales representative, once it is
determined whether it is simply a gift or is really a bribe, then the appropriate action is obvious. If we
determine that it is indeed a bribe, then it cannot ethically be accepted.

Factual Inquiries

Factual inquiries – also called descriptive inquiries- seek to uncover information bearing upon value
issues.

Where possible, researchers attempt to conduct factual inquiries using proven scientific techniques.

They provide important information about the business realities of contemporary engineering
profession, the effectiveness of professional societies in fostering moral conduct, the procedures used in
making risk assessments, and psychological an understanding of the background conditions that
generate moral problems.

It is also enables us to deals realistically with alternative ways of resolving those problems. Factual
inquiries involve what is actually known about a case, i.e., what the facts are. Although this concept
seems straightforward, the facts of a particular case are not always clear and may be controversial. An
example of facts that are not necessarily clear can be found in the controversy in contemporary society
regarding abortion rights. There is great disagreement over the point at which life begins, and at which
point a fetus can be legally protected.

In engineering, there are controversies over facts as well. For example, global warming is of great
concern to society as we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases, such
as carbon dioxide, trap heat in atmosphere. This is thought to lead to a generalized warming of the
atmosphere as emissions from automobiles and industrial plants increase the carbon dioxide
concentration in the atmosphere. This issue is of great importance to engineers since they might be
required to design new products, or redesign old ones to comply with stricter environmental standards, if
this warming effect indeed proves to be a problem.

However, the global warming process is only barely understood and the need to curtail emission of
these gases is a controversial topic. If it were known exactly what the effects of emitting greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere would be, the engineer’s role in reducing this problem would be clearer.

4. Moral Dilemmas
Ethical dilemmas or moral dilemmas are situation in which moral reasons come into conflict, or in
which the applications of moral values are problematic, and it is not immediately obvious what should
be done.

Examples

Case study 1:

Generally, Justice is defined as speaking the truth and paying one’s debts. Socrates quickly refutes this
account by suggesting that it would be wrong to repay certain debts – for example, to return a borrowed
weapon to a friend who is not in his right mind. Now there is a conflict between two moral norms:

(i) Repaying one’s debts

(ii) Protecting others from harm.

And in this case, Socrates maintains that protecting others from harm is the norm that takes priority.

Case study 2:

When the Sartre’s student is informed that his brother had been killed in the German offensive, he
wanted to avenge his brother and to fight forces that he regarded as evil.

But the student’s mother was living with him, and he was her consolation in life. The student believed
that he had conflicting obligations. Sartre describes him as being torn between two kinds of morality;
one of the limited scopes but certain efficacy, personal devotion to his mother; the other of much wider
scope but uncertain efficacy, attempting to contribute to the defeat of an unjust aggressor.

Concept of Moral Dilemma

What is common to the two well-known cases is conflict. In each case, an agent regards herself
as having moral reasons to do each of two actions, but doing both actions is not possible. Ethicist has
called situations like these moral dilemmas.

The crucial features of a moral dilemma are these:

(i) The agent is required to do each of two actions;

(ii) The agent can do each of the actions; but the agent cannot do both of the actions.
 The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what she does, she will do something
wrong.

It is more important to protect people from harm than to return a borrowed weapon. And in any case, the
borrowed item can be returned later, when the owner no longer poses a threat to others. Thus, in this
case we can say that the requirement to protect others from serious harm overrides the requirement to
repay one’s debts by returning a borrowed item when it’s owner so demands.

When one of the conflicting requirements overrides the other we do not have a genuine moral
dilemma. In order to have a genuine moral dilemma, it must be true that neither of the conflicting
requirements be overridden.

Problems

The conflicts in both the case studies arose because there is more than one moral precept. More than one
precept sometimes applies to the same situation, and in some of these cases the precepts demand
conflicting actions. One obvious solution here would be to arrange the precepts hierarchically.

However, there are at least two problems with this obvious solution.

1. First it just does not seem credible to hold that moral rules and principles should be
hierarchically ordered. While the requirements to keep one’s promises and to prevent harm to
others can clearly conflict with each other, it is far from clear that one of these requirements
should always prevail over the other. In case study 1, the obligation to prevent harm is clearly
stronger.
2. The second problem with this easy solution is deeper. Even if it were plausible to arrange
moral precepts hierarchically, situations can arise in which the same precept gives rise to
conflicting obligations. To illustrate this, let us consider case study 3.

Case study 3:

Sophie and her two children are at a Nazi concentration camp. A guard confronts Sophie and
tells her that one of her children will be allowed to live and one will be killed. But it is Sophie who must
decide which child will be killed.

Sophie can prevent the death of either of her children, but only by condemning the other to be
killed. The guard makes the situation even more excruciating by informing Sophie that if she chooses
neither, then both will be killed. With this added factor, Sophie has a morally compelling reason to
choose one of her children. But for each child, Sophie has an apparently equally strong reason to save
him or her. Thus the same moral precept gives rise to conflicting obligations. These cases are termed as
symmetrical.

Dilemmas and Consistency

What is troubling is that theories that allow for dilemmas fail to be uniquely action-guiding. A theory
can fail to be uniquely action guiding in either of two ways:

 By not recommending any action in a situation that is moral

Or
  By recommending incompatible actions.

Theories that generate genuine moral dilemmas fail to be uniquely action-guiding.

Moral Residue

In case study-1, suppose the student joins the Free French forces. It is likely that he will experience
remorse or guilt for having abandoned his mother.

Suppose if he is staying with his mother and not joined the Free French forces, he also would have
appropriately experienced remorse or guilt.

Thus, the agent faces a genuine moral dilemma.

In case study- 3, no matter which of her children Sophie saves, she will experience enormous guilt for
the consequences of that choice.

In these cases, proponents of the argument from moral residue must claims that four things are true.

(1) When the agent acts, she experiences remorse or guilt;

(2) That she experiences these emotions is appropriate and called for;

(3) Had the agent acted on the other of the conflicting requirements, she would also have experienced
remorse or guilt;

(4) In the latter case, these emotions would have been equally appropriate and called for.

In these situations, then remorse or guilt will be appropriate no matter what the agent does, and these
emotions are appropriate only when the agent has done something wrong. Therefore, these situations are
genuinely dilemmatic.

Types of Moral Dilemmas

One distinction is between epistemic conflicts and ontological conflicts.

Epistemic conflicts: It involves conflicts between two moral requirements and the agent does not know
which of conflicting requirements takes precedence in her situation. Everyone concedes that there can be
situations where one requirement does take priority over the other with which in conflicts, though at the
time action is called for, it is difficult for the agent to tell which requirements prevails.

Ontological conflicts: These are conflicts between two moral requirements, and neither is overridden.
This is not simply because the agent does not know which requirement is stronger-neither is. Genuine
moral dilemmas are ontological.

Another distinction is between self-imposed moral dilemmas and dilemmas imposed on an agent by the
world, as it were.

Self-imposed moral dilemmas: This conflict arises because of the agent’s wrongdoing. If an agent made
two promises that he knew were in conflict, then, throw his own actions he created a situations in which
it is not possible for him to discharge both of his requirements.
Dilemmas imposed on the agent by the world: It does not arise because of the agent’s wrongdoing.

E.g Sophie’s choice of selecting one child.

Yet another distinction is between obligation dilemmas and prohibition dilemmas.

Obligation dilemmas: These are situations in which more than one feasible action is obligatory.

E.g. Sartre’s student

Prohibition dilemmas: These are the cases in which all feasible actions are forbidden.

E.g. Sophie’s choice

5. Moral Autonomy
Moral autonomy is defined as, decisions and actions exercised on the basis of moral concern for
other people and recognition of good moral reasons. Alternatively, moral autonomy means ‘self
determinant or independent’.

The autonomous people hold moral beliefs and attitudes based on their critical reflections rather
than on passive adaption of the conventions of the society or profession. Moral autonomy may also be
defined as skill and habit if thinking rationally about the ethical issues, on the basis of moral concern.

Viewing engineering as social experimentation will promote autonomous participation and retain one’s
professional identity. Periodical performance appraisals, tight-time schedules and fear of foreign
competition threatens this autonomy.

It appears that the blue-collar workers with the support of the union can adopt better autonomy than the
employed professionals. Some of the instances are as below;

(i) A steel plant worker who refused to dump oil into a river in an unauthorized manner was
threatened with dismissal, but his union saw to it that the threat was never carried out.
(ii) In the case of automobile plant inspector who repeatedly want his supervisors about poorly
welded panels that allowed carbon monoxide from the exhaust to leak into the cab. Receiving
no satisfactory response from the company, he blew the whistle. The company wanted to fire
him, but pressure from the union allowed him to keep his job.

Only recently the legal support has been obtained by the professional societies in exhibiting moral
autonomy by professionals in this country as well as in the west.

The engineering skills related to moral autonomy are listed as follows:

1. Proficiency in recognizing moral problems in engineering and ability to distinguish as well as relate
them to problems in law, economics, and religion,

2. Skill in comprehending clarifying and critically assessing arguments on different aspects of moral
issues.

3. Ability to form consistent and comprehensive view points based on facts,

4. Awareness of alternate response to issues and creative solutions for practical difficulties,
5. Sensitivity to genuine difficulties and subtleties, including willingness to undergo and tolerate some
uncertainty while making decisions,

6. Using rational dialogue in resolving moral conflicts and developing tolerance of different perspectives
among morally reasonable people, and

7. Maintaining moral integrity

 Autonomy which is the independence in making decisions and actions is different from
authority.
 Authority provides freedom for action, specified within limits, depending on the situation.
 Moral autonomy and respect for authority can coexist. They are not against each other.
 If the authority of the engineer and the moral autonomy of the operator are in conflicts, a
consensus is obtained by the two, upon discussion and mutual understanding their limits.

6. Moral Development Theories

1. KOHLBERG THEORY:

Moral development in human being occurs average and experience. Kohlberg’s suggested there are
three levels of moral development, namely:

 Pre-conventional,
 Conventional, and
 Post-conventional,

Based on the type of reasoning and motivation of the individuals in response to moral questions.

In the pre-conventional level, right conduct for an individual regarded as whatever directly benefits
oneself.

At this level, individuals are motivated by obedience or the desire to avoid punish mentor to satisfy
their own needs or by the influence by power on them. All young children exhibit this tendency.

At the conventional level, people respect the law and authority. Rules and norms of one’s family or
group or society is accepted, as the standard of morality.

Individuals in this level want to please or satisfy, and get approval by others and to meet the
expectations of the society rather than their self interest (e.g., good boy, good girl). Loyalty is
regarded s most important. Many adults do not go beyond this level.

At the post-conventional level, people are called autonomous. They think originally and want to
live by universally good principles and welfare of others. They have them do unto you’. They
maintain moral integrity, self-interest.

They live by principled conscience. They follow the golden rule, ‘Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you’. They maintain moral integrity, self-respect and respect for others.
Kohlberg believed that individuals could only progress through these stages, one stage at a time. He
believed that most of the moral development occurs through social interactions.

Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development:

Level Stage Social orientation

Pre-Conventional 1 Obedience and punishment
2 Individualism ,Instrumentalism, and Exchange
Conventional 3 Good boy/Good girl
4 Law and order
Post-Conventional 5 Social contract
6 Principled conscience

Moral development Kohlberg’s stage theory:

Approximate age range Stage Substages

Birth to 9 Pre - Avoid punishment
Conventional Gain reward
Age 9 to 20 Conventional Gain Approval and avoid disapproval
Duty and guilt
Age 20 + and may be never Post- Agreed upon rights
Conventional Personal moral stands

2. GILLIGAN’S THEORY

Carol Gilligan found that Kohlberg‘s theory had a strong male bias.

 According to Gilligan’s studies, men had a tendency to solve problems by applying abstract
moral principles.
 Men were found to resolve moral dilemma by choosing the most important moral rule,
overriding rules.
 In contrast, women gave importance to preserve personal relationships with all the people
involved.
 The context oriented emphasis on maintaining personal relationships was called the ethics of
care, in contrast with the ethics of rules and rights adopted by men.
 Gilligan revised the three levels of moral development of Kohlberg, as stages of growth
towards ethics of caring.

Gilligan’s stages of cognitive development

Approximate age Stage Goal

range
Not listed Pre-Conventional Goal is individual survival

Transition is from selfishness to responsibility to others

Not listed Conventional Self sacrifice is goodness

 Transition is from goodness to truth that she is a person too

May be never Post-Conventional Principle of nonviolence- Do not hurt others or

self

The pre conventional level, which is same as that of Kohlberg’s first one, right conduct, is
viewed in a selfish manner solely as what is good for oneself.

The second level called conventional level, the importance is on not hurting others, and willing
to sacrifice one’s own interest and help others. This is the characteristic feature of women.

At the post conventional level, a reasoned balance is found between caring about others and
pursuing the self interest. The balance one’s own need and the needs of others, is aimed while
maintaining relationship based on mutual caring. This is achieved by context-oriented reasoning,
rather than by hierarchy of rules.

The theories of moral development by Kohlberg and Gilligan differ in the following respects.

Kohlberg’s theory Carole Gilligan’s theory

A .Basic aspects
Is based on the study on men Is based on the study of both men and women.
Men give importance to moral rule. Women always want to keep up the personal
relationships with all the persons involved in the
situations.
Ethics of roles and rights. Women give attention to circumstance leading to
critical situations rather than rules.
(context-oriented and ethics of care)
B .Characteristic feature
Justice Reasons
Factual Emotional

Right or Wrong Impact on Relationship

Logic Only Compassion too

Logic and Rule based Caring and Concern

Less of Caring More of Caring

Matter of Fact(Practical) Abstract

Present Focus Future Focus

Strict Rules Making Exceptions

Independence Dependence

Rigid Human Oriented

Taking a Commanding Role Shying away from Decision Making

Transactional Approach Transformational Approach

The difference in these two theories is explained through the well known examples

HEIN’S DILEMMA:

Hein being poor and debtor could not buy the costly medicine for his sick wife, at 10 times the
normal cost. Initially he begged the pharmacist to sell at half the price or allow him to pay for it
later. Pharmacist refuse to oblige him either way finally he forcibly enter the pharmacy and stole the
drug.

According to Kohlberg study men observed that the theft was morally ‘wrong’ at the conventional
level, because the property right was violated.

But men at the post –conventional level, concluded that the theft was ‘right’, as the life of the human
being was in danger.

But women observed that Hein was wrong. They observed that instead of stealing the could have
tried other solutions (threatening or payment in installments?) to convince the pharmacist. Gilligan
however attributed the decision by women as context-oriented and not on the basis of rules ranked in
the order of priority.

7. Consensus and Controversy

Consensus and controversy are factors relevant to moral autonomy.

Consensus-means agreement.

Controversy- means conflict/disagreement.

Many reasonable solutions are possible to given ethical problem. The ethics make the engineers
realize the importance of tolerance among the agreement and disagreement over a problem.

8. Models of Professional Roles

 Promotion of public good is the primary concern of the professional engineers.
 There are several role models to whom the engineers are attracted. These models provoke their
thinking, attitudes and actions.
1. Savior:
 As a Savior, the engineers save the society from poverty, illiteracy, wastage,
inefficiency, ill health, human dignity and lead it to prosperity through technological
development and social planning.
Eg. [Link]
2. Guardian:
He guards the interest of the poor and general public. As one who is conversant
with technology development, he is given the authority to determine what is best suited to
the society.
Eg. Lawrence of Arabia.

3. Bureaucratic servant:
He serves the organization and the employers. The management of an enterprise
fixes its goals and assigns the job of problem solving to the engineer, who accepts the
challenge and shapes them into concrete achievements.
Eg. Jamshedji Tata
4. Social servant:
It is one who exhibits social responsibility. The engineer translates the interest
and aspirations of the society into a reality.
Eg. Sir [Link]
5. Social Enabler and Catalyst:
One who changes the society through technology. The engineer must assist the
management and the society to understand their needs and make informed decisions on
the desirable technological development and minimize the negative effects of technology
on people and their living environment. Thus, he shines as a social enabler and a catalyst
for further growth.
Eg. Sri Sundarlal Bahuguna
6. Game Player:
He is neither a servant nor master. An engineer is an assertive player, not a passive player
who may carry out his master’s voice. He plays a unique role successfully within the
organization, enjoying the excitement of the profession and having the satisfaction of
surging ahead in a competitive world.
Eg. Narayanamurthy, Infosys and [Link], ISRO

PROFESSION

Profession-is defined as any occupation/job/vocation that requires advanced expertise, self

regulation. It brings high status, socially and economically.

The characteristics of profession are:

 Advanced expertise
 Self regulation
 Public good

Professional-relates to person or any work that a person does on profession, and it requires
expertise, self regulation and results in public good. The term professional mean a ‘person’ as well
as a ‘status’.
Professionalism- is the status of the professional which implies certain attitudes or typical qualities
that are expected to be a professional.

The criteria for achieving and sustaining professional status or professionalism are:

1. Advanced Expertise:

The Expertise includes sophisticated skills and theoretical knowledge in exercising judgment. This
means a professional should analyze the problem in specific known area, in an objective manner.

2. Self-Regulation:

One should analyze the problem independent of self-interest and direct to a decision towards the
best interest of the clients/customers .autonomous judgment is expected. In such situations, the codes
of conduct of professional societies re followed s guidance.

3. Public Good:

One should not be a mere paid employee of an individual or a teaching college or manufacturing
origination, to execute whatever the employer wants one to do. The job should be recognized by the
public. The concerted efforts in the job should be towards promotion of the welfare, safety, and
health of the public.

CHARACTERISTICS:

The characteristics of the ‘profession’ as distinct from ‘non professional’ occupation’ are listed as
follows:

1. Extensive training:

Entry into the profession requires an extensive period of training of intellectual (competence) and
moral (integrity) character.

The theoretical base is obtained through formal education, usually in an academic institution.

It may be a Bachelor degree from a college or university or an advanced degree conferred by

professional schools.

2. Knowledge and skills:

Knowledge and skills (competence) are necessary for the well-being of the society.

 Knowledge of the physicians protects us from disease and restores health.

 The lawyer’s knowledge is useful when we are sued of a crime, or if our business in to be
merged or closed or when we buy a property.
 The chartered accountant’s knowledge is important for the success of recording financial
transactions or when we file the income return.
The knowledge, study, and research of the engineers re required for the safety of the airplane, for the
technological advances and for national defense.

3. Monopoly:

The monopoly control is achieved in two ways:

(a) The profession convinces the community that only those who have graduated from the
professional school should be allowed to hold the professional title. The profession also gains the
control over professional schools by establishing accreditation standards
(b) By persuading the community to have a license, they are liable to pay penalties.

4. Autonomy in workplace:

Professional engaged in private practice have considerable freedom in choosing their clients or
patients.

Even the professionals working in large organizations exercise a large degree of impartiality,
creativity and discretion (care with decision and communication)in carrying their responsibilities.
Besides this, professionals are empowered with certain rights to establish their autonomy.

Accordingly physicians must determine the most appropriate medical treatment for their patients and
lawyers must decide on the most successful defense for their clients .The possession of specialized
knowledge is thus a powerful defense of professional autonomy.

5. Ethical Standards:

Professional societies promulgate the codes of conduct to regulate the professionals against
their abuse or any unethical decisions and actions (impartiality, responsibility) affecting the
individuals or grouper the society.

9. Theories about Right action

There are four ethical theories, each differing based on the moral concept involved.

 Utilitarianism seeks to produce the most utility, defined as a balance between good and bad
consequences of an action, taking into account the consequences for everyone affected.
 Duty Ethics contends that there are duties that should be performed regardless of whether
these acts lead to the most good.
 Rights Ethics emphasizes that we all have moral rights, and any action that violates these
rights is ethically unacceptable. Like duty ethics, Rights Ethics also do not take into account,
the overall good of the actions.
 Virtue Ethics regards those actions as right that manifests good traits (virtues) and regards
those actions as bad that display bad traits (vices).

[Link]

 The emphasis in Utilitarianism is not on maximizing the well being of the individual but rather
on maximizing the well being of the society.
  Thus it is somewhat a collectivist approach.
Eg. Building of Dams
 Dams often lead to great benefit to society by providing stable supplies of drinking water, flood
control and recreational approaches.
 However, these benefits come at the expense of people who live in areas that will be flooded by
the dam and are required to find new homes.
 Utilitarianism tries to balance the needs of society with the needs of the individual.

Two problems associated with Utilitarianism

 In the example of building a dam, what is best for everyone may be bad for a particular
individual or group of individuals.
 Frequently, it is impossible to know exactly what the consequences of an action are. It is often
impossible to know exactly what are the possible outcomes, especially when humans are
involved as subjects of the experiments.

So, maximizing the benefit to society involves guess work and if the guess goes wrong, it would end up
in major risk.

Despite these problems, Utilitarianism is a very valuable tool for ethical problem solving.

Act Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Right Utilitarianism

 Act Utilitarianism focuses on individual actions rather than on rules.

The most common rules are “don’t steal, be honest and don’t harm others” etc.
[Link] felt that individual actions should be judged based on the most good was
a produced and nothing wrong if the rule can also be broken.
 Rule Utilitarianism differs from act utilitarianism as it holds that moral rules are the most
important.
Rule Utilitarians contend that, although adhering to these rules might not always
maximize good in a particular situation, overall, adhering to moral rules will
ultimately lead to the most good.

Cost – Benefit Analysis :

It is an application of utilitarianism. In Cost – Benefit Analysis, the costs of the project as well as
the benefits out of it are assessed. The projects with the highest ratio of benefits to costs alone can be
implemented.

2. Duty Ethics

 Duty Ethics was proposed by Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804).

 The list of duties are
  Be honest
 Be fair to others
 Do not cause suffering to other people.
 These actions should be our duties as they express respect for persons.
3. Rights Ethics
 Right Ethics was formulated by John Locke (1632 – 1704).
 It holds that people have fundamental rights that other people have a duty to
respect.
 Duty Ethics and Rights Ethics are just two sides of the same coin.
 In duty ethics, people have duties, an important one of which is to protect the
rights of others.
 In right ethics, people have fundamental rights that others have duties to protect.

Two Problems with duty and rights ethics

 The basic rights of one person may conflict with the basic rights of another group.
Eg. Building of a dam.
 If people’s land happens to be in the way of a proposed dam, people have rights to own their
property. This is sufficient to stop the dam project.
 Hence rights and duty ethics do not resolve the conflict. In this case, utilitarian approach of
trying to determine the most good can be applicable.

Duty and rights ethics always gives importance to the good of a single individual. It does not
consider the overall good for society.

4. Virtue ethics:

This emphasizes on the character rather than the rights or duties. The character is the pattern of
virtues. The theory advocated by Aristotle, stressed on the tendency to act at proper balance between
extremes of conduct, emotion, desire, attitudes to find the golden mean between the extremes of excess
and deficiency.

The examples shown below illustrate the theory,

Virtue Excess Golden mean Deficient

Truthfulness(governs Revealing all in Necessary and Secretive
communication) violation of tact and sufficient to proper
confidentiality person.
Courage(face danger, Roguishness, bold Firm and humble Cowardice
risk)
Generosity (Giving) Wasting resources Give in appropriate Miserly
measure
Friendliness(governs Without anger, effusive Within decent limits Bad tempered
relationship)
Green environment Exploitation Protection Neglect
Work and earn Tiresome work Balance of work and Lazy on work
leisure
 On the other hand, the virtue ethics highlighted on the action aimed at achieving common good
and social good such as social justice, promotion of health, creation of useful and safe technological
product and services.

Five types of virtues that constitute responsible professionalism are as follows,

 Public spirited virtues,

 Proficiency virtues,
 Team work virtues
 Self governance virtues
 Cardinal virtues

Which theory to use?

In solving ethical problems, we do not have to choose from these theories.

Rather, we can use all of them to analyze a problem from different angles and see what result
each of the theories gives us.

This allows us to examine a problem from different perspectives to see what conclusion each one
reaches. Frequently, the result will be the same even though the theories are very different.

For e.g. Discharge of waste from chemical plant.

 Consider a chemical plant near a small city that discharges a hazardous waste into the ground
water.
 If the city takes its water from wells, significant health problems for the community may result.
 Rights ethics indicates that this pollution is unethical since it causes harm to many of the
residents.
 A utilitarian analysis also comes to the same conclusion since the benefits of the community is
of main concern here.
 Virtue ethics say that discharging wastes into ground water is irresponsible and harmful to
individuals and so should not be done.
 In this case, all the ethical theories lead to the same conclusion.

10. Uses of Ethical theories

Ethical theories have three important uses.

 Resolving moral dilemmas

 Justifying moral obligations
 Relating professional and ordinary morality

(i) Resolving moral dilemmas

 Ethical theories help to resolve moral dilemmas.
 Virtue ethics resolves dilemma by emphasizing on character and relationships.
 Utilitarianism resolve dilemma by emphasizing on goodness of the public.
 Duty ethics indicates the duties to protect the public.
  Rights ethics emphasizes the rights of the public to be protected.
 Ethical theories provide more precise sense of what kind of
information are relevant in resolving moral dilemma.
 The ethical theories offer ways to rank the relevant moral
considerations based on their order of importance.
 The ethical theories help us to identify the alternate possibilities to
resolve the problem and provide a systematic framework for
comparing the alternatives.
 By providing frameworks for moral arguments, the theories strengthen
our ability to reach balanced and insightful judgements.

(ii) Justifying moral obligations

Ethical theories are used to justify the obligations of engineers involved in technological
development.

(iii) Relating Professional and Ordinary morality

Safety is the ordinary morality which the engineers also try to achieve as a consequence of
their work.

Thus ethical theories relate professional and ordinary morality.

11. Self Interest

 Self interest is being good and acceptable to oneself.
 It is very ethical to possess self interest.
 As per utilitarian theory, this interest provides respect for others too.
 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 interest.
 In ETHICAL EGOISM, the self is conceived in a highly individualistic manner. It says that
every one of us should always promote one’s own interest.
 But Self interest should not degenerate into Egoism i.e., maximizing only own good.
 The ethical egoists hold that the society benefits to maximum when
i) The individuals pursue their personal good
ii) The individual organizations pursue maximum profit in a competitive
enterprise.
In such pursuits, both individuals and organizations should realize that
independence is not the only important value. We are also interdependent.
 Self interest is necessary initially to begin with. Later, it should develop into showing concern
for others, in the family as well as society.
 One’s self interest should not harm others.
 The principles of “Live and let (others) live” and “reasonably fair competition” are
recommended to professionals by the ethicists.
 12. Customs
Ethical pluralism:

Various cultures in our pluralistic society lead to tolerance for various customs, beliefs and
outlooks. In the same way, ethical pluralism also exists. It means that even reasonable people too will
not agree on all moral issues.

Ethical relativism:

According to this principle, actions are considered morally right when approved by law or
custom. Actions are considered wrong when they violate the laws or customs.

1. Laws appear to be objective ways for judging values. The laws and customs tend to
be definite, clear and real, but not always.
Eg. Apartheid laws of South Africa violated the human rights of the native
Africans.
2. Ethical relativism assumes that the values are subjective at the cultural level.
As per ethical relativism, the actions and laws of Hitler who vowed on Anti-
Semitism and killed several million Jews would be accepted as right.
3. Moral rationalism or moral contextualism:
According to this, the moral judgements must be made in relation to certain
factors, which may vary from case to case.

12. Religion
Religion have played major role in shaping moral views and moral values, over geographical regions.

Christianity has influenced the western countries, Islam in the middle-East countries, Buddhism and
Hinduism in Asia and Confucianism in China. Further there is a strong psychological link between the
moral and religious beliefs.

Religions support moral responsibility. They have set high moral standards. Faith in the religions
provides trust and this trust inspires people to be moral. The religions insist on tolerance and moral
concern for others.

Many professionals who posses religious beliefs are motivated to be morally responsible. Each religion
lays stress on certain high moral standards.

E.g. Hinduism holds polytheistic (many gods) view, and virtues of devotion.

Christianity beliefs in one deity and emphasizes on virtues of love, faith and hope.

Buddhism is non-theistic and focuses on compassion and Islam on one deity.

Judaism stresses the virtue of righteousness.

But many religious sections have adapted poor moral standards. Example many religion do not
recognize equal rights for women. The right to worship is denied for some people.
 People are killed in the name of or to promote religion. Thus the conflicts exist between the
secular and religious people and between one religion and another. Hence religious views have to be
morally scrutinized.

2 Marks:

1. What is meant by moral autonomy? (N/D 15)

2. Mention the various types of inquiry. (N/D 15)
3. Define moral dilemma (N/D 16)
4. State Kohlberg’s theory (N/D 16)
5. Define engineering ethics (N/D 13)
6. State the importance of ethical theories (A/M 17)
7. State Gilligan’s theory (M/J 16)
8. What is meant by consensus (M/J 16)
9. What are the two important versions of utilitarianism? (N/D 17)

16 Marks:

1. Explain the gilligan’s theory for moral development (8)

2. What are the different types of model of professional roles? (8)
3. Explain the theory of right ethics and its classification (8)
4. What is meant by self interest? Relate the term with ethical egoism with suitable examples. (8)
5. Discuss in detail about the concept of (i).Moral dilemma (ii). Moral autonomy (16)
6. Discuss in detail the various theories about right action (16)
7. Describe kohlbergs and gilligan’s theory on moral autonomy (8)
8. Explain in detail about the senses of engineering ethics. (16)
9.
 UNI
T-I
IIENGI
NEERI
NGASSOCI
ALEXPERI
MENTATI
ON
1.
ENGI
NEERI
NGASEXPERI
MENTATI
ON

2.
ENGI
NEERSASRESPONSI
BLEEXPERI
MENTERS

3.
CODESOFETHI
CS

4.
ABALANCEDOUTLOOKONLAW

1.
ENGI
NEERI
NGASEXPERI
MENTATI
ON
 Exper iment at
ioni scommonl yrecognizedaspl ayi
ngasessent ialroleint he
desi gnpr ocess.
 Allpr oductsoft echnologypresentsomepot entialdanger sandthusengineer i
ng
i
s an i nherentlyr iskyacti
[Link] orderto under scoret hi
sfactand hel pi n
expl oring its et hicalimplicati
ons,engi neer i
ng shoul d be v iewed as an
exper iment alprocess.
 Itis notan exper i
mentsol el
yi nl abor
at or ycont rol
led condit
[Link] an
exper imentonasoci alscal
einvolvi
nghumansubj ects.
 Bef ore manuf actur i
ng a productorpr ovidi ng a pr oject,we make sev eral
assumpt ionsand t r
ial
s,design and redesi gn and t estsev er
alt i
mest i
l
lt he
producti sobser vedt obefunctioningsatisf actori
ly
.Wet rydi
ff
erentmat erial
s
andexper i
ment [Link] om t
het estdat aobtai nedwemakedet ai
leddesi gnand
[Link],desi gnaswellasengi neeri
ngi siterati
vepr ocessasi l
lust
rat
edi n
Fig.3. 1.

Fi
g3.
1Desi
gnasani
nter
act
ivepr
ocess

 Sev
eralr
edesi
gnsar
emadeupont
hef
eedbacki
nfor
mat
ionont
heper
for
manceor
 f
ail
ureinthefi
eldorint hefactor
[Link]
desthetests,eachengi
neer
ingpr oj
ectis
modifi
eddur
ingexecut
ion,basedontheperi
odi
calfeedbackonthepr
ogressandt he
l
essonsfr
om [Link],t
hedevel
opmentofapr oductoraprojectasa
wholemaybeconsider
edasanexper i
ment.

ENGI
NEERINGPROJECTSVSSTANDARDEXPERIMENTS
Weshal
lnowcomparethet
woact
ivi
ti
es,
andi
denti
fyt
hesi
mil
ari
ti
esandcont
rast
s.
[Link]
milar
iti
es
[Link]
ti
alignor
ance:
 Thepr ojecti susual l
yexecut edi npar tialignor [Link] tainti
esexi stint he
model assumed.
 Ther ear euncer taintiesaboutt henat ur eoft hest r
essest hef i
nishedpr oductwi ll
encount [Link] ear euncer taintiesi nt heabst ractmodelusedf ort hedesi gn
calcul [Link] iorofmat erialspur chasedi suncer tainandnotconst ant .
Theymayv ar ywi tht hesuppl iers,pr ocessedl ot ,time,andt hepr ocessusedi n
shapi ngt hemat erials( e.g. ,sheetorpl at e,rodorwi re, f
or gedorcastorwel ded) .
 Ther emaybev ar i
ationsi nt hegr ainst ructur eandi tsr esul ti
ngf ailurest r
[Link]
notpossi blet o col lectdat aon al lv ar i
ations.I n somecases,ext r
apolation,
i
nt erpol ation,assumpt i
onsofl inearbehav iorov ert he r ange ofpar amet ers,
accel er atedt est ing, simul at i
ons, andv irtual test ingar er esor ted.
[Link] ainty:
 Thef inalout comesofpr oj ect sar eal souncer tain,asi nexper i
ment [Link] i
mes
unint endedr esul ts,si deef fect s( by e-product s) ,andunsaf eoper at i
onhav eal so
occur red.
 Unexpect edr isks,suchasundueseepagei nast oragedam,l eakageofnucl ear
radiat i
onf rom anat omi cpowerpl ant ,pr esenceofpest i
ci desi nf oodorsof tdr i
nk
bot tl
e,an new i rrigation canalspr eadi ng wat er-bor ne di seases,and an
unsuspect inghai rdr yercausi ngl ungcanceront heuserf r
om t heasbest os
gasketusedi nt hepr oducthav ebeenr epor ted.
[Link] t
or i
ng:
 Moni toringcont i
nual lyt hepr ogr essandgai ni ngnew knowl edgear eneeded
bef ore, dur i
ng, andaf terexecut ionofpr ojectasi nt hecaseofexper iment at
ion.
 Theper for mancei st obemoni tor edev endur i
ngt heuse( orwr onguse! )oft he
productbyt heenduser /benef iciar y.
[Link] rom t hepast :
 Usual l
yengi neer sl ear nf rom t hei rownear lierdesi gnandoper atingr esult
s,as
wel lasf r
om t hoseofot herengi neer s,butunf or t
unat elyt hati snotal wayst he
case.
 Lackofest abl i
shedchannel sofcommuni cat ion,mi splacedpr idei nnotaski ng
fori nfor mat i
on,embar r
assmentatf ailureorf earofl itigationandpl ainneglect
ofteni mpedet hef lowofsuchi nf or mat ionandl eadt omanyr epet i
ti
onsofpast
mi stakes.
 Her ear eaf ewexampl es:
 TheTi tanicl ackedasuf ficientnumberofl ifeboat sdecadesaf t
ermostoft he
passenger sandcr ewont hest eamshi pAr ctichadper i
shedbecauseoft hesame
probl em.
  “Compl et el acksofpr ot ection agai nsti mpactbyshi pping caused Sweden’ s
wor stev erbr idgecol lapseonFr idayasar esul tofwhi chei ghtpeopl ewer e
kil
led.”Thusr epor tedt heNewCi vilEngi neeronJanuar y24, [Link] neer snow
recommendt heuseoff loatingconcr etebumper st hatcandef lectshi ps, butt hat
recommendat ioni sr arelyheededasseenbyt he1993col lapseoft heBay ou
CannotBr idget hatcost43passenger soft heSunsetLi mi t
edt heirlives.
 Valvesar enot oriousf orbei ngamongt heleastr eliablecomponent sofhy dr aulic
systems.I twasapr essur er eliefv alve,andal ackofdef init
ivei nfor mat ion
regar ding i ts open orshutst at e,whi ch cont ri
but ed tot he nucl earr eact or
accidentatThr eeMi leI slandonMar ch28,[Link] milarmal funct ionshad
occur red wi thi dent icalv alves on nucl earr eact ors atot herl ocat [Link]
required r epor t
s had been f i
led wi th Babcock and Wi lcox,t he r eact or’s
manuf act urer ,butnoat tent i
onhadbeengi vent ot hem .
 NASAusest hemet ri
csy stem whi leLockheedMar ti
nusest heEngl ishsy stem
whenbui ldingasat el
liteCour tesyofNASA
Costoft hel ostor biter:$125mi l
lion
Infl
ation- adjust ed: $165. 6mi ll
ion
In 1999 at eam ofLockheed Mar t
in engi neer sused t heEngl ish sy st em of
measur ement ,whi let her estoft het eam usedt hemet ricsy st
em f oraMar s
[Link] use of t wo di ffer ent measur ement sy stems pr ev ent ed t he
spacecr aft'snav i
gat ioncoor dinat esf r
om bei ngt ransferredf rom aspacecr aft
team i nDenv ert oal abi nCal i
forni a.
Theor bi terwast henl osti nspace,andNASA wasout$125mi l
[Link]
exampl esi llust r
at ewhyi tisnotenoughf orengi neer stor elyonhandbooksand
comput erpr ogr amswi t
houtknowi ngt hel imi t
soft het ablesandal gor i
thms
under lyingt hei rf av orit
et ool [Link] ltov i
si tshopf loor sandconst ruction
sit
est ol earnf r
om wor ker sandt est er
showwel lthecust omer s’ wisheswer emet .
Thear tofback- of -the-env elopecal culationst oobt ainbal l
par kv alueswi thwhi ch
toqui ckl ycheckl engt hyandcompl icatedcomput ationalprocedur esmustnotbe
l
ost .Engi neer ingdemandspr actitioner swhor emai nalertandwel linf or medat
everyst ageofapr oject ’
shi stor yandwhoexchangei deasf reel ywi thcol leagues
i
nr elateddepar tment s.
[Link]
rast
s
Thescientifi
cexper imentsint helabor at
oryandt heengi neeri
ngexper imentsinthefiel
d
exhi
bitsev eralcont r
astsasl i
st edbel ow:
[Link] iment alcont r
ol:
 I nstandar dexper i
ment s, member sforstudyar eselectedintot wogroupsnamel y
AandBatr andom.
 Gr oupAar egi venspeci altreatment .Thegr oupBi sgivennot r
eatmentandi s
call
edt he‘ control
ledgr oup’.Butt heyarepl acedint hesameenv i
ronmentast he
[Link] spr ocessi scalledtheexper imentalcontrol.
 Thi spr acticei sadopt edi nt hefieldofmedi ci
ne.I nengineer i
ng,thisdoesnot
happen,exceptwhent hepr ojectisconf i
nedt olaboratoryexper [Link]
becausei ti stheclient sorconsumer swhochooset hepr oduct,exercisethe
control.
 I ti
snotpossi bl
etomakear andom sel ecti
onofpar tici
pantsf rom vari
ousgr oups.
 Inengi neer ing,t hroughr andom sampl ing,t hesur veyi smadef r
om amongt he
user s, toassesst her esultsont hepr oduct ..
[Link] ouch:
 Engi neer i
ngexper i
ment si nv olvehumansoul s,t hei rneeds,v iews,expect ati
ons,
andcr eativ euseasi ncaseofsoci al exper i
ment at i
on.
 Thi spoi ntofv iew i snotagr eedbymanyoft heengi neer [Link] t hequal ity
engi neer sandmanager shav ef ullyr eal i
zedt hishumaneaspect .
[Link]
or medconsent :
 Engi neer i
ngexper i
ment at i
oni sv iewedasSoci et alExper i
mentsi ncet hesubj ect
andt hebenef i
ci ar yar ehumanbei ngs.
 I nt hi sr espect ,iti ssi milart omedi calex per iment ationonhumanbei ngs.I nt he
caseofmedi calpr act i
ce,mor alandl egalr i
ght shav ebeenr ecogni zedwhi l
e
planni ngf orexper i
ment at i
on.
 I nfor medconsenti spr act i
cedi nmedi calexper iment at i
[Link] act i
cei snot
ther ei n sci ent ificl abor ator yexper iment s.I nf ormed consenthas t wo basi c
element s:
Knowl edge:Thesubj ectshoul dbegi v enal lrel ev anti nfor mat i
onneededt omaket he
decisiont opar tici pat e.
Volunt ar iness:Subj ectshoul dt akepar twi thoutf orce,f r audordecept [Link]
forright sofmi nor itiest odi ssentandcompensat i
onf orhar mf uleffectar eassumed
here.
Forav al idconsent , thef ollowi ngcondi tionsar et obef ulfill
ed:
 Consentmustbev ol untar y
 Al lr elev anti nf or mat i
onshal lbepr esent ed/ st atedi nacl earlyunder standabl e
for m
Consent ershal lbe capabl e ofpr ocessi ng t he i nf ormat ion and make r at i
onal
decisions.
[Link] ect ’
sconsentmaybeof feredi npr oxybyagr oupt hatr epresent smany
subject sofl ike- int erest sI nformedconsentwhenbr i
ngi nganengi neeringpr oductt o
mar ket ,impl iesl ett i
ngt hecust omerknowt hef ollowi ng:
(a)Theknowl edgeaboutt hepr oduct
(b)Risksandbenef itsofusi ngt hepr oductand
(c)Al lr elev anti nf or mat ionont hepr oduct ,suchashowt ouseandhownott ouse
(do’
sanddon’ ts) .
Ther el ev antf act uali nf ormat ioni mpl i
es, thatt heengi neer sar eobl i
gedt oobt ainand
assess al lt he av ailabl ei nfor mat i
on r elat ed t ot he f ulfil
lmentofone’ s mor al
obli
gat i
ons( i
.e. ,wr ongori mmor aluseofapr oductonedesi gns) ,includingt he
i
ntendedanduni nt endedi mpact soft hepr oduct ,ont hesoci ety.
Sti
llt her e exi st s a possi bil
ity ofa l ar ge gap ofunder standing bet ween t he
exper i
ment erandt hesubj ects( publ ic) .Somet imes,t hemanagement shav enot
beenwi ll
ingt odi ssemi natet hef ullinf ormat ionaboutt hepr ojectorpr oductbey ond
thel egalr equi rement s,becauseoft hef earofpot ent ialcompet it
ionsandl i
kel y
exposur et opot ent ial li
tigation.
Peopl eobj ectt oi nvolunt aryr i
skswher eint heaf fect edi ndivi
duali snei thera
dir
ectpar ti
cipantnoradeci sionmaker .Inshor t,wepr ef ert obet hesubj ectsofour
ownexper iment sr at hert hant hoseofsomebodyel se.I fi tisanasbest ospl antor
 nuclearpl anttobeappr oved,af f
ect edpar ti
esexpectt heirconsenttobeobt ained.
Butt heyar ereadyt oacceptv oluntaryr i
sksasi nt hecaseofst untsandamazi ng
races.
IncaseofKoodangul am powerpr oj
ectaswel last heSet husamudram Canal
Project,Tami lNadu,sev eralcitizen gr oups including Fishermen Forums hav e
[Link] ralgov ernmentwasabl econt ai
nmanyhar shapprehensi ons
andpr ot r
actedlegalandpol i
ticalbat tl
es,bypr ovi
dingal lr
elevantinfor
mati
on.
[Link] edgegai ned:
 Sci ent i
fi
cexper i
ment sareconduct edtogai nnewknowl edge,whil
e“engineer i
ng
projectsareexper i
ment st hatar enotnecessar il
ydesi gnedt oproducev er
ymuch
knowl edge”.
 Engi neeri
ngexper i
ment satt hemosthel pusto,
(a)Verifytheadequacyoft hedesi gn,
(b)Tocheckt hestabil
ityofthedesi gnpar amet er
s,and
(c)Prepar efortheunexpect edout comes, intheactual fi
eldenv i
ronments.
From t hemodel st est
edi nthel abor atorytot hepilotplantt est
edi nthefi
eld,there
aredifferencesinper f
ormanceaswel lasot heroutcomes.

2.
ENGI
NEERSASRESPONSI
BLEEXPERI
MENTERS
 Engi neer sar et hemai nt echni calenabl er sorf acili
tator
s;theyar ef arf r
om bei ng
thesol eexper iment [Link] rr esponsi bilityi sshar edwi thmanagement ,t he
publ i
c,andot her s. Yett heirexper t
isepl acest hem i nauni queposi t
iont o
moni torpr oj
ect s,t oi dent i
fyrisks,andt opr ov i
decl i
entsandt hepubl icwitht he
i
nfor mat i
onneededt omaker easonabl edeci sions.
 Fr om t heper spect iveofengi neeringassoci alexper imentation,f ourf eat ures
char act er i
zewhati tmeanst o bea r esponsi bleper son whi leact i
ng asan
engi neer :aconsci entiouscommi t
mentt ol iv ebymor alval
ues,acompr ehensi v e
perspect iv
e, aut onomy , andaccount abili
ty .
 Al thought heengi neer sf acil
itateexper iment s,t heyar enotal onei nt hef ield.
Thei rr esponsi bi l
ityi sshar edwi tht heor gani zat i
ons,people,gov ernment ,and
other [Link] heengi neersshar eagr eat err esponsibi
li
tywhi lemoni toring
thepr oj ects,ident ify
ingt her isks,andi nf ormi ngt hecl i
entsandt hepubl i
cwi th
[Link] his,theycant akedeci sionst opar ti
cipateorprot estorpr omot e.
 Theengi neer ,asanexper i
ment er,owesev eralr esponsibil
it
iest ot hesoci ety,
namel y ,
[Link] ent i
ouscommi tmentt olivebymor al val
ues.
2.A compr ehensi veper spectiv eonr elev anti nformat i
[Link] ncludesconst ant
awar enessoft hepr ogr essoft heexper imentandr eadinesstomoni torthesi de
effect s, ifany .
[Link] est ri
cted f ree- per sonali nvolvementi n allst epsoft hepr oject/product
dev elopment( aut onomy ).
[Link] abl ef orther esultsoft hepr oject( accountabil
ity
).
a)Consci ent iousness
 Consci ent iousmor al commi tmentmeans:
(a)Bei ngsensi tivet of ul lrangeofmor alv aluesandr esponsibili
tiesr el
evantt o
t
he prevail
ingsituati
onand
(b)Thewi l
l
ingnesst odev elopt heskil
landputef fort
sneededt oreacht hebest
bal
ance possibl eamongt hoseconsi derat
[Link] t
,engineersmustpossess
openeyes,open ear s,andanopenmi nd( i
.e.,moralv i
sion,mor alli
steni
ng,and
moralr
easoni ng).
 Thismakest heengineersassoci alexperimenters,respectforemostt hesafety
andheal thoft heaffect
ed, whiletheyseekt oenr
icht heirknowledge,rushforthe
prof
it,foll
owt herul
es,orcar eforonlythebenef iciary
.Thehumanr i
ghtsoft he
part
icipantshoul dbeprotect edthroughvol unt
aryandi nformedconsent .

b)Compr ehensi v ePer spect ive

 Consci ent iousnessi sbl indwi thoutr elev antf act uali nfor mat [Link] ng
mor alconcer ni nvolvesacommi tmentt oobt ainandpr oper lyassessal lav ail
abl e
informat iont hati sper ti
nentt omeet ingmor al obl igat i
ons.
 Thi smeans, asaf i
rstst ep, f
ullygr aspi ngt hecont extofone’ swor k,whi chmakes
itcountasanact i
vityhav i
ngamor ali mpor [Link] e,indesi gni ngaheat
exchanger ,ifIignor et hef actt hati twi llbeusedi nt hemanuf actur eofapot ent,
il
legal hal luci nogen, Iam showi ngal ackofmor al concer n.
 Oneshoul dnoti gnor ehi sconsci ence, ift hepr oductorpr ojectt hathei si nvol v
ed
wi l
lr esul ti ndamagi ngt hener voussy st em oft hepeopl e( orev ent heenemy ,in
caseofweapondev elopment )
.
 Apr oducthasabui lt-i
nobsol eteorr edundantcomponentt oboostsal eswi tha
falsecl aim.I npossessi ngoft heper spect iveoff act uali nformat ion, theengi neer
shoul dexhi bitamor alconcer nandnotagr eef ort hi
sdesi [Link] i
mes,t he
guilti st ransf erredt ot hegov ernmentort hecompet itors.
 Someor gani zationst hinkt hatt heywi lllett hegov ernmentf i
ndt hef aul torl etthe
fraudul entcompet it
orbecaughtf ir
st .Fi nal l
y ,af ull-scal eenv i
r onment alorsoci al
impactst udyoft hepr oductorpr ojectbyi ndi v i
dualengi neer si susef ulbutnot
possi ble, inpr actice.
c)MoralAut onomy
 Mor alaut onomyi sdef inedas,deci sionsandact ionsexer cisedont hebasi sof
mor alconcer nf orot herpeopl e and r ecogni tion ofgood mor alr easons.
Alter nat ivel y, mor alaut onomymeans‘ sel fdet er mi nantori ndependent ’
.
 Theaut onomouspeopl ehol dmor albel i
ef sandat t
itudesbasedont hei rcr i
t i
cal
reflect ionr athert hanonpassi v eadopt ionoft heconv ent i
onsoft hesoci et yor
prof essi on.
 Mor alaut onomymayal sobedef inedasaski llandhabi toft hinki ngr ationally
aboutt heet hical i
ssues, ont hebasi sofmor al concer n.
 Viewi ng engi neer i
ng as soci alexper i
ment at i
on,and ant ici
pat ing unknown
consequencesshoul dpr omot eanat titudeofquest ioningaboutt headequacyof
theexi stingeconomi candsaf etyst andar [Link] spr ov esagr eatersenseof
per sonal inv olvementi none’ swor k.
 Ifmanagementv i
ewspr ofi
tabilityismor ei mpor tantt hanconsi st entqual i
tyand
retent ionoft hecust omer st hatdi scour aget hemor alaut onomy ,engi neer sar e
compel ledt oseekt hesuppor tf rom t hei rpr of essi onalsoci etiesandout si
de
organi zat ionsf ormor al suppor t.
d)Account abi li
ty
 Thet er m Account abili
tymeans:
[Link] tytounder st andandactonmor alreasons
[Link] lli
ngnesst osubmi tone’ sact ionst omor alscr utinyandber esponsi v
et ot he
assessmentofot her s.
 I tincludesbei nganswer abl eformeet ingspeci ficobl igations, i
.e.,li
abletoj ustify
(orgi ver easonabl eexcuses)t hedeci sions,act ionsormeans,andout comes
(somet imesunexpect ed), whenr equiredbyt hest akehol der sorbyl aw.
 The t ug- of-warbet ween ofcausali nfl
uence by t he empl oy erand mor al
responsi bili
tyoft heempl oy eei squitecommoni npr ofessi [Link] heengi neering
practice, thepr oblemsar e:
a)Thef ragment at
ionofwor kinapr ojecti nev i
tablymakest hef inalproduct sl i
e
awayf rom t heimmedi atewor kpl ace, andlessenst heper sonalr esponsibil
ityof
theempl oy ee.
b)Fur thert her esponsi bil
itiesdi ffuseintov ari
oushi er archi esandt ov ari
ouspeopl e.
Nobodyget st her ealfeel ofper sonalresponsi bili
ty .
c)Of t
enpr oj ectsar eexecut edoneaf teranot [Link] oyeei smor einterested
inadher enceoft ightschedul esr at
hert hangi vi
ngper sonalcar ef orthecur rent
project .
d)Mor el i
tigat i
oni st obef acedbyt heengi neer s( asi nt hecaseofmedi cal
practitioner s).Thi smakest hem war yofshowi ngmor alconcer nsbey ondwhat
ispr escr ibedbyt hei nst i
t ut
ions.I nspi t
eofal ltheseshor tcomi ngs,engi neers
are expect ed tof ace t he r iskand show up per sonalr esponsi bi
li
tyast he
professi ondemands.

3.
CODEOFETHI
CS:
 Ethi
csisgeneral
lythedi
scipl
i
neorfi
eldofstudydeal
ingwit
hmoraldutyorobl
igati
on.
Thisgi
vesrisetosetofgoverni
ngpr
inci
plesorval
ueswhichint
urnareusedtojudge
thepar
ticul
arconductorbehavi
our
.

 Codeofethi
csexhibi
tsri
ght
s,dut
iesandobl
igat
ionsofthemembersofaprof
essi
on
andaprof
essional
societ
yandithavetobeadoptedbyengi
neer
ingsoci
eti
esaswell
asengi
neers.

 Codeofethi
csprovi
desaframewor kf
orethical
judgementforaprofessional
.It
serv
esasastart
ingpoi
ntforethi
caldeci
[Link] he
ci
rcumst
ancestoethi
calconductshar
edbyt hemember sofaprofession.

 Codei
sbasedonbroadpr
inci
plesoft
rut
h,honestyandtrust
wor
thi
ness,
respectf
or
humanli
feandwel
far
ecompetenceandaccountabi
li
ty.

 Asaconsequence,codeofpr
ofessi
onal
ethicsi
smoret
hanami ni
mum st
andardof
conduct
,rat
heri
tisasetofpri
ncipl
eswhichshoul
dgui
depr
ofessi
onal
sinthei
r
dai
lywork.
MODELCODEOFETHI
CS:

Tokeepupt
hesebasi
ccodesofet
hicspr
ofessi
onal
engi
neer
sshal
l,

 Off
erservi
ces,
advi
ceonorunder
taki
ngassi
gnmentsonlyi
nar
easoft
hei
r
competenceandpract
icei
nacar
efulanddi
l
igentmanner.

 Actasf
ait
hful
agent
soft
hei
rcl
i
ent
sorempl
oyer
s.

 Keepthemselv
esinformedinordertomai nt
ainthei
rcompetence,
str
ivetoadvance
thebodyofknowledgewit
hinwhichtheypracti
ceandprovi
deoppurtunit
iesfort
he
prof
essi
onaldevel
opmentoftheirsubor
dinates.

 Conductt
hemsel
veswi
thf
air
nessandgoodf
ait
htowar
dcl
i
ent
s,col
l
eaguesand
ot
hers.

 Beawareofandensurethatcl
i
ent
sandempl
oyer
sar
emadeawar
eofsoci
etal
and
env
ironment
alconsequences.

 Repor
ttothei
rassoci
ati
onand/orappr
opri
ateagenciesanyi
l
legal
orunet
hical
engi
neer
ingdeci
sionsorpr
act
icesbyengi
neersorothers.

ROLESOFCODEOFETHI
CS:

Thecodesexhi
bitf
oll
owi
ngessent
ial
rol
es:

 I
NSPI
RATI
ONANDGUI
DANCE:

1) Thecodesexpressthecol
l
ect
ivecommitmentoft
heprofessi
ont
oet
hical
conductandpubli
cgoodandt
husinspi
rethei
ndiv
idual
s.

2) Theyi
denti
fypr
imaryr
esponsibi
l
iti
esandprovi
dest
atementsandgui
del
i
neson
i
nter
pret
ati
onfort
heprofessi
onalandpr
ofessi
onal
societ
ies.

 SUPPORTTOENGI
NEERS:

[Link] v
espositi
vesuppor
ttoprofessi
onal
sfort
aki
ngstandsonmor al
i
ssues.
Furthertheyser
veaspotent
ial
legalsuppor
ttodi
schar
geprofessi
onal
obl
igat
ions.

 DETERRENCEANDDI
SCI
PLI
NE:

1.
Codeofet
hicsassi
sti
nfor
mal
l
yanal
yzi
ngunet
hical
pract
icesi
napr
ofessi
on.

2.I
ftheresul
toft
heanal
ysisaref
oundt
obecorr
ect,
thepr
ofessi
onalengagedi
n
suchapracti
cecanbesuspendedorhi
smember
shipcanbeter
minated.

 EDUCATI
ONANDMUTUALUNDERSTANDI
NG:

1)Ethi
calcodescanbetaughti
ntheeducat
ionali
nst
it
uti
ons,orcir
cul
ateamong
thepubl
icandoffi
ci
alsf
orimpart
ingt
heimpor t
anceofmoral
issuesandval
ues.
 2)Theyalsoser
vef
orthemutual
exchangeofvi
ewsandi
deasbetweenpubli
cand
prof
essi
onalswi
thr
egardt
otheprof
essional
commit
mentsandresponsi
bil
i
ties.

 PUBLI
CIMAGEABOUTPROFESSI
ON:

Hav
ingcodeswil
lboostupt
heimageamongstt
hepubl
[Link]
somot
ivat
e
t
heengi
neerst
oservethepubl
i
cinaneff
ect
ivemanner
.

 PROMOTI
NGBUSI
NESSI
NTERESTS:

Codeshel
ptomoral
iset
hevar i
ousdeal
i
ngsi
nvol
vedi
nbusi
nessi
nor
dert
oget
benef
it
sandtoat
tai
nobject
ives.

 ADVANTAGESOFCODEOFETHI
CS:

1)Setoutt
hei
deal
sandr
esponsi
bil
i
tiesoft
hepr
ofessi
on.

2)Enhancet
hepr
ofi
l
eoft
hepr
ofessi
on.

3)Mot
ivat
eandi
nspi
repr
act
it
ioner
s.

4)I
mpr
ovequal
i
tyandconsi
stency
.

5)Rai
seawar
enessandconsci
ousnessofi
ssues.

 LI
MITATI
ONSOFCODEOFETHI
CS:

1)Whet
hersuchcodei
sdesi
rabl
eorf
easi
ble.

2)Whet
heret
hical
val
uesar
euni
ver
sal
l
yorcul
tur
all
yrel
ati
vi
sti
c.

4.
BALANCEDOUTLOOKONLAW:
Thebalancedout
lookonl
awsi
gni
fi
est
heneedofl
awsandr
egul
ati
onsi
ndi
rect
ing
engi
neeri
ngpract
ices.

Wit
hthehelpofethi
cal
conduct,abal
anceisdevel
opedbet
weeni
ndi
vi
dual
needs
anddesi
resagai
nstcol
lect
iveneedanddesi
res.

Andt
heet
hical
conductcanbeonl
yappl
i
edwi
tht
hehel
pofl
aws.

Engi
neershavet
oplayaneff
ecti
verol
einenhanci
ngorchangi
ngenf
orceabl
erul
es
ofengi
neeri
ngaswellasi
nenfor
cingthem.

Andt
hecodesmustbeenf
orcedwi
tht
hehel
pofl
aws.

CASESTUDY:

BABYLONSBUI
LDI
NGCODE:

ThiscodewasdevelopedbyHammur abhi
,
KingofBaby
lonintheperi
odof
[Link]
sofhist
imeandal lt
hebuil
derswerefor
cedtoadherethecodes
[Link]
lowingaret
heessenti
alfeat
uresoflaw.
1)Househol
derdi
esduet
opoorqual
i
tyconst
ruct
ion,
bui
l
derwi
l
lbegi
vendeat
h
sent
ence.

2)Bui
l
der
ssonhastobegivendeat
hsent
ence,
i
fthesonoft
hehouseownerwas
ki
ll
edi
ndest
ruct
ionoft
hehouse.

3)I
fthehousehol
der
sslavedi
esfort
heabov
ement
ionedr
eason,
bui
l
derhav
eto
gi
veoneslavetot
hehousehol
der
.

4)Ift
hepr
oper
tydamagedordest
roy
ed,
bui
l
dershoul
drepl
aceorr
econst
ructt
he
house.

TheaspectsofBaby l
onsbui
ldi
ngcodehadat
err
ibl
eimpactonmor
aldut
iesand
responsi
bil
i
tiesofearl
i
erbui
l
ders.

UNI
TEDSTATESSTEAMBOATCODE:

 I nuni
tedst
atesal
onebet
weentheyears1816and1847,
morethan2500peopl
e
wereki
ll
edand2000peopl
ewereinj
uredduetotheexpl
osi
onofboil
ersi
n
st
eamboats.

 Becauseofthi
sinthi
syear,
alawwaspassedi
nordert
omaket
hepr
ovi
sionsf
or
per
iodi
cali
nspecti
onsofsafet
yofboi
l
ersandengi
nes.

 Buti
tiscl
eart
hatt
hisl
awwasnotef fect
iveduetothecor
rupti
onsofthe
i
nspect
orsandal
sothei
rinadequat
etr
aini
ngregardi
ngthesafet
ychecki
ng.

In1865,
thelawenf
orcementhadt
heser
iousset
backbyt
hesi
nki
ngofr
iver
boat
duet
oboil
erexpl
osi
on.

 Then, Ameri
cansocietyofmechani
cal
engineers(
ASME)formul
atedthe
standar
dproceduresf
ortheregul
ati
onoftheproducti
onofst
eam boil
ersandt
hei
r
appli
cat
ioninvar
iousfi
elds.

I
NDUSTRI
ALSTANDARDS:

 St andardsaredesignedandrecommendedbyOrgani
sat
ions,
tr
adesand
pr
ofessionalassoci
ati
onf ori
ndust
ri
alappl
i
cat
ions.

 Standardsar
etechni
cal
speci
fi
cat
ionst
hatl
aydownchar
act
eri
sti
csofa
pr
oductsuchas

1) Si
ze

2) Qual
i
ty

3)Per
for
mance

4)Saf
ety

 Thef
oll
owi
ngpoi
ntsi
ndi
cat
esomeoft
heobj
ect
ivesandt
hef
unct
ional
rol
eof
st
andar
ds.

1) Publ
i
c,cl
i
ent
sandi
ndust
ri
alpr
oducer
sar
ejoi
ntedbenef
it
sbyst
andar
ds.
 2)Wit
hthehel
pofdesi
gns,names,
brandset
[Link]
andar
dsmai
ntai
nast
eadyand
bal
ancedcompet
it
ioni
nindust
ri
es.

3) St
andar
dsf
ocusont
hemeasur
eofqual
i
typr
oduct
s.

PROBLEMSWI
THLAW I
NENGI
NEERI
NG:

I ncreasi
ngdemandforenf
orci
ngl
egal
rest
ri
cti
onsi
nthef
iel
dof
engineeri
ng.
eg.
Saf
etymeasures

 Mi
nimal
compl
i
ance.

 Itisverydi
ff
icul
ttoupdat
ethel
awsi
nor
dert
omat
chwi
tht
her
api
dlychangi
ng
t
echnology
.

 Manyl
awsr
emai
nusel
essi
nthef
orm ofnon-
laws.

 Somepr of
essi
onal
sal
sohav etoref
erthestandardwi
tht
her
eady
made
speci
fi
cat
ionsasasubst
it
uit
ionforori
ginal
thought.

PROPERROLEOFLAW I
NENGI
NEERI
NG

I flawsareef
fect
ivel
yenfor
ced,soci
etywil
lgetbenef
it
[Link]
vesapower
ful
supportt
othosewhodesir
et oactethi
call
yinthei
racti
vi
ti
es.

 Foreg,
Rai
nwat
erhar
vest
ing,
pol
i
odr
opset
c.

 Al
lrul
esgoverni
ngengineeri
ngpracti
cesshouldbeformulatedinsuchawayto
assi
stengi
neer
ingprof
essionaltounder
takeresponsi
blesocialexper
iment
ati
on.

I ftheexper
iment
ati
onisst
rong,
therul
esshoul
dnottr
ytocoveral
lthepossibl
e
outcomesofexperi
mentsandtheyshoul
dnotfor
cetheengi
neertof
ollowarigid
courseofacti
on.

 TheRul esandregul
ati
onsshoul
dbebroadinnat
ure,
butatt
hesameti
met
hey
shouldnotbewr i
tt
enfir
mlyinsuchawaytheengi
neert
obeforcedt
obe
accountablef
orhisdeci
sions.
 1
UNIT-4
SAFETY, RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS
4.1 Safety and Risk
ENGINEER’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR SAFETY
INTRODUCTION
Unarguably the first and most important duty of an engineer is to ensure the safety of the
people who use the product designed by him. It could be seen from all of the code of ethics of
the professional engineering societies that safety is of paramount importance to the engineer.
The engineers have a responsibility to the society to produce products that are safe.
Engineering necessarily involves risk. It is impossible to design any products to be
completely risk free. The relationship of risk to safety is mostly very close. In this chapter we
shall explore the following questions:
 What kind of responsibility should an engineer hold to ensure the safety, health and
welfare of the public?
 How can the products be designed by the engineers to minimize the risk to the user?
 How much risk is appropriate in an engineering design?
 How to assess the safety and risk? And
 How to do risk benefit analyses?
Safety and Its Concepts:
What is meant by safety?
Safety means the state of being safe. Safe means projected from danger and harm.
The term safety is always difficult to describe completely. What may be safe for one person
may not be safe for another person. It is because different persons have different perceptions
about what is safe. For example, a shaving razor in the hands of a child is never safe as it can
be in the hands of an adult.
The American heritage dictionary defines safety as freedom from damage, injury or
risk.
Absolute safety that satisfies all individuals or group under all conditions is neither
attainable nor affordable.
Safety Defined
The initial version of William W. Lowrence’s definition for safety is as follows:
“A thing is safe if its risk is judged to be acceptable”. It means a think is safe for a
person if the perceived risk is less. Similarly, a think is unsafe if the perceived risk is high.

Drawbacks of the Lowrance’s Initial Version of Definition:

Some of the drawbacks are
a) Under-estimation of risks: An unsafe product may be considered to be safe because of
all faulty view and misjudgment of the person. Example, buying improperly designed
coil type water heater which eventually ends up with a severe electric shock.
 In the above example, the judgment about the product has failed which is against the2
lowrance definition.
b) Over-estimation of risk: A product whose risks are comparatively less may be
considered unsafe because of over safety concern of a person. Example, thinking that
adding chlorine in drinking water will kill a lot of people in this case according to
lowrence definition the water became unsafe the moment we judged the risks is
unacceptable for us. But our common concept of safety says chlorinated drinking water
is safer. This again contrasts the lowrence definition.
c) No-estimation of risk: For the person who does not judge bout risk the product may be
either safe or unsafe. Example, Purchasing a LPG gasoline fuel driven car without
judging anything about its safety.
So in order to overcome the above said contradictions, Lowrence proposed a
modified version of definition for safety.

A Modified Lowrence Definition of Safety

Definition:”A thing is safe with respect to a given person or group at a given time, If its risks
were fully known. If those risks would be judged acceptable, in light of settled value
principles”.
In the modified Lowrence definition the term ‘things’ represent not only products, but also
service, processes, etc. Therefore the definition can be extended to the design, finance,
international affairs, etc.

CONCEPT OF RELATIVE SAFETY

Safety is expressed frequently in terms of degree and comparisons. We often use words such
as fairly ’safe’. The relative safety expresses the safety of a thing in comparison with safety of
similar things.
Example: stating that airplane travel is safer than car travel and car travel is safer than travel in
a bike.

ENGINEERS AND SAFETY

Criteria to ensure safe design.
It is universally accepted that safety should be an integral part of any engineering
design. In order to ensure the safe design, the following criteria should be met:
1) A design should comply with legal standard for product safety and other
applicable loss.
2) An acceptable design should meet be standard of single code accepted
engineering practice.
3) Alternative designs that are potentially safer should be explore
4) Finally, the designed product should be tested using prototype to determine:
I. Whether the products meets the specifications, and
 3
II. Whether the product is safety use.
Designing for safety
(Incorporating safety into the engineering design process)
Step1: define the problem. It includes the issues of safety in the product definition and
specification.
Step2: generate multiple alternate design solutions
Step3: Analyze each design solution. It evaluate pros and cons of each solution
Step4: test the solutions
Step5: select the best solution
Step6: implement the chosen solution
During step 1-6, a safety and risk criteria should be given paramount importance than other
issues.

RISK AND ITS CONCEPT

What is meant by risk?
A risk is the potential that something unwanted and harmful may occur.
The American heritage dictionary defines discusses the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
Generally the term ‘risk’ is synonymously used adverse effects are harm. The term ‘harm’ may
be defined as an invention or limitation of a person’s freedom or well-being.
The three most important types of well-being are physical well-being psychological well-
being, and economical well-being.
Effect of risk it includes dangers of bodily harm, economic loss and environmental
degradation.
Cause of risk risks or harms are caused by delayed job completion, faulty product or systems,
and economically or environmentally injurious solutions to technological problems.

RISK DEFINED
William w. Lowerence has defined risk as “a compound measure of the probability and
magnitude of adverse effect.
Mathematically,
Risk=probability of harm *magnitude or consequence of the harm
In simple words the risk is the product of the likelihood and the magnitude of the harm.
a relatively slight harm having more probability of occurring might constitute a greater risk
than a relatively large harm having lesser probability of occurring.
Natural Hazards and Disaster
A natural hazard such as floods, earthquake, droughts, volcanoes etc greatly threatens and
damages the long lifelines of human populations.
A disaster is a serious disruptive event coincides with state of insufficient preparation.
In recent years, engineering and technologies have greatly reduced some of the ill effects of4
natural hazards and disasters.
Thus engineers should be aware of the ethical and professional issues regarding risk.
Factors Influencing Risk
Since the concept of risk is subjective in nature, it depends on many factors. They are:
1. Voluntary Vs Involuntary risk
If the person knowingly takes any risk, then he feels it safe. If the same risk is forced to
him, then he feels it unsafe.
In simple terms, the voluntary risks are considered as safe and the involuntary risks are
considered as unsafe.
2. Short-term Vs Long-term consequences
A thing, which causes a short-lived illness or disability, seems safer than a thing that
will result in permanent disability.
3. Delayed Vs Immediate Risk
An activity whose harm is delayed for many years will seem much less risky than something
with an immediate effect.
4. Expected Probability
A relative slight harm having more probability of occurring(say, 50: 50 chance) seems to be a
greater/unacceptable risk than a relatively a severe harm having lesser probability of
occurring(say, 1 in 1,00,000).
5. Reversible Effects
Something will seem less risky if the bad effects are ultimately reversible.
6. Threshold Levels for Risk
Something that is risky only at fairly high exposures will seem safer than something with a
uniform exposure to risk.
From the above discussion, it is understood that something is unsafe or risky to one
person may seem very safe to someone else. This creates the great challenge for the engineers
to decide on the optimal safety level.

ACCEPTABILITY OF RISK
What is meant by Acceptable Risk?
According to D. Rowe, “A risk is acceptable when those affected are generally no longer
apprehensive about it”.
Apprehensiveness mainly depends on how the risk is perceived by the people.
Elements of Risk Perception
(Factors influencing the perception of risk)
The risk perception is influenced by the factors such as:
1. Whether the risk is assumed voluntarily;
2. The effect of knowledge on how the probabilities of harm are perceived;
3. Job –related or other pressure that cause people to be aware of risks;
 5
4. Whether the effects of a risky activity or situation are immediately noticeable; and
5. Whether the potential victims are identifiable beforehand.
We shall discuss these elements of risk perception, in detail, in the following sections.
1. Voluntarism and control
Voluntary risk: if people take risk knowingly, then their involvement of risk is known as
voluntary risk.
Many people considered safer if they knowingly take on the risk. Also the people believe
that they have ‘full control’ over their actions.
Examples for voluntary risk
1. Buying a flat/house near a chemical plant that emits low level of a toxic waste into the
air, because the property values are very low.
2. Participating in a potentially adventurous sport such as motorcycle racing, skiing,
boxing, hang-gliding, bungee jumping , etc without much safety guards .
Controlled risk
If the risk taken is within the control limit, which can be controlled by any means, then the
risk is known as controlled risk.
Examples for controlled risk:
In practice, all the dangerous sports such as motorcycle racing, skiing, hang-gliding, bungee
jumping, horseback riding, boxing etc are carried out under the assumed control of the
participants. They use all safety guard to keep the risk under control.
2. Effect of information on Risk Assessments
The information about a harm/danger should be presented in a systematic and appropriate
manner. Because the manner in which the required information for decision-making is
presented has a great influence on how risks are perceived.
Many case studies and experiments have proved that the manner in which information about
a danger is presented can lead to undesirable and wrong perceptions about danger.
The threshold limit of individuals for information varies from person to person.
Some would be comfortable only when they have information of deeper depth and quality,
while others may be comfortable with minimal information.
Many experiments have drawn the following two conclusions:
1. Options perceived as yielding company gains will tend to be preferred over those
from which gains are perceived as risky or only probable.
2. People tend to be more willing to take risks in order to avoid perceived company
losses than they are to win only possible gains.
3. Job-related Risks
The exposure of risk depends on the person’s job and his work place.
The nature of the job and the working environment will determine the risk level of a person.
For example, people working in the coalmines, oil mines shipyards, chemical plants,
nuclear power plants, etc have more probability of being exposed to the high risk.
 Because of high competition for survival, the employees don’t have any options other than6
undertaking high-risk jobs.
Unions, and occupational and safety regulations should regulate and enforce the employers,
to facilitate the standard working environment.
Most importantly, engineers who design and the workers suggestions/complaints regarding
their workplace.
4. Magnitude and proximity
Our reaction to risk is affected by the magnification and the personal identification or
relationship we have the victims.
For instance, we feel very bad if none of our close relative or friends are subjected to great
harm by some accident than if it might affect 20 strangers.
Thus the magnitude of risk and the proximity with the victims greatly influences the degree
of reaction to the risk.
LESSIONS FOR THE ENGINEERS
Engineers have the challenge to face/overcome the following two different public
conceptions of safety.
1. Positive or optimistic attitude: Some people assume that things that are familiar, that
have not hurt them before and over which they some control, present no real risks.
2. Negative or pessimistic attitude: some people feel feared, when an accident kills or
harms in large numbers, or affects their relations, they consider those risks as high risks.
Therefore, while designing a thing engineers should recognize and consider such widely
held perceptions of risks along with their routine technical design issues. So engineers
should recognize this as pt of their work.
Engineers should also understand that it is not wise to proceed under an assumption that
education will quickly change the people’s under-estimation or over-estimation of the risk.
The continuous, proper information about dangers and other issues of risk are necessary to
educate the people to have right attitude and perception about the risk.
The risk communication and risk management efforts should be structured as a two way
process.

RISK BENEFIT VALUE FUNCTION

The risk and benefits are based on the perception of probable gain and probable loss.
A typical risk-benefit value function illustrated.
The risk benefits value function drops sharply on the loss portion that it raises on the gain
portion.
One can see that the threshold is added on both gain and loss sides of the function.
The threshold on the loss side is to account for human habit of ignoring smaller risks in
order to avoid anxiety overload. It means that no effect is spent to overcome the loss sides
of the function.
 The threshold on the gain side is to account for normal human inertia. It means that the7
inherent character of people may delay the process of seeking their own gain.

TYPES OF ACCIDENTS
Engineers should have the knowledge about different nature of accidents so that to try to
prevent them. The three important types of accidents are procedural, engineered, and
systemic accidents.
1. Procedural Accidents
Procedural accidents are the result of someone making a bad choice or not following
established standard procedures.
Example: Road accidents because of not following the rules.
2. Engineered Accidents
Engineered accidents are caused by errors in the design.
Because of minor design error, the device may not perform as expected or the device may
not perform well under all circumstances.
Engineers should have the knowledge and experience to anticipate all possible engineered
failures during the design stage itself.
Example: Minor casting defects in aircraft turbine blades may cause failure of the system.
3. Systemic Accidents
Systemic accidents are difficult to understand and difficult to control.
They are characterized of very complex technologies and the complex organization that are
required to operate them.
Example: Failure of use space shuttle, in which 7 astronauts including Indian born astronaut
Chawla were killed.

4.2 ASSESSMENT OF SAFETY AND RISK

Relationship between safety, risk and cost
It is always a great challenge to engineers to balance quality and safety against cost. In
general, engineer’s tendency is to design and produce high-quality products, but business
managers tend to keep the cost down. Therefore it is necessary to understand the
relationship between safety, risk, costs and price. The relationship between them is
depicted.
Why both low-Risk and High-Risk Products are Costly?
 A product cost may have two elements:
1. Primary cost of product, and
2. Secondary cost of product.
 The primary cost of product (p) includes production cost and cost of safety measures
involved.
 8
 The secondary cost of product(s) includes costs associated with warranty expenses, loss
of customer good will, litigation, possible downtime in the manufacturing process, etc.
Safety
High Low
High High safety and High risk High Low safety and High risk Low
cost , High price cost, High price
Example: Nuclear plant, aircraft, Example: automobiles.
Risk missiles.
Low High safety and low risk High Low safety and Low risk low
cost, medium price cost , Low price
Examples: Electrical products, Examples: Electronic goods,
safety values. computers.

Figure illustrates Relationship between risk and cost to manufacture.

 A stress on low risk and high safety leads to high primary costs and lower secondary
costs, and vice versa.
 The total cost is the sum of primary and secondary costs of product.
 The total cost is minimum at point M, where the slopes of the primary and secondary
cost curves are equal in magnitude but opposite in direction.
Therefore it is evident that both low-risk and products are costly. The optimal total cost (M)
occurs in between low-risk and high-risk region.

DETERMINATION OF RISK
In order to determine the risk, one should have knowledge about the following criterions.
1. Knowledge of Risk
To assess a risk, an engineer must first identify it. To identify a risk, an engineer must first
know the information about the safety of standard products.
Though past experience and historical data provide good information about the safety of
standard products, still it is insufficient to completely assess the risk of a product.
The past experience and historical data are inadequate to access the risk, because of the
following reasons:
The information is not freely shared among firms, and
There are always new applications of old technology that makes the available information9
less useful.
Therefore in order to access the risk, engineers and firms should share the information and
knowledge about the safety of freely.
2. Uncertainties in Design
While designing a product, the design engineer must deal with many uncertainties. Many of
the risks can be expressed as probabilities and as educated guesses.
The uncertainties are in the form of application of the product, materials used for producing
the product, changing economic conditions, unfavorable environment conditions,
temperature, etc.
Traditionally engineers use ‘factor of safety’ while designing to cop with uncertainties
about materials and actual operating conditions of the product. The factor of safety is
proposed to account for unpredictably high loads or unaccountably weak construction
material.
A product is said to be safe if its capability exceeds its duty.
3. Testing for safety
Once the product is designed, both prototype and finished devices must be thoroughly
tested.
The testing is not just to determine whether the product meets the specification. It should
also involve testing to see if the product is safe.
It is essential that in any engineering design, all safety systems be tested to ensure that they
work as planned.

Different Approaches for Testing

The various testing approaches other than destructive testing are given below:
1. Scenario Analysis: This test starts from a given event, and then studies the different
consequences that might develop from it.
2. Failure modes and effects Analysis: This approach systematically examines the failure
modes of each component without focusing on causes or relationships among the
elements of a complex system.
3. Fault-Free analysis: This approach proposes a system failure and then traces the events
back to possible causes at component level.
4. Event-free Analysis: This is the reverse of the fault –free analysis. This analysis is very
useful in identifying a potentially hazardous situation in the plant.
Out of these several techniques, the fault-free analysis is most effective, because it explains
the possible approaches for proper functioning and safety of a complex system.

4.3 RISK-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

What is risk-benefit analysis?
 Risk benefit analysis is a technique, similar to cost-benefit analysis, used 10 to
analyze the risk in a project and to determine whether the project should be carried out or
not.
Risk-benefit analysis answers the following questions:
 What are the benefits of the product/project?
 Is the project/product worth the risks connected with its use? and
 Do benefits outweigh the risks?
It is understood that everyone is ready to certain levels of the risk as long as the
product/project/activity promises sufficient benefit or gain.
In risk-benefit analysis, the risks and befits of a product/project are assigned money values,
and the most favorable ratio between risks and benefits is determined.

Conceptual Difficulties in Risk-Benefit Analysis

Risk benefit analysis is a very difficult process, because of the following reasons:
 In risk benefit analysis, both risk and benefits are very difficult to quantify, because
both lie in the future. That is both risk and benefits are associated with uncertainties.
 It should be noticed that who takes the risk and who enjoys the benefits? Therefore it
is important to ensure that those who have taken the risks are the beneficiaries of it.
 It is mostly difficult to expressed both risk and benefits in a common set of units . For
example , when the risks can be expressed and measured in one set of units and
benefits in another then very difficult to do risk-benefits analysis. In this case, risk-
benefit analysis is used to judge the relative merits of different designs.

Ethical Implications on Risk Benefit Analysis

While performing the risk-benefit analysis, one should keep in mind the following ethical
questions:
a) Under what conditions, someone in society is entitled to impose a risk on
someone else on behalf of a supposed benefit to others?
b) How can we consider the worst-case scenarios of person exposed to maximum
risks while they are also obtaining only minimum benefits? Are their rights
violated? Are they provided safer alternatives?
PERSONAL RISK
If sufficient risk is given to a person, then he can be able to decide whether to participate in
risky activity or not.
Many experiments have concluded that individuals are more willing to face voluntary risk than
involuntary risks, even when the voluntary risks are more harmful than the involuntary ones.
Personal risks are difficult to assess especially if they are involuntary personal risks.

Examples for personal risks:

 A person living near a chemical plant voluntarily or involuntarily; and
 11
 A person working in a nuclear power plant or oil refinery plant.
The qualification in assessing personal safety and risk is very difficult to estimate.
While assessing the personal risk, one should consider the following ethical question:
 How to access the money value of an individual’s life?
 On what basis, the compensation for the risk can be decided?
 Is the compensation for a risk by an amount based on the exposure tolerance of the
average person justifiable?
 What will be the compensation if the tolerance level of the person is below or above the
average tolerance level?
In order to minimize the above difficulties in assessing personal risks, the analysis employ all
the available quantitative measures such as
 Making judgments on the basis of the amount of life insurance taken out by an
individual; and
 Assessing a hazardous job by looking at the increased wages a worker demands to carry
out the task.
Public Risk and Public Acceptance
Risks and benefits to the public at large can be more easily determined than the personal risks
and benefits. Because individual difference tend to even out as large numbers of people are
considered.
Assessment studies relating to technological safety can be conducted in a better manner for
public risk than for personal risk, as statistical parameters take on greater significance.
In this regard, American’s National Highway Traffic safety Administration (NHTSA) has
emphasized the following two points:
1. A value human life can be estimated based on loss of future income and other costs
associated with an accident.
2. An estimation of quantifiable losses in social welfare is not based on the maximum
expenditure allocated to save a life.
Accounting Publicly For Benefits and Risks
Public accountability for risk has been affected by the following problems:
 An expert or even group of experts cannot be expected to know everything. Hence the
public processes suffer from incomplete engineering knowledge.
 The uncertainty produced by scientists and regulators also infects the risk regulation. In
others words, a refusal to face the hard questions created by lack of knowledge affects
the risk regulation.
 Since the conception of risk vary depending on how the facts are presented, therefore
special caution should be given when stating probabilities of rare events.

Becoming A Responsible Engineer Regarding Risk:

 The engineer can provide background material to prove the faulty positions.
 12
 Engineers should actively participate in the debates related t safety and risk.
 Engineers should always insist on meaningful numbers and figures when assessing
safety and risk.
 Engineers should also recognize the previously mentioned difficulties with measuring
risks and benefits in absolute terms.
 Engineers should not be influenced by any influential lobby or trade organization.
 Engineers need to be sensitive to various quantitative value judgments related with
human and ethical values.
 Engineers should be aware at the legal liabilities regarding risk.

4.4 REDUCING RISK

 As we know, it is impossible to design and manufacture anything to be completely risk
free. However it is the responsibility of the engineers to explore all the possible ways to
reduce the risk under the given financial and time constraints.
 Risk management defined: risk management is defined as the eradication or
minimization of the adverse effects of the pure risks to which n organization is exposed.
 Elements of a risk management programme : According to the recent health and
safety legislation, the three important elements of a risk management programme are:
 Risk identification
 Risk evaluation
 Risk control

1. Risk Identification
 Risk can be identified by various techniques such as physical inspection, safety audit,
job-safety analysis, management and worker discussions, and historical data analysis.
2. Risk Evaluation
 Risk can be measured on the basis of economic, social or legal considerations.
 Economic and social considerations include financial aspects, uninsured cist of
accidents, insurance premium, overall effect on the probability, and possible loss of
production.
 Legal considerations include possible constraint from compliance with health and safety
legislation, code of practice, guidance notes and accepted standards, fire prevention,
pollution and product liability.
3. Risk Control
 Risk control consists of four areas: risk avoidance, risk retention, risk transfer and risk
reduction.
 Risk avoidance: It refers to the conscious decision by the management to avoid
completely a particular risk by discontinuing the operation producing the risk.
 13
 Risk retention: It refers to the legal assignment of the cost of certain potential losses
from one party to another.
 Risk reduction: It refers to the reduction or elimination of all aspect of accidental loss
that lead to a wastage of n organization’s assets.
Faulty Assumptions and Their Realities about Safety
There are many misconceptions about safety, some of the popular fault assumptions and their
realities about safety are given below:
1. Assumption: The principle causes of all accidents are operator error and negligence.
Reality: Accidents are caused by dangerous conditions, which can be corrected.
2. Assumption: Producing a safe product always increases the costs.
Reality: If safety is incorporated in the design stage itself, the initial cost will be reduced. If
there are any later design changes, it will increase the product cost.
3. Assumption: we learn about safety after a product has been completed and tested.
Reality: If safety is not built into the original design, people can be hurt during the testing
stage. Unwillingness to change a design means compromising on safety.
4. Assumption: Warnings about harms are sufficient. Insurance coverage is cheaper than
planning for safety.
Reality: warnings can provide minimal protection against harmful events. Insurance rates are
very high.

CASE STUDY OF THE THREE MILE ISLAND

Abstract
The accident at the three miles island unit-2(TMI-2) nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania on
March 28, 1979 was one of the most serious in the history of the U.S. nuclear industry. It not
only brought to light the hazards associated with nuclear power, but also force the industry to
take a closer look at the operating procedures used at the time. What makes the TMI-2 accident
such an interesting case study is the series of events, which led up to the partial meltdown of
the reactor core. It was a combination of human error, insufficient training, bad operating
procedures and unforeseen equipment failure that culminated in a nuclear accident that could
have easily been prevented.

CASE STUDY OF THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER

Abstract
The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine was the product of
a flawed soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators in the
context of a system where training was minimal. It was a direct consequence of cold war
isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.
The accident destroyed the Chernobyl-4 reactor and killed 30 people, including 28 from
radiation exposure. A further 209 on site were treated for actuate radiation poisoning and
 14
among these, 134 cases were confirmed. Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects.
However the large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia and beyond were contaminated in
varying degrees.
The Chernobyl disaster was a unique event and the only accident in the history of commercial
nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred.

4.5 RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY

WHAT IS MEANT BY AUTHORITY?

Authority is the right to make decision, the right to direct the work of other, and the right to
give orders

It is a crucial factor in organization since engineers and employees must be authorized to carry
out the jobs assigned to them

SOURCES OF AUTHORITY

Authority derives from several sources. They are the person’s position or rank, and personal
attributes such as Knowledge and expertise

1. INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY

DEFINITION: Institutional Authority can be defined as the institutional right given to a

person to exercise power based on the resources of institution.

It is Authority given by institution to the qualified individual in order to meet their institutional
objectives.

This Authority is exercised by the making policy decisions, allocating resources, issuing
orders, carrying out the actions, giving recommendations, etc

LIMITS OF INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY:

In a company, the institutional Authority is given by the owners or stockholders of the

company .In practice, sometimes the owners of the company delegate the institutional authority
to ineffective and incompetent individuals. Those individuals may be unable to exercise their
authority effectively in order to meet the company’s objective.

2. EXPERT AUTHORITY:

Apart from institutional authority, there is an authority based on the knowledge and expertise.

Expert authority is the possession of special knowledge, skill or competence to perform some
task or to give sound advice.
 15
It is proved that the leaders with the expertise can more effectively guide and motivate others
then the conventional leaders. This concept is referred as ‘authority of leadership’

In today’s organization setup, the staff engineers, advisors, and consultants are given expert
authority, while institutional authority is assigned to the line managers.

AUTHORITY Vs POWER

The differences between institutional authority and power are as follows.

[Link] AUTHORITY POWER

1. It is a legal right of a superior It is the ability of the person to influence the
which compel his subordinates to others to perform an act. It may not have legal
perform certain acts sanction.
2 It is delegated to an individual by It is earned by an individual through his own
his superior effort
3 It lies in the position held and the It rests the individual. Even when the position
authority changes with change in has changed, his power remains with him.
position.
4 It is mostly well defined and finite It is undefined and infinite.

MORALLY JUSTIFIED AUTHORITY

The institutional authority assigned to employee may ensure in achieving the institutional
objectives. But those institutional rights and duties should necessarily be morally justified
institutional rights and duties.

The institutional authority is set to be morally justified, only when:

 The goals of the institution are morally permissible or morally desirable,

and
 The way of implementation should not violate basic moral duties.

Therefore engineers should have moral obligations to perform only morally permissible
institutional duties, when they accept employment.

Accepting Authority

Employees accept/ recognize their employers’ authority by accepting the guidance and obeying
the directives issued by the employer. Rarely employees disobey an order on moral grounds.

According to Herbert Simon, “a subordinate is said to accept authority whenever he permits his
behavior to be guided by the decision of a superior, without independently examining the
merits of that decision”.
 16
Simon also noted that all employees have limits on “zone of acceptance” in which they are
willing to accept authority.

Generally employees are not interested to make an issue of every incident of questionable
morality, because of fear of losing their job/position.

Therefore the ‘zone of acceptance’ can be used as a measure of the lack of individual moral
integrity.

Paramount obligations

The codes of ethics of the professional societies state that an engineer’s paramount obligation
is to protect public health, safety and welfare rather than the obligations of loyalty and faithful
service to employers.

As professionals, engineers have obligations to accept their employers’ institutional authority.

But this does not mean that they have to obey obligations blindly. Therefore the basic moral
task of engineers is to be aware of their obligations to obey employers on the one hand and to
protect and serve the public and clients on the other hand.

Engineers must weigh their obligations to the public, their employers, their colleagues and
others when conflicts between such obligations rise.

4.6 COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

What is meant by collective bargaining?

 International Labor Organization (ILO) has defined collective bargaining as “negotiation

about working conditions and terms of employment between an employer and one or
more representative employee’s with a view to reaching agreement”.
 The process is collective in the sense that the issue relating to terms and conditions of
employment are solved by representatives of employees and employers rather than
individuals.
 The term bargaining refers to evolving an agreement using methods like negotiation,
discussion, exchange of facts and ideas rather than confrontation.

Process of collective bargaining:

The process of collective bargaining can be summarized in the following three steps:

Step – 1: Presenting the character of demands by the union on behalf of the constituent
elements.

Step – 2: Negotiations at the bargaining table.

Step – 3: Reacting an agreement.

 17
Unionism and Professionalism:

 Collective bargaining assumes ‘unionism’. Legally, any organization employing more

than 20 employees could have a union. In organizations, more than one union is also
permitted.
 The employers form unions to safeguard the interests of employees and to prevent
exploitation of employee.
 Many professional managers have argued that the ethical aspects of professionalism in
engineering are inconsistent with union ideology and practice.
 According to John Kemper, the unionism and professionalism are conflicting with each
other. Professionalism offers paramount importance to the interests of society and of
employer. But unions, also known as collective bargaining agents, consider the
economic interests of the members ahead of the interests of their employer.
 Also, a number of professional societies have emphasized that loyalty to employers and
the public is not possible with any form of collective bargaining.
 Even many professional societies indirectly instruct the engineers that they should not
become shall not actively participate in strikes, picket lines, or other collective coercive
action.
 Thus professional societies oppose unionization because of the issue of conflicting
loyalties and on the grounds that is unprofessional.
 In a nutshell, the general view is that it is impossible for the engineer to belong to a
union and at the same time to maintain the standards of his profession.

CONCLUSION:

For the above discussions, the following conclusion can be made:

1. We can absorb whether collective bargaining and its tactics are ethical or unethical,
only on the basic of the given situation.
2. Though unions often have misused their power and irresponsibly disregarded the
public good, the formation of engineering unions should not be considered always
unprofessional.
3. The moral assessment of unions is complex. Many morally relevant fact and factors
should be considered while judging about any union.

ARGUMENTS OVER UNIONS

There are two arguments in favor of and against unions.

1. ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF UNIONS

 18
 Unions play a vital role in achieving high salaries and improved standard of living of
employees.
 Unions give employees a greater sense of participation in organization decision making.
 Unions ensure job security and protection against arbitrary treatment to the employees.
 Unions have the ability to resist any orders from the employers to perform unethical
acts.
 Unions maintain stability by providing and effective grievance procedure for employee
complaints.
 Unions can act as counter force to radial political movements that exploit the employees.

2. ARGUMENTS AGAINST UNIONS

 Unions shatter the economy of a country by playing DISTORTING influence on

efficient users of labor.
 Unions remove person to person negotiations between employers and employees. Thus
an individual is not given much important in the process of collective bargaining.
 Unions encourage unrest and strained relations between employees and employee.
 Unions encourage the unhealthy concept of job promotion, salary hike, etc on the basis
of seniority.
 Unions prevent employer from rewarding individuals for their personal achievements.

EXTERNAL RESPONSIBILITIES
 External responsibilities refer to the responsibilities of the engineers to the outside
world.
 The responsibilities to the outside world include :
1. Confidentiality
2. Conflict of interest
3. Occupational crimes.

4.7 CONFIDENTIALITY
What is confidentiality?

 It is widely accepted that the engineers have an obligation to keep certain information of
the employer/client secret or confidential.
 Just as with lawyers and medical physicians, engineers also require the confidentiality
principle in their profession. For example, lawyers, doctors, and counselors keep
information of their clients/patients confidential. In the same way engineers have an
obligation to keep proprietary information of their employer or client conflidential.
 Confidentiality is highly emphasized in most engineering codes of ethics. For example,
the NSPE states that engineers shall not reveal facts, data or information obtained in a
 19
professional capacity without the prior consent of the employer or client except as
authorized by law or this code.

Confidential Information:

 Confidential information is information deemed desirable to keep secret.

 According to the codes of ethics of ABET, Engineers shall treat confidential information
coming to them in the course of their assignment as confidential”.
 The most commonly considered criterion on the confidential information is as follows:
Confidential information is any information that the employer or client
would like to keep secret in order to compete effectively against business rivals.
 In general confidential covers both sensitive information given by the employer or
client and information gained by the professional in work paid by the employer or client.

TERMS RELATED TO CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

1. Privileged Information

 IT refers information that is available only on the basis of special privilege. That is,
information available to an employee who is working on a special assignment.
 It includes information that has not yet become to public or known within an
organization.
 This term is often used as a synonym for confidential information.

2. Proprietary Information

 It is the information that is owned by a company.

 It refers to a new knowledge established within the organization that can be legally
protected from use by others.
 This term is often used as synonym for ‘property’ and ‘ownership’.

3. Trade secrets

 A trade secret can be any type of information that has not public and which an employer
has taken steps to keep secret.
 These trade secrets may be about designs, technical processes, plant facilities, quality
control systems, business plans, marketing strategies and so on.
 Trade secrets are given limited legal protection against employee or contractor abuse. In
the sense, an employer can sue employees or contractor for leaking trade secrets or even
for planning to do so.

4. Patents
 20
 Patents legally protect specific product from being manufactured and sold by
competitors without the permissions of the patent holder.
 Patents vs. trade secrets: A patent holder has legally protected monopoly power. But
in case of trade secrets, the legal protection is limited to keeping relationships of
confidentiality and trust.

Why must engineering be kept confidential?

Many information such as privileged information, proprietary information, and trade

secrets are very important for a company to compete in the market. If such information is
leaked to competitors, then the competitors may gain competitive edge and may capture the
market. Therefore it is in the company’s best interest to keep such information confidential as
much as possible.

What type of information should be kept confidential?

Some of the type information that should be kept confidential are:

 Information about the unreleased products.

 Test results and data about the products.
 Design or formulas for products
 Data should technical process.
 Organization of plant facilities.
 Quality control procedures.
 Business information such as number of employees working on project, the suppliers’
list, marketing strategies, production costs, and production yields.

Justification and limits of confidentiality:

The obligation of confidentiality can be justified at two levels:

First Level: It focuses on three moral considerations- respect for autonomy, respect for
promises, and regard for public well-being.

Second Level: It focus on the major ethical theories. It includes justification of confidentiality
by right ethicists, duty ethicists and utilitarian.

We shall discuss the above considerations in the following sections.

1. First level of justification of the confidentiality obligation

(a) Respect for autonomy:

 It refers to respect the autonomy of freedom and self-determination of individuals and

companies in order to recognize their legitimate control over some information.
 21
 Without the legitimate control, the individual and companies cannot maintain their
privacy and protect their self-interest.

(b) Respect for promises:

 It refer to respect the promise (in the form of signing contracts) made by employees to
the employer.
 It is the duty of the employee to respect the promises made to the employer.

(c)Respect for public well-being:

 There are public benefits in recognizing confidentiality, relationship within professional

context.
 The economic benefits of competitiveness to the public can be promoted only when
companies maintain some degree of confidentially concerning their product s.

2. Second level of justification of the confidentiality obligation:

(a)Justification by right ethicists:

 The right ethicists justify employees’ obligation of confidentiality by appealing to basic

human rights.
 These ethicists argue that the rights of employers, to establish what information should
be treated as confidential, should be limited by other basic human rights.
 For instance, no employer should be given a right to safeguard proprietary information
by preventing engineers from whistle blowing in cases where those leaked information
would save human lives and their rights.

(b)Justification by duty ethicists:

 The duty ethicists insist on the basic duties of both employers and employees to maintain
the trust and to commit themselves to an employment agreement they have made.
 They also emphasize that nobody should abuse the property of others.

(c)Justification of utilitarian’s:

 View of rule-utilitarian’s: Rule-utilitarian’s view rules governing confidentiality as

justified to the extent that such rules protect the most good for the greatest number of
people.
 View of act- utilitarian’s: Act- utilitarian’s focus on each situation when an employer
decides on some information to be confidential information.

Changing jobs and confidentiality:

 22
 The obligation of protecting confidential information is not over when employees
change jobs.
 Legally, an engineer is expected to keep information confidential even after the
employee has moved to a new employer.

Management policies for maintaining confidentiality:

Some general management policies for maintaining confidentiality are as follows:

Approach 1: To use employment contracts that place special restrictions on future

employment. This type of agreement the right of individuals to proceed their careers freely.

Approach 2: To use an employment contact that offers positive in exchange for the restrictions
it places on future employment.

Approach 3: To offer an employee a special post-employment annual consulting fee for

several year on the condition that he will not work for a direct competitor during that period.

Approach 4: To tighten the security control on the internal flow of information by restricting
access to trade secrets. This may create an unhealthy working atmosphere of distrust.

Approach 5: To have unwritten and informal agreements among competing companies not to
hire another’s more important employees.

However, a better feasible solution is that the employers have to create a sense of professional
responsibilities among their staffs that beyond merely following the employment agreements.

4.8 CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

What is a conflict of interest?

 In general, conflicts of interest means an individual has two or more desires that all
interests cannot be satisfied given the circumstances.
 Professional conflicts of interest are situations where professionals have an interest, if
pursued, could keep them from meeting one of their obligations to their employers.
Examples:
o An employee working in a company depositing a substantial investment in a
competitors company.
o An employee working in a company serving as a consultant for a competitors
company.
Difference between general conflicts of interest and professional conflicts of interest

 In general conflicts of interest, satisfying all desires/interests of a person cannot be

possible because of physical or economical or other problems.
 23
 By contrast, the professional conflicts of interest cannot be pursued only because
of moral or ethical problems.
Types of conflicts of interest

The three important types of conflicts of interest are:

1. Actual conflicts of interest.

2. Potential conflicts of interest and
3. Apparent conflicts of interest.
1. Actual conflicts of interest
 The actual conflicts of interest arises when an employee compromise objective
engineering judgment.
 It refers to the loss of objectively in decision-making and inability to faithfully
discharge professional duties to employer.
 Example: A mechanical engineer working in the purchase department of an
automobile industry might have his personal influence while offering the
contract for supply of raw materials to a vendor .In this case pursing his
financial interest with the vendor might lead him not to objectively and
faithfully discharge his professional duties to his industry.
 Thus actual conflicts of interest can corrupt professional judgement.
2. Potential Conflicts of interest
 The potential conflicts of interest may corrupt professional judgment in the
future, if not in the present.
 Although potential conflicts of interest may not harm the interest of the
employer initially, there is a threat that potential conflicts of interest will
become actual conflicts of interest at later stage.
 Example: An engineer becoming a friend with a supplier for his company. In
this case, the engineer may not have conflicts of interest initially. However,
in future he may favour his friend, as in the case of actual conflicts of
interest.
3. Apparent Conflicts of Interest
 There are situations in which there is the appearance of a conflict of interest.
This type is referred as apparent conflicts of interest.
 Apparent conflicts of interest actually not corrupting the professional
judgment. However it decreases the confidence of the employer and the
public in the objectively and trustworthiness of professional services. Thus it
harms both the profession and the public.
 Example: Consider a situation, where a design engineer is based on a
percentage of the cost of the design and there is no incentive for him to
reduce the costs down. In this context, it may appear that the engineer will
 24
make the design more expensive in order to earn more commission for
himself. This appearance of conflict of interest may cause the distrust on the
engineer’s ability to perform his professional duties.
What Do The Engineering Codes of Ethics Say About Conflicts Of Interest?

Some of engineering codes that address conflicts of interest are given below:

1. Fundamental canons of the NSPE code says:

 “Engineers shall not be influenced in their professional duties by
conflicting interests”.
 “Engineers shall not accept financial or other considerations, including free
engineer designs, from material or equipment suppliers for specifying their
product”.
 ‘Engineers shall not accept commissions or allowances, directly or
indirectly, from contractors with work for which the Engineer is
responsible”.
2. Fundamental canons of ethics of ABET says:
 “Engineers shall not solicit nor accept gratuities, directly or indirectly,
from contractors, their agents, or other parties dealing with their clients
or employers in connection with work for which they are responsible”.
Conflicts of Interest and Accepting Gifts/Bribes

 Mostly engineers find themselves in actual, potential, or apparent conflicts of interest are
those involving accepting gifts.
 What is a bribe?
 A bribe is something such as money or a favour, offered or given to someone in a
position or trust in order to induce him to act dishonestly.
 It is something offered to influence or persuade.
 What are the ethical reasons for not tolerating bribery?
Bribes are illegal and immoral because of the following three reasons:

1. Bribery corrupts free market economy system and it is anticompetitive.

2. Bribery corrupts justice and public policy by allowing rich people to make all
the rules. In today’s business,It is understood that only large and powerful companies
will survive, since they are capable of providing bribes.

3. Bribery treats people as commodities that can be bought and sold. This practice
degrades the human beings and corrupts both the buyer and the seller.

 What is meant by the term ‘kickbacks’?

 Kickbacks are another form of bribing.
 25
 Prearranged payments made by contractors to companies or their
representatives in exchange for contracts actually granted are called
‘kickbacks’.
 When is a gift a bribe?
(What are the difference between gift and bribe?)
 Gifts are not bribe as long as they are gratuities of smaller amounts. But bribes are
illegal and immoral because they are worth of substantial amounts.
 Gift may play a legitimate role in the normal conduct of business whereas a bribe
influences the judgment.
 In olden days the following thumb rule was applied: “A gift is a bribe if one can’t
eat, drink or smoke it in a day”.
 Today a more appropriate thumb rule says:
“If you think that your offer of a particular gift would have grave or merely
embarrassing consequences for your company if made public, then the gift should
be considered as a bribe”.
What is moonlighting? Does it create conflicts of interest?
 The term moonlighting is used when employee of a company works for another
company during his spare time’
 Moonlighting creates conflicts of interest only in special circumstances, such as working
for competitors, suppliers, or customers.
Different ways to avoid Conflicts of interest:
It is understood that all conflicts of interests, whether actual, potential, or apparent should be
avoided in all possible ways. Some of the effective ways to avoid conflicts of interests are as
follows:
 To follow the guidance of company policy.
 In the absence of company policy, one can go for a second opinion from a coworker or
manager.
 In the absence of above two options, It is better to examine one’s own motives and use
ethical problem solving techniques.
 Finally, one follows the statements in the professional code of ethic. Some of the codes
have given clear statements to identify whether the given situation is a conflict of
interests or not.

4.9 OCCUPATIONAL CRIMES

What Are Occupational Crimes?

 Occupational crimes are illegal acts committed through a person’s lawful employment.
 It is the secretive violation of laws regarding work activities.
 26
 When professionals or office workers commit the occupational crimes, it is referred as
‘White Collar Crime’.
 Most of the occupational crimes are special instances of conflicts of interest. These
crimes are motivated by personal greed, corporate ambition, misguided company
loyalty, and many other motives.
 Even crimes that are aimed at promoting the interest of one’s employer rather than
oneself are also considered as occupational crimes.
 Occupational crimes impinge on various aspects such as professionalism, loyalty,
conflicts of interest, and confidentiality.

Examples of Occupational Crimes

Three cases of occupational crimes that are commonly observed are:

1. Price fixing.
2. Endangering lives and
3. Industrial espionage i.e. industrial spying.

1. Occupational Crimes of Price Fixing

 While fixing a price for any commodity/product/service, sometimes all competitors

come together and jointly set the prices to be charged. These are called as Pricing
cartels.
 The above price fixation is unfair and unethical practice. This leads to restraint the
free trade and open competition. Thus the above kind of price fixing is an example
of occupational crime.
 Case Illustration: In 1983, in American state of Washington, six large electrical
contractors along with eight company presidents and vice presidents were indicted
on charges of fixing bids (contracts) for building public power plants. This is evident
instance of occupational crime.
 In order to avoid the above kind of occupational crimes, the laws are enforced which
forbids companies from jointly fixing prices.

2. Endangering Lives
 Endangering the lives of employees is another kind of occupational crime.
 Some companies employ workers without disclosing them the harmful health effects
and safety hazards about the working environment and the product to be
manufactured. In due course of time, workers are exposed to very serious health
problems. In this case, the employers are guilty of involved in an occupational
crime
 27
 Case Illustration: Manville Corporation, the largest producer of asbestos in U.S,
knew that asbestos dust was harmful for their employees’ health. It could cause a
lung disease named ‘asbestosis’ and an incurable cancer named ‘mesothelioma’.
The company kept this information secret from the employees and the public.
During 1940-1979, over 27 million workers were exposed to asbestos and more
than 1,00,000 workers have died. Many victims and their families have
successfully filed civil suits to claim damages.
 The above shocking case study is the typical illustration of an occupational crime
committed by the Manville Corporation.

3. Industrial Espionage

 Industrial espionage means industrial spying. Espionage refers secret gathering of

information in order to influence relationships between two entities.
 Keeping information secret is a right. But acquisition of others’ secret to one’s
advantage is espionage. The espionage is one of the most unethical and lawless
activities.
 The vital information are secretly gathered/theft through espionage agents (also
called spies).
 Industrial or corporate espionage is the theft of trade secrets of economic gains. The
trade secret may be any of the intellectual properties such as designs, prototypes,
formulas, software codes, passwords, manufacturing processes, marketing plans,
supplier/contractor details, etc.
 From the above discussion, it is clear that the industrial espionage is also a typical
occupational crime existing in our society.

RIGHTS OF ENGINEERING
4.10 PROFESSIONAL RIGHTS AND EMPLOYEE RIGHTS
Engineers not only have many responsibilities, they also have rights to go along with these
responsibilities. Always rights, duties and responsibilities go together. In fact, rights and
responsibilities go together. In fact, rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same
coin.
In most popular definition of right states, “A right is a valid claim to something and
against someone which is recognized by the principles of an enlightened conscience”.

TYPES OF RIGHTS:
The concept of rights can be categorized into the following three types:
1. Human rights
2 .Employee rights
(a) Contractual rights,
(b) Non-contractual rights.
 28
3. Professional rights
1. Human Rights
 Human rights are the rights possessed by virtue of being people or moral agents.
 The fundamental human rights adopted by the united Nation’s international bills of
human rights are listed
(1)Rights to life
(2)Rights to liberty
(3)Rights to security of person
(4)Rights not to be held in slavery
(5)Rights not to be tortured or subjected to inhuman or degrading punishment
(6)Rights to recognition before the law
(7)Rights to impartial trail and protection from arbitrary
(8)Rights to freedom to movement
(9)Rights to marriage
(10)Rights not to marry without free consent
(11)Rights to property ownership
(12)Rights to freedom of thought
(13)Rights to peaceful assembly and participation in government
(14)Rights to social security and work
(15)Rights to education
(16)Rights to participate in and from trade unions
(17)Rights to nondiscrimination
(18)Rights to a minimal standard of living
 Thus engineer, as human being, have human rights to live and freely practice their
legitimate interests.

2. Employee Rights

 Employee rights are the rights that apply or refer to the status or position of
employee
 Types of employee rights:
(1)Contractual employee rights,
(2)Non-contractual employee rights

(1)Contractual Employee Rights

 These employee rights are institution rights that arise only due to specific
agreements in employee contact.
 Examples: The contractual employee rights include
 Rights to receive a salary of a certain amount
 29
 Rights to receive other company benefits such as bonuses, salary
increment, etc.

(2)Non-Contractual Employee Rights

 These are Rights existing even if not formally recognized in the specific contracts
of company policies
 Examples: The Non-contractual employee rights include
 Right to choose outside activities;
 Right to Privacy and employer confidentiality;
 Right to due process from employer;
 Right to nondiscrimination and absence of sexual harassment at the
workplace

(3) Professional Rights

 Professional rights are the rights possessed by virtue of being professionals having
special moral responsibilities.
 Examples: The professional rights include
 Right to exercise one’s professional judgment on the basis of his
conscience.
 Rights to refuse to involve in unethical activities
 Rights to warn the public about harms and dangers
 Rights to express one’s professional judgment, include his rights to
disagree
 Rights to fair recognition and remuneration for professional services.

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF PROFESSIONAL RIGHTS

Rights of professional Conscience:

 It is one of the most fundamental Rights of engineers.

 The rights of professional conscience refer to the moral rights to exercise
responsible professional judgment in discharging one’s professional responsibilities.
 In simple words, it is the rights to do what everyone agree obligatory for the
professional engineer to do.
 The Rights of conscience is a ‘negative’ right. because its place on obligation on
other people not to interface with exercise
 In order to exercise the rights of professional conscience, engineers require special
resources and support from others. So, this right is also considered as a ‘positive’
right, as it is placing on the other people an obligation to do more merely not
interfering.
 30
Specific Rights:

 The right of professional conscience is most general professional rights. It consists

of many other specific rights. Two important specific rights are:
(1).Right of conscientious refusal, and
(2).Right of recognition.

1. Rights of conscientious refusal:

 The right of conscientious refusal is the right to engage in unethical behavior.

 According to this rights, no employer can force or pressure an employee to do
something that the employee considers unethical unacceptable.
 The rights of conscientious refusal arises two situations:
1. Where there is widely shared agreement in the profession regarding ethical
and unethical acts, and
2. Where there is a possibility for disagreement among the people over
unethical acts.
 Thus the engineers should have a moral right to refuse in participating unethical
activities. The example of unethical activities are forging documents, lying, giving
or taking bribes , selling the company secrets to others, information theft, etc.
 Also the employers should have a moral right not to force or pressurize the
employee to participate any unethical activities. Employers should not use any
revenge techniques against the employees in this regard.

2. Right to Recognition:

 The right to recognition refers to the engineer’s right to professional recognition for
their work and accomplishments.
 The recognition/reward may be of any one of the following types :
1. Extrinsic Rewards: These are related to monetary remunerations such as
increased salaries, commissions, cash bonus, gain sharing, etc.
2. Intrinsic Rewards: These are related to non-monetary remunerations such
as acknowledging achievements by issuing appreciations letters, certificates and
oral praises, etc.

FOUNDATION OF PROFESSIONAL RIGHTS:

The basic professional rights discussed so far, can justified by the ethical theories as
given below.

1. Rights Ethics:

 Rights ethics emphasizes that should all have human moral rights, and any action
that violates these rights is unethical.
 31
 Thus rights ethicists justify the basic right of professional conscience by referring to
human moral rights.

2. Duty Ethics:

 Duty ethics emphasizes that is duties should be performed, without considering

much about moral rights.
 For example, if an individual has a right to do something, it is only because others
have duties or obligations to support him to do so. In this view, the basic
professional rights is justified by reference to others duties to support or not
interfere with the work-related exercise of professional s conscience.

3. Utilitarianism:

 Utilitarian theory argues that the greatest good is promoted by allowing engineers to
practice their obligations.
 Thus the utilitarianism justifies the right of professional conscience referring to the
basic goal of producing the most good for the greatest number of people.

WHISTLE BLOWING:

What does whistle blowing mean?

 Whistle blowing is the act by an employee of informing the public or higher

management of unethical or illegal behavior by an employer or supervisor.
 It is the act of reporting on unethical conduct within an organization to someone outside
of the organization in an effort to discourage the organization from continuing the activity.
 According to the codes of ethics of the professional engineering societies, engineers
have the professional rights to disclose wrong doing within their organization and expect to
take appropriate actions. Thus in a way, whistle blowing is also one of the professional rights
of engineers.
 On the other hand, the employers/companies view whistle blowing as a bad exercise.
Because they feel that whistle blowing can lead to distrust, disharmony, and an inability of
employees to work together.
 Example: Journalists and media persons blow the whistle on politicians to bring out
their corruption by publishing articles or informing regulatory authorities.

Whistle Blowing Defined:

 General Definition: Whistle blowing is alerting relevant persons to some moral or

legal corruption, where relevant persons are those in a position to act in response, if
only by registering protest.
 32
 Subjective Definition: Whistle blowing occurs when an employee or former
employee conveys information about a significant moral problem outside approved
organization channels to someone in a position to take action on the problem.

Types of Whistle Blowing:

The four type of whistle blowing are given below:

1. Internal Whistle Blowing: Internal Whistle blowing occurs when the information is
conveyed to someone within the organization.
2. External Whistle Blowing: External Whistle blowing occurs when the information is
passed outside the organization.
3. Open Whistle Blowing: Open whistle blowing also known as acknowledged whistle
blowing occurs when the persons openly reveal their identity as they convey the information.
4. Anonymous Whistle Blowing: Anonymous whistle blowing occurs when the persons
who is blowing the whistle refuses to reveal his name when making allegations.
Moral Guidelines:

1. When is the whistle-blowing morally permissible?

Richard Degeorge has provided a set of criteria that must be satisfied before whistle
blowing can be morally justified. Degeorge Believes that whistle blowing is morally
permissible when the following three criteria are meet:

1. If the harm that will be done by the product to the public is serious and considerable.

2. If the employees report their concern to their superiors.

3. If getting no satisfaction from their immediate superiors, they tire out the channels available
within the organization.

2. When is the whistle-blowing morally obligatory?

Degeorge believes that whistle blowing is morally obligatory when the following two criteria is
meet:

1. If the employee has documented evidence that would convince a responsible impartial
observer that his view of the situation is correct and the company policy is wrong; and

2. If the employee has strong evidence that making the information policy that public will in
fact prevent the threatened the serious harm.

PREVENTING WHISTLE BLOWING

In order to solve the whistle blowing a problem within a company, any one of the following
four methods can be used:
 33
1. The company should create a strong ethics culture. There should be clear commitment
to the ethical behavior from both employers and employees.

2. The organization should remove rigid channels of communication. Instead of they

should encourage free and open communication system within the organization,

3. The companies should be Create ethical review committee with real freedom to
investigate the complains and make independent recognitions to top management.

4. There should be willingness on the part of the management to admit mistakes, if

necessary. This attribute will set an atmosphere for employee’s ethical behavior.

EMPLOYEE RIGHTS:

What are the Employee Rights?

 As discussed in section employee rights are any rights, moral or legal, that involve the
status or being of an employee.
 In fact the professional rights are also employee rights. For example the professional
rights to express dissent about company policies are also evidently employee rights.
 Employee rights also include fundamental human rights relevant to the employment
situation.
 As stated already, employee rights are of two types:
o Contractual employee rights and
o Non-Contractual employee rights.

Right To Outside Activities:

 As per the basic human rights all employees have the right to practice outside activities
of their own interest without any interference from employers.
 However, the rights of employees to practice outside the activities and should not
violate the duties and responsibilities to their jobs.
 Also the employers have the right to take action when outside activities create a conflict
of interest,
 In addition employees have no right to damage their employer’s interests even during
non-working hours.

Rights To privacy:

 The right to personal privacy means the right to have a private life off the job.
 In other words, the right to privacy is also limited by the legitimate exercise of
employer’s rights. The employers can obtain and use information of employees for their
 34
effective management of the company. However this personal information should not be
given to outsiders.

Rights to Due Process:

 The rights to due process means right to fair procedures safeguarding protecting the
exercise of other rights.
 This righty also extends to fair procedures in firing, demotion, and other disciplinary
actions.
 In order to implement the right of due process, the following two general procedures can
be used:
1. Written explanations, specifying the reasons, should be given to employees who are
penalized in any ways.
2. An appeals procedure should be established so that an employee can appeal against
their penalties if he believes his rights have been violated.

4.11 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR):

What is an intellectual property?

1. Intellectual property is a property that results from mental labor.

2. The intellectual property is originating mainly from the activities of the human intellect.

3. Intellectual property is the information and original expression that derives it original value
from creative ideas with a commercial value.

4. In the legal sense, intellectual property is a patterned invention, a trade secret or copyrighted
material.

5. Like other properties intellectual property is also an asset which can be bought or sold
licensed and exchanged.

What Are The Intellectual Property Rights?

1. The legal rights built up on the intellectual property created are known as intellectual
property rights.

2. These rights are approved and regulated by the law on IPR of the country.

3. IPR allows the people to independently own their innovations and creativity, which is
similar to legal protection of any other properties.

4. According to the trade related intellectual property rights system all the members of the
world trade organization have to comply the enforcement of intellectual property of right
protection laws.
 35
5. The IPRs safeguard and encourage the innovations in the various sectors of the benefit of
this society.

Elements of Intellectual Property Rights

The WTO has established seven elements of IPRS, which were agreed by TRIPS, they are:

1. Patents.
2. Industrial Designs
3. Trade Marks
4. Copy Rights
5. Trade Secrets
6. Design of integrated circuits
7. Geographical Indications.
1. PATENTS:

 Patents are the legal rights approved for new inventions involving scientific and
technical knowledge.
 Patent means an official document giving the holder the sole right to make use or sell an
invention and preventing others from copying it.
 To be patient the invention must be useful, original, new, unusual and hardly noticeable.
 As invention may be a product, method, apparatus, design, composition of matters etc
But one cannot patient a way of doing business or anything that occurs in nature.
 The validity period of most of the patents are 20 years from the date of the filling
However for the design patents such as new design for a product the patent validity is 14
years.

2. INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS:

 It is the right to safeguard one’s industrial designs.

 As stated by TRIPS, a design is an idea or conception as to the features to the shape
configuration pattern, ornament of composition of lines or colors applied to any article,
two or more dimensional or both any industrial process or means which is the finished
article appeals and is judged to the solely by the eye or product.

3. TRADEMARKS:

 Trademarks are words, phrases, sound or symbol associated with goods or services.
 Trademark means a registered design or name used to identify a company’s goods.
 It is used to indicate the public the origin of manufacture of the goods affixed with that
mark.
 Examples: Pepsi is a registered trademark in soft drinks; Thomson in electronic goods:
and nestle in food products.
 36
4. COPYRIGHTS:

 Copyright means the legal right held for a certain number of years to print publish sell
broadcast perform film or record an original work or any part of it.
 The copyrights product the expression of the idea, not the idea themselves.
 The copyright expires fifty years after the death of the author.
 Example: Poems, paintings, script of movies and computer programs.

5. TRADE SECRETS:

 Trade secret means a device or techniques used by a company in manufacturing its

products etc and keep secret from other companies or the general public.
 Trade secret such as formulas, patterns, methods, and data compilations are kept secret
in order to gain a competitive advantage over the competitor.
 Though the trade secret cannot be registered like the other intellectual properties thefts
of trade secrets are legally considered as crime.
 Examples: The formula of Fanta soft drink and the formula for making drugs.

6. DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS:

 It is the right granted to the inventor to prevent anybody making use of the design of
integrated circuits, semiconductor devices, and other electronic devices.
 Example: Invention of a new microprocessor chip.

7. GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS:

 Geographical indications identify goods as originating in the territory of a country, a

origin or a locality in that territory where a specific quality reputations or other
characteristics of the goods is the essentially attributed to their geographical origin.
 Examples: Tirunelveli halwa, Dindugal locks, sivakasi crackers, kancheepuram sarees.

BENEFITS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS:

The benefits of implementing the IPRS are given below:

 IPRS promote incentives for the inventions industrial and economical developments of a
country.
 IPRS provide incentives for the inventions and ensure adequate returns on
commercialization of the invention.
 IPRs are useful in identifying unprotected areas to avoid violation.
 IPRs provide use the invention for the public purpose.

4.12 DISCRIMINATION:
What is the discrimination?
 37
1. Discrimination is the unequal treatment of an individual intentionally or unintentionally.

2. Discrimination refers to the treating the people unfairly because of one’s sex, race, skin
color, age or religious outlook.

3. Discrimination based on these aspects of the biological makeup and basic convection is
disgraceful.

4. Discrimination violates the fundamental human rights of fair and equal treatment humans.

5. Discrimination defined: Discrimination is a morally unjustified treatment of people on

arbitrary or irrelevant grounds.

Preferential Treatments:

1. Preferential treatment mean giving an advantage to a member of a group that is the past was
denied equal treatment in particular women and minorities.

2. The preferential treatment s are also referred as reverse preferential treatments, as it reverses
the historical order of preferences.

TWO KINDS OF PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT:

1. Week Preferential Treatment: In involves giving an advantage to members of traditionally

discriminated-against groups over equally qualified applicants who are members of other
group.

2. Strong Preferential Treatment: In involves giving preference to minority applicants

women over better qualified applicants from other groups.

ARGUMENTS OVER PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT:

1. Arguments Favoring Preferential Treatment:

 A rights ethics who favor preferential treatment emphasizes on the principle of

compensatory justice. According to them past violations of rights must be compensated.
So preference should be given on the basis of the membership in a group that has been
disadvantaged in the past.
 The utilitarianism who favors preferential treatment argues that the women and
minorities should be integrated into the economic and social mainstream.

2. Arguments against Preferential Treatment:

 It can be argued that preferential treatment is a straightforward violation of others people

rights to equal opportunity.
 It is also argued that there is the economic harm that results from a policy of not
consistently recruiting the best practice is the best qualified person.
 38
 The reverse discrimination is unfair in the present the similar to the unfair discrimination
made against the disadvantaged groups in the past.

Thus in the present scenario it is very important to find a way to balance these for and against
arguments over preferential arguments over preferential treatments in order to achieve the
social integration.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

 Sexual harassment is a particular undesirable, objectionable from the sex discrimination

 Definition of sexual harassment.

1.”sexual harassment is any sexual oriented practice that endangers a woman’s job that
undermines her job performance and threatens her economic livelihood”.

2.”sexual harassment is the unwanted imposition of the sexual requirements in the

context of a relationship of unequal power”.

 Sexual harassment can be sexual harness as it violates the basic human rights to pursue
one’s work free from the pressures, fears, penalties, and insults.
 UNIT-5 GLOBAL ISSUES
Multinational corporations-Environmental Ethics-Computer Ethics-Weapons
development-Engineers as Managers-Consulting Engineers-Engineers as expert witness
and Advisors-Moral leadership-code of conduct-Corporate social Responsibility

1. Multi National Corporations:

Globalization means integration of countries through commerce, Transfer of technology
and exchange of information and culture. In a way, it includes acting together and
interacting economies through Trade, Investment, Loan, Development Schemes and capital
across countries. These flows include Knowledge, science and technology, skills, culture,
information and entertainment besides direct human resource, telework and outsourcing.

Organisations who have established business in more than one country are called Multi
National Corporation. The head quarters are in home country and the business is extended in
many host countries.

The Western organizations doing business in the less economically developed countries gain
the advantage of inexpensive labour, availability of natural resources, conductive tax
atmosphere, and virgin market for the products.

At the same time, the developed countries are also benefitted by fresh job opportunities, jobs
with higher remuneration and challenges, transfer of technology and several social benefits by
the wealth developed.

Loss of jobs for home country loss or exploitation of natural resources, political instability
for the host countries are some of the threats of globalization.

International human rights:

Common minimal rights are to be followed to smoothen the transactions when the
engineers and employers of MNCs have to interact at official, social, economic and
sometimes political levels.

At international level, the organizations are expected to adopt the minimum levels of

a)Values such as mutual support, loyalty and reciprocity,

b)The negative duty of refraining from harmful actions such as violence and fraud
c) Basic fairness and practical justice in case of conflicts.
International Rights to be taken care are,
i)Right of freedom of physical movement of people.
ii) Right of ownership of properties.
iii) Freedom from torture.
iv) Right to fair trial from the products.
v) Freedom from discrimination on the basis of race or sex.
vi)Physical security.
vii)Freedom of speech and association.
viii) Right to have a minimum education.
ix) Right to political participation
x) Right to live and exist
Ways to promote morally justifiable measures

Multinational companies should involve in promoting morally just measures in the host
country. The following are need to be considered in this context.

 Respect the basic human rights of the people of the host countries.
 Give some benefits to the host countries.
 Promote the overall economy and improve the welfare of the workers.
 Improve morally justified institutions in the host country.
 Respect the laws and cultures of the host countries without violating the basic moral rights.
 Provide a fair wage to the employees of the host countries.
 Provide adequate safety measures to the workers when they engage in hazardous activities
and inform the danger of working situations.
 Pay for the extra risks undertaken by the workers.

Technology Transfer is the process of developing practical applications for the results
of scientific research.

The process of transferring discoveries made by basic research institutions to the commercial
sector, to be developed in to useful products and services.

Sharing technical information by means of education and training.

Thus technology transfer is the sharing of knowledge and facilities among:

 Federal laboratories
 Industries
 Universities
 Federal, State and local governments
 Third party Intermediates

Why Transfer of Technology

 Technology and innovation can help to:

 Improve living standards
 Increase Productivity
 Generate new industries and employment opportunities
 Improve public services
 Create more competitive products in world markets.

Appropriate Technology

Technology that can be made at an affordable price at an affordable price by ordinary

people using local materials to do useful work in ways that do the least possible harm to both
human society and the environment.

 Appropriate technology is a term which refers to using the simplest and most benign level
of technology which can effectively achieve the intended purpose.
 It refers to technology which is most appropriate to the environment and culture it is
intended to support.
 Appropriate Technology in a most basic sense means suitable technology. It means
identification, transformation and implementation of the most suitable technology for a new
set of conditions.

2. ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:
One of the most important political issues of 20th century has been environmental protection
& the rise of environmental movement.

 This movement has sought to control the introduction of toxic and unnatural substance in
to the environment, to protect the integrity of the biosphere and to ensure healthy environment
for humans.
 Engineers are responsible in part for the creation of technology that has led to damage of
the environment and are also working to find solutions to the problems caused by modern
technology.
 The environmental movement has led to an increased awareness among engineers that they
have a responsibility to use their knowledge and skills to help protect the environment.
 An area of study called environmental ethics was formulated, seeking to explore the ethical
roots of the environmental movement and to understand what ethics tells us about our
responsibility to the environment.

Definition:

Environmental Ethics is the study of moral issues concerning the environment and moral
perspective, beliefs or attitudes concerning the issues.

It has become important that engineers design eco friendly tools, machines, suitable products,
processes and projects.
These are essential now to,

 Ensure protection of environment

 Prevent the degradation of environment
 Slow down the exploitation of natural resources.

ROLE OF ASCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:

 American society of civil engineers (ASCE) code of ethics has specifically requires that
engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to
comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of professional
duties.
 Compaq computer corporation was the leader, who exhibited their commitment to
environmental health ,through implementation of the concept of Design for environment on
their products ,unified standard all over the world units, and giving priority to vendors with a
record of environmental concern .
Engineers as Experimenters have certain duties toward environment ethics namely,
1. Environmental Impact Assessment:
One unintended effect of technology is wastage and the resulting pollution of land, water
and even space. We have to analyze detailed study about how the industry &technology
affects the environment.
2. Establish Standards:
Study and to fix the tolerable & actual pollution levels.
3. Counter Measures:
Study what the protective or eliminating measures are available for immediate
implementation.

4. Environmental Awareness:

Study on how to educate the people on environmental practices, issues and possible
remedies.

ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS:

Acid Rain:

 Large emissions of Sulphur Oxides and nitrous oxides are being released in to the air from
the thermal power stations using the fossil fuels and several processing industries.
 Acid Rain causes acidification of Lakes and streams and contributes to damage of trees at
high elevations and many sensitive forest soils.
 In addition,acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints,including
irreplaceable buildings,statues and sculptures that are part of any nations cultural heritage.
 Mobilized copper has been implicated in outbreaks of diarrhoea in young children and it is
thought that water supplies contaminated with aluminium cause Alzhemers disease.
Global Warming:

 Over the past 30 years ,the earth has warmed by 0.6degree Celsius,and it is likely to push
up the temperature by 3 degree Celsius by 2100 according to NASAs studies.
 The U.S administration has accepted the reality of global ultimate change,which has been
associated with intense heat waves and the melting of polar ice.
 Green house gases carbon di oxide emitted by motor vehicles & coal fired power plants
,trap heat like the glass walls of a green house causes the earth to warm up.

Depletion of Ozone Layer:

 The ozone layer protects the entire planet from the ill effects of UV radiation and is vital
for all living organisms in this world.
 The equipments which emits chloro flouro carbon (CFC)in our day to day life is
Refrigerators,air conditioners and aerosol can [Link] has also caused skin cancers to sun
bathers in the western countries.
 Further NO and NO2 gases were found to react with Ozone.
 Apart from engineers,the organization ,laws of contry and local administration and market
mechanisms are required to take up concerted efforts to protect the environment.

Industrial Waste Disposal:

There has been a lot complaint through the media on

a) Against the sterlite copper smelting plant in Thuthukudi (1997) against its pollution.

b) When Indian companies imported the discarded French warship for disposal, the poisonous
asbestos compounds were expected to pollute the atmosphere besides exposing the labour to a
great risk, during the disposal.

APPROACHES TO RESOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS:

(i)COST-OBLIVIOUS APPROACH:

 In this approach, cost is not taken in to account, but rather the environment is made as
clean as possible.
 This approach bears a sticking resemblance to rights and duty ethics.
 It is difficult to uphold, especially in modern urbanized society. It is very difficult to
enforce, since the definition of “as clean as possible” is hard to agree on, and being oblivious
to cost is not practical in any realistic situation.

(ii)COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS:

 Here the problem is analysed in terms of the benefits derived by reducing the pollution.
 The cost and benefits are weighed to determine the optimum combination.
 In this approach, the goal is not to achieve a completely clean environment, but rather to
achieve economically beneficial balance of pollution with health (or) environmental
considerations.

ROLE OF ENGINEERS:

 Engineers have a responsibility to ensure that their work is conducted in the most
environmentally safe manner.
 Responsibility must be balanced somewhat by consideration of the economic well being of
our employer, our family and our community.
 As professionals, engineers have the right to express their opinions on moral issues such as
environment.
 An engineer should not be compelled by his employer to work on a project that he finds
ethically troubling, including projects with severe environmental impacts.
 For many environmental issues, engineers are not competent to make decisions but should
instead seek the council of others such as biologists, public health experts and the physicians
who have the knowledge to help analyse and understand the possible environmental
consequences of a project.

3. COMPUTER ETHICS:
Computer ethics is defined as

a)study and analysis of nature and social impact of computer technology.

b) Formulation and justification of policies for ethical use of computers.

There are numerous ways in which computers have been misused, leading to serious ethical
issues. The engineers roles as designer, manager and user of computers bring with them a
responsibility to help foster the ethical use of computers.

COMPUTER ETHICS PROBLEMS:

(i)Computer as the instrument of unethical act:

(a)The usage of computer replaces the job positions. This has been overcome to a large extent
by readjusting work assignments, and training everyone on computer applications such as
word processing, editing and graphics.

(b)Breaking Privacy: Information (or) data of the individual accessed or erased or the
ownership changed.

(c)Defraud a bank or a client:, by accessing or withdrawing money from others bank account.

(ii)Computer as an object of unethical client:

The data’s are accessed and deleted or changed

(a)HACKING:

Ethical issues also arise when computers are the objects of unethical act. This act is
popularly referred to as hacking and has been widely reported in the news papers and in
popular culture, sometimes with the hacker being portrayed as heroic.

Hacking comes in many forms:

(i)Gaining unauthorized access to a database, implanting false information and disseminating

viruses over the internet.

(ii)These activities are by no means limited to highly trained computer specialists. Many
hackers are bored teenagers seeking a challenge.

(iii)Computer hacking is clearly ethically troublesome. Accessing private information violates

the privacy rights of individuals or corporations even if the hacker keeps the information to
himself.

(iv)Hackers have accessed secret military information which has oblivious implications for
national security.

(v)Altering information in a data base even information about yourself is also ethically wrong.

(b)SPREADING VIRUS:

(i)The issuance of computer viruses is also unethical. These viruses frequently destroy data
stored on computer.

(ii)This act could lead to deaths when hospital records are wiped out or even to the loss of
millions of dollars for corporations, individuals, and tax payers as completed work must be
redone after being destroyed by virus.

(iii)Hackers are not being malicious, but are simply trying to” push the envelope” and see
what they and their computers are capable of.

Problems Related to Autonomous Nature of Computers.

Autonomy refers to the ability of a computer to make decisions without the intervention of
humans.

a)SECURITY RISK:
 Tokyo stock exchange faced a major embarrassment .A seemingly casual mistake by a
junior trader of a large security house led to huge losses including that of reputation. The
order through the exchanges trading system was to sell one share for 6,00,[Link] the
trader keyed in a sale order for 6,00,000 shares at one each.
 Naturally, the shares on offer at the ridiculously low price were lapped up. And only few
buyers agreed to reverse the deal. The loss to the securities firm was said to be huge running
in to several hundred thousand.
 More important to note, such an obvious mistake, could not be corrected by some of the
advanced technology available.

b)LOSS OF HUMAN LIVES:

Many weapons systems rely heavily on computer sensors & computer controls. Due to speed
with which events can happen on a modern battle field, it would seem valuable to have
weapons that can operate autonomously.

Weapon systems operating without human intervention can suffer from the instability
problems described with regard to financial markets.

For e.g. malfunctioning sensor might lead a computer to that an enemy has increased its
military activity in a certain area. This would lead to an increased activity by the enemy etc.

Thus unstable situation could lead to a conflict and the loss of life when really there was
nothing happening. This problem is especially disconcerting due to implications of loss of
human life.

Various Issues Related to computer ethics discussed as follows:

1. Computer in work place:

(a)Elimination of Routine and Manual jobs:

This leads to unemployment, but the creation of skilled & IT enabled service jobs are more
advantageous for the people. Initially this may require some up gradation of their skills and
knowledge, but a formal training will set this problem right.

(B)Health and Safety:

 The ill effects due to electromagnetic radiation, especially on women and pregnant
employees, mental stress, wrist problem known as carpel. Tunnel syndrome, and back pain
due to poor ergonomic seating designs and eye strain due to poor ergonomic seating designs
and eye strain due to poor lighting and flickers in the display and long exposure, has been
reported worldwide. Over a period of long exposure these are expected to affect the health and
safety of the people.
 The computer designers should take care of these aspects and management should monitor
the health and safety of the computer personnel.
(C)Computer Failure:

 Failure in computers may be due to errors in the hardware or software. Hardware errors are
rare and they can be solved easily and quickly.
 But software errors are very serious as they can stop the entire network. Testing and quality
systems for software have gained relevance and importance in the recent past, to avoid or
minimize these errors.

Property Issues: Concerned With Computers Are.

 Computers have been used to extort money through anonymous telephone calls.
 Computers are used to cheat & steal by current as well as previous employees.
 Violation of contracts on computer sales and services.
 Conspiracy as a group , especially with the internet to defraud the gullible, stealing the
identity & to forge the documents.
 Property is what the law permits & defines as can be owned, exchanged and used. The
computer hardware is protected by patents. The software is protected by copyrights and trade
secrets. But algorithms can be copyrighted, because the mathematical formulas can be
discovered but not owned. The object codes which are not intelligible to human beings cannot
be copyrighted.
 Thus, we see that producing multiple copies from one copy of software &distribution or
sales are crimes.

4. WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT:
One of the largest employers of engineer’s worldwide is the defence industry.

A Weapon is a tool which can be used to kill or incapacitate, to destroy property, or to

otherwise render resources non functional or unavailable. It may be used to attack and defend
and consequently also to threaten or protect.

Many innovations in engineering and science have come about as a result of the development
of weapons. Since Weapons are designed basically for one purpose to kill human beings, it is
important to look at this type of engineering work in the contact of engineering ethics and the
rights of engineers.

An engineer may choose either to work or not to work in defence related industries and be
ethically justified in either position.

OPTING TO WORK-JUSTIFICATIONS

 Work for the safety of country.

 Act of patriotism
 Someone else is there if an engineer failed to work.
 Steady income to the family.
OPTING NOT TO WORK-JUSTIFICATIONS

 Duty is to kill human beings

 Destructing something

Problems of Defence industry:

 Problem of wastage and huge cost in implementing and maintaining a weapons system.
 Problem of technology creep.
 Problem in maintaining secrecy.
 Every country allocates large amount of its resources to defence sector.
 Many reasonable engineering professionals feel that, ethically they cannot work on designs
that will ultimately be used to kill other humans. Their remoteness from the killing site does
not change this feeling.
 Even though they will not push the button, trigger the gun or may never actually see the
victims of the weapon, they still find it morally un acceptable to work on such systems.
 On the other hand equally morally responsible engineers find this type of work ethically
acceptable. They reason that the defence of our nation or other nations from aggression is a
legitimate function of our government and is an honourable goal for engineers to contribute
to.
 Both these positions can be justified by reference to the moral theories and problem solving
techniques. Even if an engineer finds defence work ethically acceptable, there might be uses
of these weapons or certain projects that he considers questionable.
 As with many of the ethical dilemmas, there is no simple solution, but rather the answers
must be determined by each individual after examination of his values and personal feelings
about the ethics of defence work.
 It is important to avoid working on any project that you deem unethical, even if it might
lead to career advancement, or even it is a temporary job.
 This principle holds true for projects that you feel are unsafe, dangerous for the
environment etc. It can be argued that weapons work is the most important type of
engineering, given its consequences for mankind.
 Because of the implications to human life, this type of engineering requires an even more
stringent examination of ethical issues to ensure responsible participation.

5. ENGINEERS AS MANAGERS:
CHARACTERISTICS:

The characteristics of engineers as managers are:

Promote an ethical climate, through framing organizations policies, responsibilities and by

personal attitudes and obligations.
Resolving conflicts, by evolving priority, developing mutual understanding, generating
various alternative solutions to problems.

Social responsibilities to stake holders, customers and employers. They act to develop wealth
as well as the welfare of the society. Ethicists project the view that the manager’s
responsibility is only to increase the profit of the organization, and only the engineers have the
responsibility to protect the safety, health and welfare of the public.

But managers have the ethical responsibility to produce safe and good products, while
showing respect for human beings who include the employees, customers and the public.
Hence the objective for the managers and engineers is to produce valuable products that are
also profitable.

[Link] CONFLICTS:

In solving conflicts, force should not be resorted. In fact, the conflict situations should be
tolerated, understood and resolved by participation by all the concerned. The conflicts in case
of project managers arise in the following manners:

(a)Conflicts based on [Link] happen because of various levels of execution, priority

and limitations of each level.

(b)Conflicts arising out of fixing the priority to different projects or [Link] are to
be arrived at from the end requirements and it may change from time to time.

(c)Conflicts based on availability of personnel.

(d)Conflicts over technical, economic, and time factore such as cost, time and performance
level.

(e)Conflict arising in administration such as authority, responsibility, accountability and

logistics required.

(f)Conflicts of personality, human psychology and ego problems.

(g)Conflicts over expenditure and its deviations.

Most of the conflicts can be resolved by following the principles listed below:

People:

Separate people from the problem. It imply that the views of all concerned should be
obtained. This impersonal approach will lead to not only early solution but also others will be
prevented from committing errors.

2. INTERETS:
Focus must be only on interest i.e., the ethical attitude or motives and not on the positions. A
supplier may require commission larger than usual prevailing rate for an agricultural product.

3. EVALUATION:

The evaluation of the results should be based on some specified objectives such as efficiency,
quality, and customer satisfaction. More important is that the means, not only the goals,
should be ethical.

6. CONSULTING ENGINEERS
 When engineers practice their profession they are designated as consulting engineers.
 They are compensated by fees for the services they render to their clients.
 The consulting engineers work in private. There is no salary from the employers. But they
charge fees from the sponsor and they have more freedom to decide on their projects.
 Still they have no absolute freedom, because they need to earn for their living.
 The consulting engineers have ethical responsibilities different from the salaried engineers,
as follows:
1. Advertising
 Advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by an
indentified sponsor.
 The consulting engineers are directly responsible for advertising their services, even if they
employ other consultants to assist them. But in many organisations, this responsibility is with
the advertising executives and the personnel department.
The following points should be kept in mind in the context of advertising:
 Advertisements are to be honest. Elements such as lies, half-truth, exaggerations, false
claims, vagueness, meaningless data etc., are to be avoided as they are unethical.
 Actual roles of the engineers should be projected in the advertisements.
 Consulting engineers should put-up advertisements that enhance public awareness of their
services.
 Competitive advertisements result in frictions, reducing mutual respect and damaging the
professions public image. So, it’s better to avoid making competitive advertisements.
Consulting engineers are allowed to advertise but to avoid deceptive ones. Deceptive
advertising such as the following are prohibited:
 By outright lies.
 Half-truth, e.g., a product has actually been tested as prototype, but it was claimed to have
been already introduced in the market. An architect shows the photograph of the completed
building with flowering trees around but actually the foundation of the building has been
completed and there is no real garden.
 Exaggerated claims. The consultant might have played a small role in a well-known
project. But they could claim to have played a major role.
 Making false suggestions. The reduction in cost might have been achieved along with the
reduction in strength, but the strength details are hidden.
 Through vague wordings or slogans.
2. Competitive Bidding
 A method of procurement by which two or more parties are given the opportunity to submit
separate bids to the client in connection with the design and construction of a project.
 A process in which buyers request potential suppliers to submit quotations or tenders for a
proposed purchase or contract.
 It means offering a price, and get something in return for the service offered. The
organizations have a pool of engineers.
 The expertise can be shared and the bidding is made more realistic. But the individual
consultants have to develop creative designs and build their reputation steadily and carefully,
over a period of time.
 The clients will have to choose between the reputed organizations and proven
qualifications of the company and the expertise of the consultants. Although competent, the
younger consultants are thus slightly at a disadvantage.
3. Contingency Fee
 Payment based upon or dependent upon a party’s successful resolution of the matter.
 This is the fee or commission paid to the consultant, when one is successful in saving the
expenses for the client.
 A sense of honesty and fairness is required in fixing this fee.
 Contingency means a future event which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty.
 The NSPE Code III 6a says that the engineers shall not propose or accept a commission on
a contingent basis where their judgement may be compromised.
 The fee may be either as an agreed amount or a fixed percentage of the savings realized.
 But in the contingency fee-agreements, the judgement of the consultant may be biased. The
consultant may be tempted to specify inferior materials or design methods to cut the
construction cost. This fee may motivate the consultants to effect saving in the costs to the
clients, through reasonably moral and technological means.
4. Safety and Client’s Needs
 Consulting engineers have more responsibilities in decision making concerned with safety
aspects, and difficulties concerning truthfulness are the matters to be given attention.
 They are having the option of accepting or rejecting the job and most of the times, they
take up “design-only projects”.
 The consulting engineers may design something and have no role in the construction.
Sometimes, difficulties may crop-up during construction due to non-availability of suitable
materials, some shortcuts in construction, and lack of necessary and adequate supervision and
inspection.
 Properly-trained supervision is needed, but may not happen, unless it is provided. Further,
the contractor may not understand and/or be willing to modify the original design to serve the
clients best.
 A few on-site inspections by the consulting engineers will expose the deficiency in
execution and save the workers, the public, and the environment that may be exposed to risk
upon completion of the project.
 Even though they accept design-only projects, it is their moral responsibility to think
beyond the contract and inspect the project when it is being implemented by the client due to
the following reasons:
 To safeguard the clients from losses
 To ensure the implementation of appropriate design aspects.
 To ensure safety
 To identify the difficulties and to suggest alternative courses of action in such a way to
overcome the difiiculties.
The NSPE codes on the advertisement by consultants provide some specific regulations. The
following are the activities prohibited in advertisement by consultant:
1. The use of statement containing misrepresentation or omission of a necessary fact.
2. Statement intended or likely to create an unjustified expectation.
3. Statement containing prediction of future (probable) success.
4. Statement intended or likely to attract clients, by the use of slogans or sensational language
format.

7. ENGINEERS AS EXPERT WITNESS

 Engineers serve as consultants who provide expert opinion and views in many legal cases
of the past events.
 They are required to explain the causes of accidents, malfunctions and other technological
behavior of structures, machines, and instruments, e.g., personal injury while using an
instrument, defective product, traffic accident, structure or building collapse, and damage to
the property, are some of the cases where testimonies are needed. The focus is on the past.
 In common practice, engineers are often hired by one of the rival parties of a dispute.
 This creates special ethical issues about the engineer’s functions. So, it is important to
study how the engineers act as expert witness and advisors.
Expert witness in the courts
The court views engineers who function as expert witness in the judicial system in the
following way:
 “Human beings who will putforth their professional judgements with honesty”
 Engineers may offer expert testimony in cases like defective products, personal inquiry,
property damages and accidents on different mode (air, land and sea).
 These cases usually involve the payment of “Compensatory damages” for defective
products, injuries, property damages, accidents and so on.
 Engineers should know the objectives of a legal system find out the truth and honestly
communicate the same to the system.
 They should not become hired guns who normally engage in telling lies or withhold
information from the opposing side for the purpose of satisfying clients who pay consultation
fees.
 The functions of eye-witness and expert-witness are different as presented in the Table.
 Eye-witness Expert-witness

Eye-witness gives 1. Gives expert view on the facts in their area of their expertise
evidence on only what 2. Interprets the facts, in term of the cause and effect
has been seen or heard relationship
actually (perceived facts) 3. Comments on the view of the opposite side
4. Reports on the professional standards, especially on the
precautions when the product is made or the service is provided

Abuses of Engineers as Expert witness

The engineers, who act as expert-witnesses, are likely to abuse their positions in the
following manners:
1. Hired Guns
 When engineers are hired by lawyers to help them in such a way to manipulate facts in
order to win a case for their clients, engineers are called as hired guns.
 As the hired guns, engineers break the standards of honesty and also fail ti investigate
ethically.
 For instance, due to the design fault of car tyre, an accident might have occurred and the
affected family files for compensation.
 In this situation, the tyre producer might hire an engineer to put up views as an expert in
favour of him. This may cause not to get any compensation to the affected family.
 The hired guns forward white lies and distortions, as demanded by the lawyers.
 They even withhold the information or shade the fact, to favour their clients.
 As per the moral considerations engineers have obligations to thoroughly examine the
events and demonstrate their professional integrity to testify only the truth in the court. They
should not act as hired guns and abuse their profession.
2. Money Bias
 Consultants may be influenced or prejudiced for monitory considerations, gain reputation
and make a fortune.
 Financial biases terribly influence engineers and their technical services are hired on the
basis of contingency fees.
 Many forensic engineers serving as expert witness become victimized by money biases for
an enhanced gain.
 If engineers manipulate the results of an investigation for the monetary benefits, they are
abusing their profession.
3. Ego Bias
 It greatly influences the judgement given by the expert witnesses.
 The assumption that the one side is innocent and the other side is guilty is responsible for
this behaviour.
 An inordinate desire to serve one’s client and get name and fame is another reason for this
bias.
4. Sympathy Bias
 If engineers change the findings of their investigation just because of the sympathy they
have for anyone side of the parties involved in the dispute, then engineers are said to abuse
their profession.
 Sympathy for the victim on the opposite side may upset the testimony.
 The integrity of the consultants will keep these biases away from the justice.
 The court also must obtain the balanced view of both sides, by examining the expert
witnesses of lawyers on both sides, to remove a probable bias.
In order to overcome all these influence, engineers should always maintain their integrity
while serving as expert witnesses.
DUTIES
1. The expert-witness is required to exhibit the responsibility of confidentiality just as they
do in the consulting roles. They can not divulge the findings of the investigation to the
opposite side, unless it is required by the court of law.
2. More important is that as witness they are not required to volunteer evidence favorable
to the opponent. They must answer questions truthfully, need not elaborate, and remain
neutral until the details are asked for further.
3. They should be objective to discover the truth and communicate them honestly.
The stand of the experts depends on the shared understanding created within the society. The
legal system should be respected and at the same time, they should act in conformance with
the professional standards as obtained from the code of ethics.
4. The experts should earnestly be impartial in identifying and interpreting the observed
data, recorded data, and the industrial standards. They should not distort the truth, even under
pressure. Although they are hired by the lawyers, they do not serve the lawyers or their
clients. They serve the justice. Many a time, their objective judgements will help the lawyer to
put up the best defense for their clients.

1. ENGINEERS AS ADVISORS IN PLANNING AND POLICY MAKING

Advisors
 Like economists, sociologist and other professionals, engineers also play a vital role in
planning and policy making.
 The engineers are required to give their view on the future such as in planning, policy-
making, which involves the technology.
 Cost and benefits of various methods, housing systems, transportation, infrastructural
facilities, energy use, land use, national defence etc. are to be considered for making the
policy.
 Planning involves expert advises about the feasibility, risks and benefits of the projects.
 As expert advisors. Engineers help is required. They are usually forced to prepare reports
that will favour certain specific projects.
 But the engineer’s responsibility is to consider the values of honesty, public trust and report
for the common goal.
Various issues and requirements for engineers who act as advisors are:
1. Objectivity
 The engineers should study the cost and benefits of all possible alternative means in
objective manner, within the specified conditions and assumptions.
2. Study All Aspects
 They have to study the economic viability (effectiveness), technical feasibility (efficiency),
operational feasibility (skills) and social acceptability, which include environmental and
ethical aspects, before formulating the policy.
3. Values
 Engineers have to posses the qualities, such as (a) honesty, (b) competence (skills and
expertise), (c) diligence (careful and alert) (d) loyalty in serving the interests of the clients and
maintaining confidentiality, and (e) public trust, and respect for the common good, rather than
serving only the interests of the clients or the political interests.
4. Technical Complexity
 The arbitrary, unrealistic, and controversial assumptions made during the future planning
that are overlooked or not verified, will lead to moral complexity.
 The study on future is full of uncertainties than the investigations on the past events.
 On the study of energy options, for example, assumptions on population increase, life style,
urbanization, availability of local fossil resources, projected costs of generating alternative
forms of energy, world political scenario, world military tensions and pressures from world
organizations such as World Trade Organization (W.T.O.) and European Union (EU) may
increase the complexity in judgement on future.
5. National Security
 The proposed options should be aimed to strengthen the economy and security of the
nation, besides safeguarding the natural resources and the environment from exploitation and
degradation.

For the advisors on policy making or planning, a shared understanding on balancing the
conflicting responsibilities, both to the clients and to the public, can be affected by the
following roles or models:
1. Hired Gun
 The prime obligation is shown to the clients.
 The data and facts favorable to the clients are highlighted, and unfavorable aspects are
hidden or treated as insignificant.
 The minimal level of interest is shown for public welfare.
2. Value-neutral Analysts
 This assumes an impartial engineer.
 They exhibit conscientious decisions, impartiality i.e., without bias, fear or favor, and
absence of advocacy.
 All alternatives should be identified and analyzed. Cost benefit analysis should also be
done. Advocacy should be avoided.
3. Value-guided Advocates
 The consulting engineers remain honest (frank in stating all the relevant facts and truthful
in interpretation of the facts) and autonomous (independent) in judgement and show
paramount importance to the public (as different from the hired guns).
As expert advisors in public planning and policy making, engineers should have the following
characteristics:
 Honesty: adopted in preparing reports, interpreting data etc.,
 Competence: being trained and having proper experience in the relevant field.
 Diligence: doing the job with utmost care and promptness.
 Loyalty: serving the clients by maintaining confidentiality.

8. MORAL LEADERSHIP
 Engineers provide many types of leadership in the development and implementation of
technology, as managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, academics and officials of the
government.
 Moral leadership is not merely the dominance by a group. It means adopting reasonable
means to motivate the groups to achieve morally desirable goals.
 This leadership presents the engineers with many challenges to their moral principles.
 Moral leadership means more or less moral authority.
Moral leadership is essentially required for the engineers, for the reasons listed as follows:
1. It is leading a group of people towards the achievement of global and objectives. The goals
as well as the means are to be moral. For example, Hitler and Stalin were leaders, but only in
an instrumental sense and certainly not on moral sense.
2. The leadership shall direct and motivate the group to move through morally desirable ways.
3. They lead by thinking ahead in time, and morally creative towards new applications,
extension and putting values into practice. ‘Morally creative’ means the identification of the
most important values as applicable to the situation, bringing clarity within the groups
through proper communication, and putting those values into practice.
4. They sustain professional interest, among social diversity and cross-disciplinary
complexity. They contribute to the professional societies, their professions, and to their
communities. The moral leadership in engineering is manifested in leadership within the
professional societies. The professional societies provide a forum for communication, and
canvassing for change within and by groups.
Participation in professional societies helps engineers in the following ways:
 To give education and communication to the members.
 To unifying the profession and to speak and act on behalf of it.
 To establish places for communicating, organizing and assembling changes by large group
of people.
 To provide a forum for resolving conflicts.
 To sponsor ethics workshops.
 To conduct surveys on ethical issues.
 To share the acts of creativity among members.
 To develop code of ethics and insist the engineers to obey the codes for promoting
integrity, honor and dignity of profession.
5. Voluntarism: Another important avenue for providing moral leadership within
communities, by the engineers is to promote services without fee or at reduced fees (pro bono)
to the needy groups.
The professional societies can also promote such activities among the engineers. This type
of voluntarism (or philanthropy) has been in practice in the fields of medicine, law and
education. But many of the engineers are not self-employed as in the case of physicians and
lawyers.
The business institutions are encouraged to contribute a percentage of their services as free
or at concessional rates for charitable purposes.
6. Community service: This is another platform for the engineers to exhibit their moral
leadership. The engineers can help in guiding, organising, and stimulating the community
towards morally- and environmentally-desirable goals. The corporate organizations have
come forward to adopt villages and execute many social welfare schemes, towards this
objective.

The Codes of Ethics promote and sustain the ethical environment and assist in achieving the
ethical goals in the following manner:
1. It creates an environment in a profession, where ethical behavior is the basic criterion.
2. It guides and reminds the person as to how to act, in any given situation.
3. It provides support to the individual, who is being pressurized or tortured by a superior or
employer, to behave unethically.
4. Apart from professional societies, companies and universities have framed their own codes
of ethics, based on the individual circumstances and specific mission of the organizations.
These codes of conduct help in employees’ awareness of ethical issues, establish, and nurture
a strong corporate ethical culture.

9. CODES OF CONDUCT
 A Code of Conduct applies the Code of Ethics to a host of relevant situations.
 Code of ethics is a framework for ethical judgement of any profession.
 A particular rule in the Code of Ethics might state that all employees will obey the law; a
Code of Conduct might list several specific laws relevant to different areas of organizational
operations, or industry, that employees need to obey.
 The Code of Conduct outlines specific behaviours that are required or prohibited as a
condition of ongoing employment. It might forbid sexual harassment, racial intimidation or
viewing inappropriate or unauthorized content on company computers.
 Codes, along with other measures, have helped some companies dig themselves out of
scandals, and have helped many companies build a healthier work climate and reputation.
9.1 National Society of Professional Engineers
Preamble
Engineering is an important and learned profession. As members of this profession,
engineers are expected to exhibit the higher standards of honesty and integrity. Engineer must
perform under a standard of professional behavior that requires adherence to the highest
principles of ethical conduct.

Fundamental Canons
Engineers in the fulfilment of their professional duties shall
1. Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
2. Perform services only in areas of their competence.
3. Issue public statements only in objective and truthful manner.
4. Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.
5. Avoid deceptive acts.
6. Conduct themselves honourably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the
honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.
Rules of Practice
1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
a. If engineers’ judgement is overruled under circumstances that endanger life or property,
they shall notify their employer or client and such other authority as may be appropriate.
b. Engineers shall approve only those engineering documents that are in conformity with
applicable standards.
c. Engineers shall not aid or abet the unlawful practice of engineering by a person or firm.
d. Engineers shall not permit the use of their name or associate in business ventures with any
person or firm that they believe are engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise.
2. Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence.
a. Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in
the specific technical fields involved.
b. Engineers may accept assignments and assume responsibility for coordination of an entire
project and sign and seal the engineering documents for the entire project, provided that each
technical segment is signed and sealed only by the qualified engineers who prepared the
segment.
3. Engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
a. Engineers shall be objective and truthful in professional reports, statements, or testimony.
They shall include all relevant and pertinent information in such reports, statements, or
testimony, which should bear the date indicating when it was current.
b. Engineers may express publicly technical options that are founded upon knowledge of the
facts and competence in the subject matter.
4. Engineers shall at for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees
a. Engineers shall disclose all known or potential conflicts of interest that could influence or
appear to influence their judgement or the quality of their services.
b. Engineers shall not accept compensation, financial or otherwise, from more than one party
for services on the same project, or for services pertaining to the same project, unless the
circumstances are fully disclosed and agreed to by all interested parties.
5. Engineers shall avoid deceptive acts
a. Engineers shall not offer, give, solicit or receive, either directly or indirectly, any
contribution to influence the award of a contract by public authority, or which may be
reasonably construed by the public as having the effect of intent to influence the awarding of a
contract. They shall not offer any gift or other valuable consideration in order to secure work.
They shall not pay a commission, percentage, or brokerage fee in order to secure work, except
to a bonafide employee or established commercial or marketing agencies retained by them.
Professional Obligations
1. Engineers shall be guided in all their relation by the highest standards of honesty and
integrity.
 Engineers shall advice their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be
successful.
 Engineers shall not attempt to attract an engineer from another employer by false or
misleading pretences.
2. Engineers shall at all times strive to serve the public interest.
 Engineers shall seek opportunities to participate in civic affairs, career guidance for youths,
and work for the advancement of the safety, health, and well-being of their community.
3. Engineers shall avoid all conduct or practice that deceives the public.
 Consistent with the foregoing, engineers may advertise for recruitment of personnel.
4. Engineers shall not disclose, without consent:
 Engineers shall not, without the consent of all interested parties, promote or arrange for
new employment or practice in connection with a specific project for which the engineer has
gained particular and specialized knowledge.
5. Engineers shall not be influenced in their professional duties by conflicting interests
6. Engineers shall not accept financial or other consideration including free engineering
designs, from material or equipment suppliers for specifying their product.
7. Engineers shall not attempt to obtain employment or advancement or professional
engagements by untruthfully criticizing other engineers, or by other improper methods.
8. Engineers shall not attempt to injure, maliciously or falsely, directly or indirectly, the
professional reputation, prospects, practice, or employment of other engineers.
9. Engineers shall give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due, and will
recognize the proprietary interests of others.

10. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Institution of Engineers
The Codes
 A corporate member will, at all times, endeavour to protect the engineering profession
from misrepresentation and misunderstanding.
 A corporate member will interact with others in his profession by free exchange of
information and experience. He will contribute to the growth of the institution to maximum
effectiveness to the best of his ability.
 A corporate member will not offer his professional services by advertisement or through
any commercial advertising media, or solicit engineering work, trading, teaching either
directly or indirectly or through agencies/organizations in any manner derogatory to the
dignity of the profession and the institution.
 A corporate member will not directly or indirectly injure the professional reputation, work,
or practice of another corporate member.
 A corporate member will not divulge confidential findings or actions of the council or
committee of which he is a member, without obtaining official clearance.
 A corporate member will not take credit for an activity, professional work, engineering
proposal when engaged in a team and give due recognition to those where due.
 A corporate member will express an opinion only when it is founded on facts and honest
conviction before a forum, court, commission or at an inquiry.
 A corporate member will exercise due restraint in criticizing the work or professional
conduct of another corporate member which would impinge or hurt his character and
reputation.
 A corporate member will not try to supplant another corporate member in a particular
employment, office or contract.
 A corporate member will be upright in all his dealings with person(s), organizations, in
business, contractors, and agencies. He should not take actions that lead to groupism, political
connotation or unethical conduct in the discharge if his official powers.
 A corporate member will not misrepresent his qualification to gain undue advantage in his
profession.
 A corporate member will act with fairness and justice in any office, employment or
contract.
 A corporate member will not associate in engineering work which does not conform to
ethical practices.
 A corporate member will not compete unfairly with another corporate member by means,
which in the opinion of others, are based on garnering support for personal gain, enlisting
uncalled for sympathy, espousing unjust cases or amounts to use of unconstitutional methods.
 A corporate member will act in professional matters as a faithful agent or trustee.
 A corporate member will not receive remuneration, commission, discount or any indirect
profit from any work with which he is entrusted, unless specifically so permitted.
 A corporate member will not accept financial or other compensation from more than one
source for the same service or work connected thereto, unless so authorized
 A corporate member will immediately inform his organisation/institution of any financial
interest in a business, and engineering work which may compete with, adversely affect or
hamper the growth of parent body.
 A corporate member will engage or enlist the services of specialist/experts when in his
judgement, such services are in the best interest of his employer or to the profession.
 A corporate member will endeavour to develop a team among his colleagues and staff and
provide equal opportunity to them for professional development and advancement.
 A corporate member will subscribe to the principle of appropriate norms, appreciation and
adequate compensation for those engaged in office, technical and professional employment
including those in subordinate positions.
 A corporate member, if he considers that another corporate member is guilty of unethical,
illegal, unfair practice, defalcation, will not present such information to the Council of the
Institution for necessary action, unless armed with substantial proof.

The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE CODE OF ETHICS)

Code of Ethics
We the members of the IEEE, in recognition of the importance of our technologies in
affecting the quality of life throughout the world, and in accepting a personal obligation to our
profession, its members and the communities we serve, do hereby commit ourselves to the
highest ethical and professional conduct and agree:
1. To accept responsibility in making engineering decisions consistent with the safety, health
and welfare of the public, and to disclose prompt factors that might endanger the public or the
environment.
2. To avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible, and to disclose them to
affected parties when they do exist.
3. To be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data.
4. To reject bribery in all its forms.
5. To improve the understanding of technology, its appropriate application, and potential
consequences.
6. To maintain and improve our technical competence and to undertake technological tasks
for others only if qualified by training or experience, or after full disclosure of pertinent
limitations.
7. To seek, accept, and offer honest criticism of technical work, to acknowledge and correct
errors, and to credit properly the contributions of others.
8. To treat fairly all persons regardless of such factors as race, religion, gender, disability,
age, or national origin.
9. To avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious
action.
10. To assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional development and to
support them in following code of ethics.
The American Society Of Civil Engineers (ASCE) - Code Of Ethics
Fundamental principles
Engineers uphold and advance the integrity, honor and dignity of the engineering
profession by:
1. Using their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare and the
environment.
2. Being honest and impartial and serving with fidelity the public, their employers and clients
3. Striving to increase the competence and prestige of the engineering profession and
4. Supporting the professional and technical societies of their disciplines.
Fundamentals Canons
1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive
to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their
professional duties.
2. Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence.
3. Engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
4. Engineers shall act in professional matters for each employer or client as faithful agents or
trustees, and shall avoid conflicts of interest.
5. Engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall
not compete unfairly with others.
6. Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and
dignity of the engineering profession and shall act with zero tolerance for bribery, fraud, and
corruption.
7. Engineers shall continue their professional development throughout their careers, and shall
provide opportunities for the professional development of those engineers under their
supervision.
8. Engineers shall, in all matters related to their profession, treat all persons fairly and
encourage equitable participation without regard to gender or gender identity, race, national
origin, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, disability, political affiliation, or family,
marital, or economic status.
RISK ANALYSIS
1. Analytical Methods
Several analytical methods are adopted in testing for safety of a product/project.
a. Scenario Analysis
 This is the most common method of analysis. Starting from an event, different
consequences are studied.
 This is more a qualitative method
 For example, a disaster recovery plan, for an organization is discussed. When the
probability and size of loss (indicating possibility and financial significance,
respectively) are both high, risk exists. On the other hand, risk is not associated with
very low probability of occurrence, or with losses that under any other circumstances
would be considered “affordable”. But there is a gray area between probability/loss
combinations that are truly risky, and those that are not. This reflects the fact that the
boundary between risky and non-risky events is fuzzy, not exact.
 To assess the risk faced by the organization, the planner matches the probability and
loss characteristics of various exposures to one’s intuition of risk. This exposure
analysis can be most effectively carried out using ‘loss scenarios’.
 A scenario is a synopsis of events or conditions leading to an accident and subsequent
loss. Scenarios may be specified informally, in the form of narrative, or formally
using diagrams and flow charts.
b. Failure Mode and effect Analysis (FMEA)
 In this method various parts or components of the system and their modes of failure
are studied. The cause of failure is not studied.
 It is one of the qualitative tools, which support proactive quality strategies. Successful
implementation of FMEA requires relevant knowledge and insight as well as
engineering judgment.
 FMEA concept was introduced in 1960s by aerospace companies. Then the use of
FMEA was extended to automobile industries and other types of industries,
understanding the value of this approach.
 In the last decade, it has undergone metamorphosis where focus was on severity,
occurrence and detection rating.
 FMEA is defined as a systematic tool to
(a) Identify possible failure modes in the products/process,
(b) To understand failure mechanism (process that leads to failure),
(c) Risk analysis, and
(d) Plan for action on elimination or reduction of failure modes.
c. Fault-tree Analysis
 This is a qualitative method and was originated by Bell Telephones. It is technology-
based deductive logic.
 The failure (undesirable event) is initially defined, and the events (causal
relationships) leading to that failure are identified at different components level.
 This method can combine hardware failures and human failures
Example 1: Consider the failure of the steam flow in a thermal station. The water is pumped
from a big reservoir nearby. The details are shown in Fig. 4.1
Example 2: An automobile car does not start. The details of this case are shown in Fig. 4.3.
The advantages of FTA are (a) the primary cause can be located easily, and (b) It is useful in
emergent situations i.e., a fire-fighting approach.

RISK-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
The major reasons for the analysis of the risk benefit are:
 To know risks and benefits and weigh them each
 To decide on designs, advisability of product/project
 To suggest and modify the design so that the risks are eliminated or reduced
Economic and ethical limitations that exist in the risk-benefit analysis are as follows:
 Primarily the benefits may go to one group and risks may go to another group. Is it
ethically correct?
 Is an individual or government empowered to impose a risk on someone else on
behalf of supposed benefit to somebody else? Sometimes, people who are exposed to
maximum risks may get only the minimum benefits. In such cases, there is even
violation of rights.
 The units for comparison are not the same, e.g., commissioning the express highways
may add a few highway deaths versus faster and comfortable travel for several
commuters. The benefits may be in terms of fuel, money and time saved, but lives of
human being sacrificed. How do we then compare properly?
 Both risks and benefits lie in the future. The quantitative estimation of the future
benefits, using the discounted present value (which may fluctuate), may not be correct
and sometime misleading.
 Both risk and benefits may have uncertainties. The estimated probability may differ
from time to time, and region to region.
1. Personal Risk
 Assessing the involuntary personal risk is not an easy risk. For example, a group
residing near the cement plant is exposed to a lot of risk. If suppose a cement plant or
refinery was to come up in the area where this group already reside, they will object
the proposal. The adequacy of compensation amount payable cannot be fixed
reasonably.
 There are persons who dared to serve people in spite of the risky situations where
their lives were in risk. For example, Mahatma Gandhi served people during
Navakali yatra, where dangers were present all over. For such saviours, there was no
personal risk.
The following methodologies may be adopted to assess quantitatively, the personal risk:
 Assess the voluntary activities. (eg., life insurance policy taken)
 Assess the degree of occupational hazard (eg., dust, radiation and asbestosis) and
its effect on health.
 Loss of senses such as sight(eyes), hearing(ears) and loss of limbs(immobility by
the loss/damage to organs or disfigurement of the limbs or body)
  Loss of earning capability, especially due to physical disability
 Get assistance by trained arbiters
2. Public Risk
 Assessing the public risk is relatively easy, as in the societal value system the cost of
disability can be averaged out. For example, the U.S national Safety Council adopts
an equivalent of 6000 days for death as per the personal value system for social costs
of disability.
 To assess the public risk, the loss on the assets and the correction costs are estimated.
For example,
i. Loss of or reduction in future income or earning capacity due to loss of limbs or
their capability.
ii. Costs associated with accident, which includes the transplantation or
reinforcement of body parts/limbs and medical treatment and
iii. Cost of welfare which includes rehabilitation, provision of less-demanding
alternate jobs and other disability benefits.
3. Reducing Risk (Improving safety)
Techniques that are adopted to reduce the risks in a product or process are:
 Application of inherent safety concepts in design, eg., LPG cylinder is provided with
frame to protect the value while handling and facilitate cryogenic storage. A magnetic
door catch provides an easy escape for children caught inside the ‘fridge’
accidentally.
 Use of redundancy principle in the instrument protection/design. For example, use of
standby device and back-up for computer storage.
 Periodical monitoring (inspection) and testing of safety system to ensure reliability,
e.g., fire extinguishers, ‘earth’ system in electric circuits are checked periodically.
 Issue of operation manuals, training of the operating personnel and regular audits are
adopted to ensure that the procedures are understood, followed and the systems are
kept in working condition.
 Development of well-designed emergency evacuation plan and regular rehearsal/drills
to ensure preparedness, in case of emergency
4. Voluntary Risk
 Voluntary risk is the involvement of people in risky actions, although they know that
these actions are unsafe.
 The people take these actions for thrill, amusement or fun.
 They also believe that they have full control over their actions (including the
outcomes!) and equipments or animals handled,
 E.g., people participate in car racing and risky stunts.
 Testing becomes inappropriate when the products are
i. Tested destructively
ii. When the test duration is long, and
iii. When the components failing by tests are very costly. Alternate methods such
as design of experiments, accelerated testing and computer-simulated tests are
adopted in these circumstances.
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
 1.
SPACESHUFFLECHALLENGER

I
NTRODUCTI
ON:

 OnJanuar y28,1986,thespaceshuttl
echall
engerwasl
aunchedforthelastt
[Link]
shutt
leisthemostcompl i
catedvehicl
eeverconstr
uct
[Link]
igi
nall
y,
thedesignwastobeonlya
partofNASA’ soverall
mannedspacet ranspor
tati
onsyst
em,butbecauseofpoli
ti
csandbudget
cuts,
itwastransf
ormedf r
om anintegr
alcomponentofasystem t
ot hesol
ecomponentoft he
mannedspacepr ogr am.

 Thespaceshut t
lewasthefi
rstattemptt oproduceat r
ulyr
eusablespacecraft.
All
previous
spacecraftweredesi
gnedtofl
yonasi nglemission.I
nlat
e1960s,NASAenv i
sionedav ehi
clethat
couldbeusedrepeatedl
y,t
husreducingbot htheengineeri
ngcostandhardwar ecost.
Howev er
theresul
ti
ngvehicl
ewasnotenv i
[Link] er
edesignfl
aws,oneofwhichcausedt heloss
ofthechall
enger.

NASA-
PLANNI
NGANDPOLI
TICS:

NASA’
spl
ansf
orcont
inuedmannedexpl
orat
ionofspacer
est
edont
hreel
eggedt
ri
ad.

FI
RSTLEG: wasar eusablespacetransport
ationsy stem,thespaceshutt
lewhichcouldt
ranspor
t
menandcar go tolowear thorbi
tandt henlandbackonear thtoprepar
eforanothermi
ssion.
SECONDLEG: wasamannedor bit
ingspacest ati
ont hatwouldberesuppli
edbytheshutt
leand
woul
dserveasbot hat r
ansferpoi
ntf oract
ivi
tiesfurtherfr
om eart
handasasci enti
fi
cand
manufact
uringpl
atfor
m.
FI
NALLEG: wastheexplorati
onofmar s,
whi
chwoul dstartfr
om spacestati
on.

Thepol i
ticsoft heear ly70s, forcedNASAt oretreatf rom itsambi ti
ouspr ogram. Boththespace
stationandt hejour neyt oMARSwer edelayedindef init
ely, andt heUSmannedspacepr ogram
wasl eftst andingononel eg- t
hespaceshut tl
[Link] t
lewasconst antlyunderat t
ckby
Democr at i
ccongr essandpoor lydef endedbyar epubl i
canpr esi dent.
Tor et ainshut tl
ef undi ng, NASAwasf orcedtomakeaser iesofmaj orconcessi ons.
(i
)faci ngahi ghlyconst raintbudj et,
NASAsacr i
ficedt heresear chanddev el
opmentnecessar yto
produceat rul
yr eusabl e, eli
mi nat i
ngoneoft hef eaturest hatmadet heshut tleat t
racti
veint he
fi
rstpl ace. SolidRocketboost er swer eusedi nsteadofsaf erliqui dfuelledboost ersbecauset hey
requir edamuchsmal lerresear chanddev el
opmentef f
ort.
(i
i)Toi ncr easei tspol iti
cal cloutandt oguaranteeast eadycust omerbase, NASAenl ist
edt he
suppor tofUSAi rfor [Link] rforcecoul dprovidet heconsi derabl epol it
icalcl outoft hedef ence
depar t mentandhadmanysat ellit
eswhi chrequi r
edl aunchi ng. Howev er,Air
for cesuppor tdidnot
comewi thoutapr [Link] tlepay l
oadbaywasr equiredt omeetAi rforcesi zeandshape
requir ement s,
whi chpl ay edkeyconst r
aint
sont heul t
imat edesi [Link] enor ei mpor tantwast he
Airbf or cer equirementt hatt heshut tlebeablet olaunchf rom v andenbur gAirf or ceBasei n
Califor nia.
(i
ii
)Thewei ghtr educt i
onr equi redt heeliminati
onoft hedesi gnsai rbreat hi
ngengi nes,
resulti
ngin
asi ngl epassunpower edl andingt hatgreatl
yli
mi t
edt hesaf etyandl andi ngv ersat il
i
tyofthe
vehicle.

FACTORSAFFECTI
NGLAUNCHDECI
SION:
(
1)PRESSURESTOFLY:
 Ast heyear1986began, therewasext remepressureonNASAt o“Flyoutthemanifest
”.
The
spaceshut t
leprogram hadbeenpl aguedbyexagger at
edexpectati
ons,fundi
ng
i
nconsistencies,
andpolit
icalpressur es.
 PresidentKennedy sdeclarat
iont hattheUSwoul dlandamanont hemoonbef or
etheendof
thedecadehadpr ovidedNASAsApol loprogr
am withhighvi
sibi
l
ity
,acleardir
ect
ionandpowerf
ul
poli
ti
calbacking.I
thadnei t
heracl eardirecti
onnorconsist
entpoli
ti
cal backi
ng
 (
2)SYSTEM STATUSANDCOMPETI
TION:
 In1985,at ot alof19f l
ightshadbeenl aunchedandr ecov ered,andal thoughmanyad
experi
encedmi norpr oblems, al
lbutonceoft hef l
ightscoul dright f
ul l
ybecat egori
zedas
successfully .Howev er,delaysint hepr ogram asawhol ehasl eadt heAi rFor cetorequest
fundtodev elopandexpendabl elaunchv [Link] enchl aunchor ganizat i
onArianSpace
haddev elopedandi ndependentcapabi lit
yt oplacesat el
li
tesi ntoor bitatpr icestheshut tle
couldnothopet omat chwi t
houtgr eatlyincreasedf ederalsubsi [Link] tlewas
soongoi ngt ohav etobegi nshowi ngthati tcouldPayf ori t
[Link] ewasonl yonewayt his
couldbedone–i ncreaset henumber soff li
ghts.
1986wast ot hey earoft r
ut [Link] o
provethati tcoul dl aunch.
 Alargenumber soff li
ght sont i
met ocont inuetoat tr
actcust omer sandr etainCongr essional
[Link] i
ght s61- C, hadexper iencedar ecordedf ouron- padabor tsandhadt hreeot her
schedulesl [Link] nally,onMi ssi
on61- C,Col umbiawasf orcedt ol andatEdwar dAirForce
Baserathert hanatKennedySpaceCent reaspl [Link] ayi nCol umbi a’sl
aunchand
touchdownt hr eatenedt oupsett helaunchschedul eforther estoft hey ear.

 AtthetimeoftheChall
engerexpl
osion,NASAsupposedl yhadfourcomplet
edshutt
[Link]
real
it
ytherewasonlyenoughpartfortwocompl et
eshut tl
[Link]
tswer epassedar
oundand
rei
nstal
ledint
heorbit
erswit
htheear l
i
[Link] emov
edor
i
nserted,t
heshutt
leswereexposedtoawhol ehostofpossi bl
eserv
ici
ngincl
udedproblems.

 Inaddit
ionstoprobl
emscausedbyt heFl
ight61-CofColumbia,thenextColumbiafli
ght,61-E
scheduledforMarch,alsoputpr
essureontheNASAt ol
auncht heChall
engeronschedul e.
TheMar chfli
ghtofColumbiawast ocarr
ytheASTROspacecr af
t,whichhasv er
ytightlaunch
windowbecauseNASAwant edi
ttoreachHalley’
sCometbef oreaRussianprobear r
ivedat
thecomet .I
nordertolaunchColumbia61-Eont i
me,chal
lengerhadtocarryoutitsmission
andreturntoKennedySpaceCent rebyJanuar y31.

 NASAhasmucht ogainf or
m asuccessf ull
[Link]“TeacherinSpace”missionhad
generat
edmuchmor epressinter
estthanot herrecentshutt
lefight
[Link]
cit
ywascont i
nues
tobeextremel yimpor t
anttotheagency .ItisaveryimportanttoolthatNASAusest ohel
p
ensurei
tsf [Link] ecentsuccessoft hespaceshut t
leprogram haslef
tNASAi nCat ch-
22sit
uat i
[Link] ull
yshuttl
efightwer enolongernewsbecauset heywerealmost
ordi
[Link] er
,launchabortsanddel ayedlandingsweremor enewsworthybecausethey
weremuchl esscommon.

 I naddit
iontogeneral
publi
citygai
nedfrom 51-L,
NASAundoubtedl
ywasawarethata
successful
missionwoul
dpl aywelli
nthewhi t
[Link]
esi
dentRaeganshar
edNASAsl
oveof
publi
cit
yandwasaboutt ogiveastateofunionspeech.
SEQUENCEOFEVENTS:
MONDAY,
JANUARY27

 OnMondayJanuar y27,NASAhadat temptedt oplacechall

engeri
norbit
,onlytobest ymiedby
astr
ippedboltandhi [Link]
lpreli
minaryprocedureshadbeencompl et
edandt hecrew
hadj
ustboardedwhent hefir
stproblem str
[Link] cr
osensoronthehat chindicatedthati
t
wasnotshutsecurely;
itt
urnedoutthatthehat chhadbeenshutsecurelyandt hatthesensor
wasmalfunct
ioni
ng,butval
uableti
mewasuseddet er
miningthatt
hesensorwast hepr oblem.

 Aft
erthehat
chwascl
osed,
theext
ernalhat
chhandl
ecoul
dnotberemoved.
Thethr
eadsonthe
connect
ingbol
twer
estri
pped,
andi nst
eadofcleanl
ydi
sengagi
ng,whentur
nedt hehandl
e
 simplyspunar ound.
Attempt stouseapor t
abl
edril
ltoremov ethehandlefail
ed.
Techni
ci
ans
ont hesceneaskedmi ssi
oncont r
olforper
missi
ont osaw thebol
toff.
Fear
ingsomef or
m of
str
uctur
alstresst othehat ch,
engi
neersmadenumer oustime-consumingcalcul
ati
onbefor
e
givi
mgt hego-aheadt ocitofft
hebolt.
Theenti
reprocessconsumedal mosttwohoursbefor
e
thecountdownwasr esumed.

 Misfortunescont i
[Link] stoveri
fythei ntegr
it
yoft hehat chandremov ethe
handle,t hewi nd had been steadil
yr i
[Link] onautJohn y oung fl
ew aser i
esof
approachesi ntheshuttl
etraini
ngaircraftandconfir
medt hewor stf earsofmi ssi
oncontrol
.
Thecr osswi ndsatthecapewer einexcessoft helevelal l
owedf ortheabor tconti
[Link]
opportunityhadbeenmi ssedandt hef l
ightwouldhav et owaituntilthenextpossi bl
elaunch
window,t hefoll
owingmor [Link] tediscour aged,especi al
lysi
nceext r
emely
coldweat herwasf orecastforTuesday,whichcouldfurtherpostponet helaunch.

TUESDAY,
JANUARY28

 Afterthecancelledl aunchonMondaymor ning,therewasagr eatdealofConcernaboutt he

possibleef f
ect
sofweat [Link] edi
ctedlow forTuesdaymor ningwas23f arbelow the
nomi naloperat
ingt emper atureformanyofthechal lenger’
ssubsy st
[Link]
, asthe
suncameupont hel auncht imeapproached,bothai rtemper at
ureandv ehicl
ewouldwar m up,
butt herewasst illconcer [Link] dtheambi enttemper aturebecomehi ghenoughtomeet
l
aunchr equi
rement ?NASA’ Slaunchcommi t
teecr i
teri
ast atedthatnolaunchshouldoccurat
temper atur
esbel ow [Link] ewasal soconcer nov eranyper manenteffect
sont he
shuttleduetothecol dov ernighttemper
atur
es.

 AllNASAcent ersandsubcont r
acter
si nvol
vedwi t
htheshut tl
ewereaskedt odeterminet
he
possibl
eeffect’
sofcoldweatherandpr esentanyconcer
[Link]
me, t
hekennedyspace
centerwentaheadwi thi
t’
sfreeze-
protecti
onplane.
Thisplaneincl
udedusingant
i-
freezeint
he
hugeacoust i
cdampi ngponds andallowingwar mtobleedthroughpipes,
showers,
andhoses
topreventf
reezing.

 TheweatherwasTuesdaymor ni
ngwast obecl earandcold.
Becausetheov er
nightlowwas
for
ecastat23degF, therewasdoubtt hechal l
engerwouldbemuchabov ef r
eezingatlaunch
ti
[Link] tcri
teri
aincl
udedv eryspecif
ict
emperatur
elimit
sf ormostsy stem on
theshut
tl
[Link] alwaiverwouldber equi
redtolaunchifanyofthesecriter
iawer enotmet.
Alt
hought hesecr i
teri
awher esupposedl ylegall
ybindi
ng,t
heMar shal
lspacef l
i
ghtcenter
admini
str
ator,Lar
ryMul l
oyhadbeenr outi
nelywrit
ingwaiver
stocov erthepr obemswi ththe
SRBSonther ecentshuttl
efli
ghts.

 Engineers atMor ton- Thiokol

,the SRB manuf actureri n Utah,werev eryconcern aboutthe
possibleeffectsoft hecol dweat her.
Thepr oblemswi ththeSRBS hadbeenl ongknownt o
engineersRogerBoi sjol
ynandAl lanMcDonal d,
butbot hf eltthattheirconcernswerebeing
i
gnor ed.
Thef eltt
hatt her equestbyNASAt oprovi
decommentont helaunchconditi
onswasa
goldenoppor tuni
tytopr esentt heirconcer ns.
Theywer esuret hatt
hechal l
engershouldnotbe
l
aunchedi nsuchcondi t
ionsast hoseexpect ed f orTuesdaymor ni
[Link]
providedbyt heairforce,thecal culatedthatatthe9: [Link] hetemperat
ureofthe
O-ri
ngswoul dbeonl y29degF. Ev enby2:00p. m.,
theO- r
ingswoul dhav ewarmedonl yto38degF.

 Thedesignv al
i
dati
ontestsori
ginal
l
ydonebyThi okolcov
eredonlyaverynar
rowtemperatur
e
range.
Thet emper
aturedatabasedidn’ti
ncl
udeanyt emperat
uresbel
ow 53degF.
TheO-ri
ngs
from Fl
ight51-C,
whichhadbeenl aunchedundercoldconditi
onstheprevi
ousyear
,showed
 verysigni
fi
canterosi
[Link] ail
ableont
heeffectsofcol
d,butal
lthe
Thiokolengineer
sagreedthatthecoldweatherwoulddecr easet
heelasti
cit
yofthesyntheti
c
rubberO-ri
ngs,whi
chinturnmightcausethem tosealslowlyandall
owhotcombust i
ongast o
surgethroughthejoi
nt.

 Basedont hisresul ts,t

heengi neersatThi okol recommendedt oNASAMar shal
l thatchal lenger
notbel aunchedunt ilt
heO- ringsr eachedat emper atureof53degF. ThemanagementMar shal
l
was f l
abber gast ed,and demanded t hatThi okolpr ovrthatl aunchi ng was unsaf [Link] a
response was a compl eter eversalof nor malpr [Link] l
y,
NASA r equi r
ed i t’
s
subcont r
actedt opr ovet hatsomet hingwassaf [Link] heywer erequi r
ingt hei
rsubcont r acters
to prov et hat t he somet hing was unsaf e. Faced witht his ext r
eme pr essur e,Thi okol
managementaskedi t
’sengi neerst or econsider edtheirposit
[Link] heengi neer sst uckt o
thei
roriginalrecommendat i
onsnott of l
y,
Thiokolmanagementov erruledthem andgav eNASA
i
tappr ov al t ol aunch. Rockwel l,thecompanyt hatmanuf act
ur ed theor biter ,also had
concernsaboutl aunchi ngincol dandi cycondi [Link] nwast hepossi bi li
tyof
i
cef rom ei thert heshut tl
eort hel aunchst ruct urestri
ki
nganddamagi ngthev [Link] ke
Thiokol,theyr ecommendedagai nstt hel aunch,andt heytoower epr essedt oexpl ai
nedt hei
r
[Link] eadofst i
ckingwi tht heiror i
ginalst rongrecommendat i
onagai nstl aunch,t he
Rockwel lteam car efull
ywor dedt hei rstatementt osayt hattheycoul dnotf ul
lyguar ant eet he
safetyoft heshuf fl
e.

 Ini t
sdesiretoflyoutitsmani fest,
NASAwaswi l
li
ngt oacceptRockwel l
’sstat
ementasa
recommendat i
[Link] fi
naldecision tolaunch,
howev er
,bel
onged t
o Jesse Moor e.
He was
i
nf ormedofRockwel l
’
sconcern’sbutwasal sotoldthattheyhadaappr [Link]
engineer
sandmanagementf rom NASAMar shal
lchosenott oevenment i
onedtheoriginal
concernsofThi okol.
Somehow,thewar ni
ngsandconcer nswerediminishedast heywer e
communi catedateachstepofthel adderofr
esponsi
bil
ity
.

 LateMondayni ghtthedecisiont opushonwar [Link] t

et hev ery
realconcernofsomeoft heengi neersfamili
arwi ththeactualvehi
clesubsystems,t
hel aunch
wasappr [Link] want edt ober esponsi
bleforf ur
therdelayi
nganal r
eady
[Link] er
yonewasawar eofthepr essureontheagencyt oflyoutthemanifest,yet
noonewoul dhav econsciouslyriskedthelivesoft [Link]
ialrewar d
hadcomet oout weighthepot entialr
[Link] earl
y,ther
ewer emanyr easonsforlaunching
chall
enger sont hatcoldTuesdaymor ning,andagr eatdealoffrustr
ationfr
om thepr evi
ous
l
aunchat temptr emained.

PRE-
LAUNCHEVENTS:

 Alt
houghthedeci
siontolaunchonTuesdayhadbeenmadel ateonMondayni ght ,i
twasst i
ll
possi
blet
hatsomet hi
ngmi ghtforceNASAt opost
[Link],thedecisionto
l
aunchhadbeenmade,andnot hi
ngwasgoi ngtostandi
ntheway ;the“presson”ment al
i
ty
wasfir
mlyest
abli
shed,andev enifal
loff
lor
idefr
onzeover
,chall
engerwouldbel aunched.

 Thepre-
launchi nspect
ionofchall
engerandthelaunchpadbyt heice-t
eam wasunusualto
saythel
east .Theice-t
eam’sresponsi
bil
it
ywastor emoveanyfrostorniceonthevehi
cleor
l
aunchst ruct
[Link] heyfounddur i
ngthei
rinspect
ionlookedlikesomethi
ngoutofa
sci
ence-
ficti
onmov ie.

 Thef
reezepr
otect
ionpl
ani
mpl
ement
edbyt
heKennedyper
sonnelhadgonev
erywr
ong.
 Hundredsoficicles,someupt o16i n.l
ong,clungtothel aunchstruct
ur [Link] ail
sand
walkwaysneart heshuttl
eentrancewerecov er
edinice,maki ngthem ext r
emelydanger ousif
thecrew hadtomakeanemer gencyevacuati
[Link] idsheetofi cest r
etchedf rom t
he
195ftleveltot he 235ftlevelon the [Link] er,NASA cont inued to cli
ng toi t
s
cal
culati
onsthattherewouldbenodamageduet of
lyi
ngi ceshakenloosedur ingthelaunch.

THELAUNCH

 Ast heSRBsi gnited,thecol

dcondi ti
onsdidnotallowt heO- r
ingstopr operl
[Link] t
hinthe
fi
rst300mi ll
i
secondsofi gnit
ion,botht hepri
mar yandsecondar yO- ringsont hel owest
sectionoftherightSRBwer evapor i
zedacross70degr eesofar cbythehotcombust iongases.
Puffsofsmokewi t
ht hesamef requencyast hev i
brati
ngboost ersar eclearl
ypr esentin
pict
ur [Link] er,soonaftert
hechallengerclearedthetower ,atemporaryseal
ofgl assyaluminum- oxi
desf r
om t hepropell
antformedi npl aceoft hebur nedO-ringsand
chall
engercontinuedsky ward.

 Unfor
tunat
ely,atthetimeofgr eatestdy nami
cpressur
e,theshutt
leencounteredwindshear.
Asthechall
enger’sguidancecont rollur
chedtheshuttl
etocompensateforthewindshear,t
he
fr
agil
ealuminum- oxi
desealshat [Link]
nt,st
rucktheex t
ernalt
ank
andquickl
ybur nedthrought hei nsulat
ionandthealuminum str
uctur
[Link]
str
eamedoutandwasi [Link] l
engerexpl
oded.

 Whent heremainsoft hecabinwer erecovered.I

tbecameappar entthatmostoft hecrew
surv
ivedtheexpl
osionandsepar at
ionoftheshut t
lef r
om therestoft hevehicl
e.Duringthe2
min.45secfallt
ot heocean,atl
eastfouroft hepersonaledresspackswer eact i
vatedandat
l
eastthreewerefuncti
oningwhenthechallengerstr
uckt [Link]-speedimpactwi t
h
thewaterpr
oducedaf orceof200g,andwasundoubt edlyt
hecauseofdeat hf oral
lthecrew.

POST-
CRASHEVENTS:

Sincet hecrashofchal lenger,NASAandext ernali

nvesti
gatorshav etakenal ookatbot htheshut tl
e
andt hesequencesofev entsthatallowedi tt [Link] egonet hroughsignif
icant
redesignandnow i ncludeacapt uref eaturesont hef i
[Link] shalladminist
rators
mostr esponsibleforallowingt heSRBpr obl emst ogouncor [Link] l
owingt he
recommendat i
onsoft heRoger scommi ssions,NASAhasat t
empt edtostreamlineandcl eanupi ts
communi cat
[Link] stem f orreportingsuspect edpr oblemsanony mouslynow exi stswi t
hin
NASA.I naddit
ion,theast r
onautst hemsel vesar enow muchmor eacti
veinmanydeci si
on-maki ng
aspect softhepr [Link] rentNASAadmi ni
str
ators,Admi ralRi
chardTruly,i
saf ormershut tl
e
astronaut.

SAFETYANDETHI
CALI
SSUES

Therear emanyquest ionsi nvol

vingsafetyand/orethicsthatarer ai
sedwhenweexami net he
decisi
ont [Link]
ously,t
hesit
uati
onwasunsaf [Link]
ionsar emor e
compl [Link] standards ofet hi
calconductar eto be mai nt
ained,then each per
son must
dif
ferenti
atebetweenr i
ghtandwr ongandmustf oll
owt hecoursethatisdetermi
nedtobet her i
ght
,
orethical
,[Link]
, t
hedetermi
nat i
onofri
ghtorwr ongisnotsimple,andgoodar gument s
canbemadeonbot hsi desoft [Link] heissuesraisedbyt hechal
lengerl aunch
decisi
onar easf ol
l
ows:

[Link]
esol
i
drocketboost
ersi
nher
ent
lyt
oodanger
oust
ouseonmannedspacecr
aft
?Ifso,why
 ar
etheyapar
toft
hedesi
gn?
[Link]
etyt
radedf
orpol
i
tical
accept
abi
l
ityi
nthedesi
gnoft
hespaceshut
tl
e?
[Link]
hingst
obepr
omi
sedt
otoomanypeopl
e
duri
ngthedesignoft
hespaceshutt
le?
[Link]
dtheneedtomai
ntai
nlaunchschedul
efor
cedeci
sionmaker
stocompr
omi
sesaf
etyi
nthe
l
aunchdeci
si
on?
[Link]
bil
i
tiesbei
ngi
gnor
edi
nthewr
it
ingofr
out
inel
aunchwai
ver
sfort
hespace
shut
tl
e?
6. WeremanagersatRockwel
landMor
tonThi
okolwi
sei
nignor
ingt
her
ecommendat
ionsof
thei
rengi
neer
s?
[Link]
dtheengi
neersatRockwellandMort
onThi
okoldoal
lthatt
heycoul
dtoconv
incet
hei
rown
managementandNASAoft hedanger
sofl
aunch?
[Link]
essedi
tscont
ract
orst
olaunch,di
ditv
iol
atei
tsr
esponsi
bil
i
tyt
oensur
ecr
ew
saf
ety
?

THETHREEMI
2. LEI
SLANDDI
SASTER
Theacci dentattheThr eeMi l
eIslandunit2(TMI2)nucl earpowerpl antinPennsy lv
aniaon
mar ch281979wasoneoft hemostser i
ousinthehistoryoftheUSnucl eari
ndust ry.I
tnot
onlybroughtt oli
ghtthehazar dsassociatedwithnuclearpower ,butalsoforcedt heindustr
y
totakeacl oserlookatt heoperatingproceduresusedatt [Link] heTMI -2
accidentsuchani nteresti
ngcasest udyistheseriesofev entwhichl eadupt othepar t
ialmelt
downoft [Link] nati
onofhumaner ror,i
nsuf f
ici
enttr
aining,bad
operati
ngpr ocedures,andunf oreseenequipmentf ai
l
uret hatcul
mi natedinanucl ear
accidentthatcouldhav eeasil
ypr event
ed.

Ti
mel
i
neOfEv
ent
sOccur
ri
ngDur
ingTheThr
eeMi
l
eIsl
andDi
sast
er

ELAPSED EVENT
TIME
00:00:
00 Pumpsf eedi ngwat ert ot hesecondar yloopshut down.
Thi swast hefirstoft woi ndependentsy stem f ail
ur ethatleadtothenear
mel tdownoft het hreemi l
eislandnucl earr eactor.
00:
00:
01 Alarm soundswi t
hi nt heTMIcont rol r
oom.
Att hetimet hi
sal armi sdi sregardedbyt heoper at ors.
00:
00:
02 Wat erpr essureandt emper aturei nther eact orcor er i
se.
Thef ail
ur eoft hesecondar ylooppumphasst oppedt hetransferofheat
from thepr i
mar yl oopt ot hesecondar [Link] iseintemper at
ureand
pressur eisconsi deredt obepar toft henor mal plantoper ati
on,and
hencei gnor ed.
00:
00:
03 Pressur er el
iefv alve( PORV)aut omat icallyopens.
Whent hepr essur eofst eam i nther eact orcor er i
sesabov esafelimits,
thepr essur ereliefval veisdesi gnedt oaut omat i
cal lyopen,rel
easingthe
ex cessst eam t oacont ainmentt ank.
00:
00:
04 Backuppumpsf orthesecondar yl oopwat ersystem aut omat i
call
yturn
on.
Foursecondsi ntot heacci dentt hesecondar yloopwat erpumpsar e
 automatical
l
ytur
[Link]
sisindicat
edtotheoperator
sbythe
presenceofli
ght
sonthecontrol
[Link]
atorsarenotawar
ethat
thepumpshav ebeendi
sconnectedandarenotfunct
ioni
ng.

00:
00:
09 Bor onandsi lvercont rol rodsar elower edi ntot henr eact [Link] ight
goesout ,indi cat i
ngv al vei scl osed.
Lower ingoft hecont r ol rodsi nt ot her eact orcor esl owsdownt her ateof
ther eact i
on, t heef fectofwhi chi sal soar educt ioni nt heheatpr oduced
byt her eact or .Whent hePORVl ightgoesout ,theoper at orsi ncor r ectly
assumet hatt hev alv ei scl osed.I nr eal ityt hev alv eisnotopenbuti sal so
releasi ngst eam andwat erf rom t hecor [Link] si snowaLOCA( lossof
cool antacci dent ).
00:
02:
00 Emer gencyI nject ionWat er( EI W)i saut omat ical l
yact i
v ated.
TheEI Wi sasaf etydev icet hatcauseswat ert of lowi ntot her eact or
cor e.I tisdesi gnedt oensur et hatwhent her ei saLOCO, thewat eri nt he
cor er emai nsatassaf el ev [Link] hepastt heEI W sy stem hast ur ned
i
tsel fonwhent her ehasbeennol eaksot hatt heoper at or sar enot
undul yconcer nedbyt hi s.
00:
04:
30 Oper ator sobser vet hatt hewat erl ev el int hepr imar ysy stem i sr ising
whi let hepr essur ei sdecr easi ng.
Whent heyobser vet hatt hewat erl ev el int hecor ei sr isingt heoper ators
shutof ftheEI W sy st em.
00:
04:
30 Wat erl evel i
nt hecor est illappear st ober ising.
Inact uallyt hewat erl ev el i
nt hecor ei sdr oppi ngandt ur ningof ft heEI W
i
ncr easest heamountofst eam bei ngpr oducedbyt her eact orcor [Link]
combi nat i
onofst eam andwat erisst illbei ngr eleasedt hrought hePORV.
00:
08:
00 Oper ator snot icest hatt hev alv esf ort hesecondar yloopbackuppumps
areof f.
8mi nut esi nt ot heacci dentt hecl osedv alvei snot icedbyanoper ator .
Oncehet urnst hev al v esbackont hesecondar ywat erl oopi sf unct ioning
cor rect ly
.
00:
45:
00 Wat erl evel i
npr imar yl oopcont i
nuest odr op.
Att hi spoi nti nt heacci dentt heoper at orsst i
llsonotsuspectaLOCA.
Thei nst rumentchecki ngt her adiat ionhasnotr egi steredanal ar m, and
thegaugesi nt hecont rol room ar ewr ongl yi ndi cat i
ngt hatt hewat erl evel
i
sup.
01:
20:
00 Primar yl ooppumpsst ar tt oshakev iolent ly.
Steam pr oducedbyt henl ackofcool ingwat erint hecor epassest hrough
thepr imar yl ooppumpsandcausest hem t [Link] ngt heyar e
notf unct ioni ngcor rect l
y ,theoper at or st ur nof ft wooft hef ourpumps.
01:
20:
00 Remai ningt wopumpsi nt hepr imar yl oopt urnof f.
Theaut omat icsshut downoft het wor emai ningpumpsi nt hepr imar y
l
oopcausest hewat erwi thint henucl earcor et ost opci [Link] sin
turncausest heheat edcor et oconv er tmor ewat erintost eam, fur ther
reduci ngt het ransf erofheatawayf rom t hecor e.
02:
15:
00 Wat erl evel dr opsbel owt het opoft hecor e.
Oncet het opoft hecor ei sexposed, thest eam i sconv er tedt o
super heat edst [Link] sr eact swi t ht hecont rol rodsandpr oduces
hydr ogenandot herr adi oact ivegases.
02:
15:
00 Hy dr ogengasi sr el
easedt hr oughPORV.
Sincet hepi lotoper at edr eli
efv alvei sst i
llint heopenposi ti
oni tal l
ows
 thehy dr ogengaspr oducedt ober el
easedal ongwi t
ht hest eam.
02:
20:
00 Oper at orf rom nextshi f
tar rivesandcl osesPORVbackupv alves.
02:
20:
30 Oper at or srecei vefirstindi cat i
ont hatt her adi ati
onl evelsar eup.
02:
45:
00 Radi ational arm soundsandasi teemer gencyi sdecl ared.
Att hispoi nthal fthecor ei suncov eredandt her adiationl evel ofthe
wat eri nt hepr imar yl oopi s350t imesi tsnor mal level.
03:
00:
00 Duet ohi gherr adiationl evelsagener al emer gencyi sdecl ared.
Ther ei sst illconfusi onast owhet hert hecor eisuncov er edornot ,ther
e
aresomet hatf eel thet emper aturereadi ngsmaybeer roneous.
07:
30:
00 Oper at or spumpwat eri nt
ot hepr i
mar yloopandopent hePORVbackup
valvet ol owert hepr essur e.
09:
00:
00 Hy drogenwi t
hint hecont ainmentst ructureexpl odes.
Theexpl osioni sr ecor dedbyt hei nstrumenti nt hecont rolroom.I tis
dismi ssedasj ustbei ngaspi kecausedbyanel ectri
cal mal [Link]
soundoft heexpl osi onhear di st hroughbysomet obeav entil
ator
damper .
15:
00:
00 Primar yl ooppumpsar etur nedon.
Bynowal argepor t
ionoft hecor ehasmel t edandt her ei sstil
l hy
drogen
presenti nt hepr i
mar [Link] erf r
om t hepr imar ylooppumpsi s
circulat edandt hecor etemper atureisf i
nal lybroughtundercont rol.

DETAI
LEDDESCRI
PTI
ONOFACCI
DENT:

 At36secpasts4:
00a. m.onthemarch28,1979,t
hefir
stofaseri
esofpumpsf
eedi
ng
watertothest
eam gener
ator
sattheThreeMileI
slandnucl
earpl
antst
opped
funct
ioni
ng.

I
twasl aterdeterminedt hatthiswascausedbymai ntenancewor kbeingdoneont he
number7pol isheratt [Link] eam pr
oducedbyt her eact
ornotonlyrunst he
gener atortoproduceel ectri
cit
ybutal soservestocool downt her eact
orcor
e, r
educing
theriskofamel [Link] heflowoft hewaterstopped, t
het emperat
ureinsidethe
reactorcor ei
ncr [Link] hewaterinsi
det hereactortoexpand,i
ncreasing
thepr essureinsidethepr essurizerto2200psi,100psi mor ethant henor
[Link]
designed, t
hei ncreaseinpr essurecausedt hepil
otoper at
edr el
iefvalv
e(PORV) ,to
opendr ai
ningthest eam andwat erfrom t
hereactorcoreint oat ankonthefl
oor .

 Atthispoi
ntthet hr
eeemer gencyfeedwaterpumpsstart
[Link] at
ornoticedt hat
theywererunning,butdi
dnotnot i
cethatthevalv
esontheemergencyf eedwat erlines
wer ecl
[Link] i
nthecontrolroom hadli
ght
stoindi
cat
et hatthevalv
eswer e
closed,
oneoft heli
ghtswascov eredbyay ell
owmaint
enancetag,whiletheoper ator
didnotnoti
cetheot herl
ight.

 Despi
tet
heopeni
ngoft
hePORV,
thepr
essur
econt
inuedt
ori
se,
9seci
ntot
heacci
dent
thecontr
olr
odsaut omaticall
yloweredasdesignedt ohal
tthefissi
onreacti
[Link]
s
halt
edthe9fi
ssionreacti
onbutt helat
entheatoft heradi
oacti
vemat er
ial
conti
nuedto
heatthewat
[Link] hisheatwasaf r
actionofwhati snormall
yproduced
duri
ngthefi
ssionreacti
on,itwasenought opotent i
all
yover
heatthecore.
 Thi
rt
eensecondsi
ntot
heacci
dent
,thePORVshoul
dhav
ecl
osedsi
ncet
hepr
essur
ein
thereact
orhaddr opped,
theli
ghti
ndicat
ingt hatthePORVwasenergized(i
.[Link])
shutoff,
leadingt
heoperator
stoassumet hatthePORVwasnowcl [Link]
ity
,the
PORVwasst uckopenandsteam andwat erwer eescapi
ngf
rom t
[Link]
s
knownasaLOSSOFCOOLANTACCI DENT( LOCA) .

Inthef i
rst100mi nutesoftheacci dent,almost32, 000gallonsofwater,orone-thirdof
thereact or
scapaci t
y,escapedthr ought [Link] dentatTMIcoul dhav ebeen
containedhadei t
hert hePORVshutatt hispoi ntort heoperat
orsnoti
cedt hatthev alv
e
wasst [Link] ingtheini
tialstagesoft heacci dent
,EdwardFredri
ckandCr ai
g
Faust,thecontrolroom operators, werepr esentint hecontrolr
[Link] hef actor
s
thataddedt othesev eri
tyoftheacci dentatTMIwast heinadequat
et r
aini
ngoft he
empl oyeesatthef acil
it
[Link] her esponsibil
i
tyofMetEdandBabcock&
Wilcox.

 Over100al ar
mswentof fi
nthecontrol
room duri
ngthefi
rstfewmi nutesofthe
acci
[Link]
onwithoutpr
ovidi
nganyusefulinformati
ontothe
operat
[Link]
ickdeal
twiththealar
mstot hebestoft hei
rabi
l
ity
basedont hetrai
ningt
heyhadrecei
ved.

 TwoMi nutesi
ntotheacci
dentthepressureifthewat eri
nt hereactordroppedsharpl
y
whichcausedtheEmergencyInj
ecti
onWat er( EI
W)t obeaut omaticall
yactiv
[Link]
s
sentabout1000gall
onsofwaterpermi nuteintothereactorcoolantsystem.

 Thef al
li
ngpressurecoupledwit
hconstantreactorcoolanttemper
atureshoul
dhave
al
[Link]
ead,feari
ngt hatthecorewouldhavetoomuch
water,Oper
atorFredrickt
urnedoffoneoftheEIW pumps, r
educi
ngtheflowofwat
er
i
ntot hecor
et olessthan100gall
onspermi nute.

 EightMi nutesintotheacci dentitwasdi scov eredt hattheemer gencyf eedwat erwas

notr eachingt hecor ebecauseoft heclosedv [Link] at
orFaustpr oceededt oopen
thesev alves,
al l
owingwat ertor ushintothest eam gener at
[Link] aterdiscovered
thatt hesev alveswer eclosedt woday sear l
ierdur ingar outi
netestoft [Link]
4:11a. m.,analarm signalledhighwat erinthecont [Link] he
buildingwher eal lt
hewat erdraini
ngf r
om thecor ethroughthePORVi sst [Link]
self
thisal arm shouldhav ebeenacl earindi
cationofal eakinthecool [Link]
Fredr i
ckwasi nformedoft hi
sher ecommendedt hatt hesumppumpsdr ainingwat erto
thecont ai
nmentbui l
dingbeshutof f
.

 Byabout6: 15a.m.,
roughly2hour sand15mi nutesint
otheacci dent,t
helevelofwater
i
nt her eactorhaddroppedbel owthelev eloft [Link] otheoperatorsthe
coreisnowuncov [Link]
sessent i
althatt hecor eremaincov eredatallt
imest o
preventitf r
om over
heat i
[Link] hecor eov erheatsthezirconium all
oyofthef uel
rod
claddingreactswiththest eam toproducehy [Link] swhathappenedi nt
he
TMIr eactor,notonl
yi sthehy dr
ogenpr oducedf l
ammabl e,butthedi mini
shmentoft he
fuelrodcl addi
ngincreasest heri
skofr adioact i
vecontaminati
on.
  Thewat erconti
nuedtoleakoutofthePORVunti
l6:[Link]
s,t
he
Babcock&Wi l
coxsit
erepresent
ati
veatTMIaskedtheoperat
orsift
heyhadshutt
he
bl
ockv alvewhichist
hebackupv al
[Link] hi
spoi
ntthePORVwasshut
aft
erhav i
ngremainedopenf or2hoursand22minutes.

Iti
sst il
lunclearwhetherRoger swasresponsiblefort
hev al
[Link] d
Fredricktesti
fiedthatt
hev alv
ewascl osedatt hesuggest
ionofashi f
tsupervisor
comi ngont othenextshift
.Basedoni ncreasi
ngr adi
ati
onlevel
s,ataround7:00a.m.a
sit
eemer gencywasdecl ared,i
ndicat
ingthethreatofrel
easeofradioact
ivi
tyintothe
surroundingenv ir
onment.

 Astheradi
ationlevel
scontinuedtoincrease,thestaf
fofTMI -
2wascont act
inglocal
l
awenf or
cementandl ocalenergyprovi
der s.At7:
24agener alemer
gencywasdecl ared
att
heTMI -2siteandthesi
tebegant obeev acuat
ed.By11: [Link]
al
per
sonnelwer eorder
edoffoft heisl
and,andt heremaini
ngt echni
cianswereforcedto
wearfacemaskst oblockanyai r
-borneradioacti
veparti
cles.

 At1:[Link] r
olroom heardwhatt heydescribedasal oud
"t
hud."Whil
etheydismi ssedthesoundaswel l
ast hepressurespikeindicatedbythei
r
i
nstrumentsasamal function,t
het hudwasact uall
yahy dr
ogenexpl osioninsi
dethe
contai
nmentbuil
[Link]
et heparti
all
ymel t
edcoreis
broughtt
oacont r
oll
ablet emperatureusingwat erf
rom thepri
mar yloop.

I
MMEDI
ATEREACTI
ONTOTHEACCI
DENT

 Shor tl
yaf t
ertheacci dentoccur red, anincorrectreadingr eportedt r
acesofr adioacti
ve
i
odi ne-131i ntheGol dsbor orar [Link] l
et her eadingcausedani mmedi ateneedf or
concer n,thereadi ngswer elaterfoundt obeer [Link] l
dupi nradioact
iveiodine
i
nhuman' sthyroidsf rom inhalingr adi
oact i
vepar ticl
esordr inkingcont aminat
edmi l
k
remai nedt hepr imaryconcer noft hetopof fi
ci al
si ncl
udingGov ernorWi l
l
iam Scranton
II
[Link] ernorwasi ncorr
ect l
yinf or
medt hatt her el
easeofst eam representedt he
primar yconcer nt othesur roundingenv ir
onment ,despit
et hef actthattherewasno
i
ndi cati
ont hatr adioact i
vesteam hadescapedf rom ther eactorcor eorthepumps
feedingt hecor e.

 Theeveningoftheaccident
, mayorofGoldsbor o,
KenMey ers,metwithhiscouncil
member stodiscussthepossibi
li
tyofanev acuati
[Link] sproceeded
togodoortodoort hr
oughthet ownprovidi
ngf amili
eswithwhateverinfor
mationthey
coul
d,mostlyconsist
ingofinfor
mationtheyt hemselveshadheardfrom newsr epor
ts,
aswellasexplaini
ngtheevacuati
onprocedur eshouldGovernorScrantondecl
ar ea
stat
eofemer gency.

 Foll
owingtheacci dent,numer oustestswereconduct edinattemptst oconcludewhat
i
fanyef f
ectincreasedr adiat
ionwoul dhaveont hehealt
hofhuman, ani
mal andplant
l
ifei
nthesur roundingar [Link] udies,i
twasrevealedthatthemaj or
it
yof
radi
oacti
vemat erialhadbeencont ai
nedbyt hecor [Link]
tetheimmedi ateconcern,
however,alatergov er
nmentr eportindicat
edt hattherewouldli
kelybeoneaddi ti
onal
 deat
hasar esul
tofcancerduet
oincr
easedr
adi
ati
onl
evel
sint
hesur
roundi
ngar
eai
n
a30y earperi
od.

THECLEAN-
UPOPERATI
ON

 Duri
ngthecleanupoper ati
onsattheThreeMil
eIsl
andnuclearr
eactortherewere
i
ssuesofethicalmisconductonthepartofbothor
gani
zati
onsandi ndivi
dual
sthat
occur
[Link]
ver
sit
yhasdi scussedonesuch
exampleinhisbook" Contr
oll
i
ngTechnology.
"

THEI
SSUE

Inanyindustr
ialoperat
ionov erheadcr anesusedforl if
ti
ngheavyequi pmentpl ayan
i
mpor t
[Link] aneuseddur i
ngthecleanupofTMI -
2hadbeendamaged
duri
ngtheoriginalacci
[Link] i
ngt herepairi
ngoft hecranevari
ouspar tsthatwer e
damagedhadbeensubst i
tutedwi t
hr eplacement
st hatwerenotexactlythesameas
theori
ginal
[Link]
ont hecranehadbeenmodi fiedtoperfor
m dutiest hatexceeded
theori
ginalmanufacturerspecifi
[Link] ot
henat ur
eofthecleanupoper ati
onthe
changesmadeposedahazar dtonotonl ythewor kersonsitebutalsot opeopl ei
nthe
surr
oundingareas.

 Kingrecei
vedr eportsfr
om bothParksandGischelwhichst at
edconcernsovertheuse
[Link] i
ortothatKi
nghadalreadyexperienceddiffi
cul
ti
eswiththe
[Link]
hatest
abli
shedengineer
ingpr ocedureswerenotbeing
foll
owedbyot herhighlevelmanagers,
part
icul
arl
yBecht elpeople.

 Basedonwhathehadseenandthereport
sher ecei
vedKingdecidedthatt
hecr
ane
shoul
dbecaref
ull
ytest
edbefor
ebeingputint
oser v
[Link]
Becht
eldi
dnotagreewit
hKing'
sassessmentofthesituati
onandfeltt
hathewas
bei
ngover
lycaut
ious.

I
nreact
iontotheGischel
'
srepor
t,Ki
ng'ssuperi
oror
deredKi
ngtoimmedi
atelyf
ire
Gi
schel
.Kingref
usedanddefendedGischel
'sposi
ti
[Link]
hispoi
ntGPU'
stacti
cs
t
urnednasty
.

 Aft ersufferingast rokeay earbefore, Gischel hadseenapsy chologi stwor kingunder

[Link] het i
me, thepsy chologistsuggest edGi schel t
akeaneur opsy chol ogical
ev aluati
on, butGi schel r
efusedt otaket [Link] mmedi atelyf ollowi ngthe
releaseoft her eport,heagai nreceivedal ett
ersuggest i
nghet aket [Link] t
Arnol d,thepr esidentofGPUNucl ear, continuedpr essuringGi schel andi nacl ear
violationoft hedoct or -
pati
entr el
ationshi pdisclosedt hathehadknowl edgeoft he
topi csofGi schel'smeet ingswi ththeGPUempl oy edpsy chol
ogi [Link] teral etter
i
nsi stingGischel t
aket heexam f rom t heboar dchai r
manofGPU, Gischel sentaswor n
affidav i
ttoAr noldexpl aini
nghi stakeont heTMIcl eanupoper ationsandt heev ent
s
thatf oll
[Link] schel r
equest edthatAr noldforwar dtheaf fi
dav i
tt otheNRCwhi chhe
did, butonJul y1af terGischel st
il
lrefusedt otaket heneur opsy chologi cal exam he
wast ransferredt oadi ff
erentsubsi diaryofGPU.
  RichardPar ksalsofil
edaswor naf fi
davitandsubmi tt
edi ttotheNRC, anda
harassmentcompl aintfil
edagai nstGPUNucl [Link]'scompl ai
ntwasf il
edonthe
groundst hatamanagert oldhim Par ks'
ssuper i
orswereconsi deringtransferr
inghim
offsite,hewasdemot edfrom hisposi t
ionasalter
natest art
upandt estmanager ,
and
wasi nformedofaf alserumort hathisex- wi
fe(whowasact uallydeceased)wast ryi
ng
todigupdi rtonPar kst ogetcust odyoft hei
[Link] terhefil
edhis
compl aintParkswassuspendedwi t
hpayont hegroundst hathiscont inuedworki
ng
wouldsubj ecthimt ocont i
nuedhar assmentf rom hiscowor kers.

InFebruaryof1983GPUNucl earaccusedKingofhiri
ngemployeesawayfrom GPUN
forhisownf i
rm,Quil
[Link] li
ctofint
erest
,Ki
ngwassuspendedand
l
ockedoutofhi soffi
cewhilehecl ai
mst hatdocumentshewroteconcer
ningthe
[Link]'
ssecretary
,JoyceWagner,wasal
sof or
cedint
o
suspensionandwithi
namont hbot hki
ngandWagnerhadbeenf ir
ed.

THEI
MPACTOFACCI
DENT

Thenumer ousethicalquestionssur r
oundingtheTMI -2cleanuppr oceduremi ghtsuggest
thatnothi
ngposi ti
vecoul dhav eresultedfrom t
[Link] ondthequest ionablebehavi
or
ont hepartofthecompani esr esponsibl
eforthecleanup,radiationpresentedamaj or
problem f
ort hecleanupcr ewsasdi dalgaethatnotonlygrew, butthriv
edi nthe
contaminatedwat [Link] eimpor t
antsci
enti
ficaswel lassociologicalissuest hat
result
edfrom theacci [Link] oll
owingisbasedonMat [Link] d'sarti
cle"Afterthe
Meltdown, Lessonsf r
om aCl eanup"thatappearedintheApr il24,1990edi t
ionoft heNew
Yor
kTi
mes
Whatthecl
eanupeff
ortdi
dpr ovewasthat,
despi t
er equir
ing400wor ker s,
over41/ 2year s,
and970mill
i
ondoll
ars,t
hecleanupofanucleardisast [Link]
ketheSov iet
appr
oachtothecl
eanupattheChernobyldi
sastersite, wherethereactorwasencasedi nan
enor
mousconcret
estruct
ure,thecl
eanupoft hereactorsiteandespeci all
ythereactorvessel
atTMI-
2provi
dedmanyanswer stoquesti
onssur roundingt heacci
dentandev enprovided
somehint
sastothenatureofexact
lyhowst ablereactorv essel
sare.

Duringthecleanuppr ocesst heteam l

earnedthatdespit
ethe51%mel t
downoft her eact
or
core,thatthereactorvesselwasr el
ati
[Link]
catedtwosepar atepoints.
Fi
rstthatitwasf areasiertohav eameltdownt othecorethanexpected,butsecondlythatat
l
eastint hi
scase, t
her eactorvesselwasabletowi t
hstandtemperatur
emuchhi gherthan
anti
cipated.

Beyondsci
enti
fi
cimpact,
howev er,
remainstheimpactthattheaccidenthadont hepubli
c.
Manyanaly
stsinthenucl
earindust
rybeli
evethatt
hei nci
dentatTMI -
2hasmeantt henucl
ear
i
ndustr
yhasonlyonemor [Link]
y st
sfeelt
hatanothernuclearaccidentonthescale
ofTMI-2wi
llr
esulti
npubli
coutcryfort
heclosingoftheothernucl
earpl antsaroundthe
nat
ion.
NUCLEARREACTORTECHNI
CALI
NFORMATI
ON

I
tisimportantt
ounder st
andt hebasicsofhowanucl earreactorproducesel ectri
cit
yand
whatthebasiccomponent soft hereactoratThreeMi l
[Link] eeMi leIsl
andwas
thehomet otwonuclearplant s,TMI-
1andTMI -[Link] ati
ngcapacit
y
was1,700megawat tsorenoughel ectr
ici
tyt
osuppl y300,000homes.I nanut shell
,nucl
ear
powerplantsgener
at eel
ectricit
ybyusingsteam turbi
[Link] unctionofthenucl earfueli
s
toheatwaterandconv er
tittost [Link] ntheorythissoundsqui tesimple, butt
hehazards
associ
atedwithnuclearf
uel saddt othecomplicati
[Link] earreactorsuchasTMI -2can
bedivi
dedintovari
oussub- systems.

 TheNucl earreactor
 Wat ersyst
em-Pr imarywat erl
oop( r
eactorcool
antloop)
-secondar
ywaterl
oop(
feed
wat ersystem) -
condenserwat er.
 St eam generator
 Auxi li
ari
es-Waterpumps, pressuri
zer
I
nor dert ounderstandtheaccidentatTMIi tisessent
ial
thatwehav earudi
mentar
y
understandingofhowt hesesystemsf uncti
on.

THENUCLEARREACTOR

 Anucl earreactorgeneratesheatbyharnessingat omicener [Link] eofanatom,

whichi salsocalledthenucleus,canbesplitbybombar di
ngi twithneut r
[Link]
freeneutronst ri
kesthecor ei
tspli
tstheatom intotwosmal lerat
om f ragments,
givi
ng
offenergyi nthef or
m ofkinet
icenergyofthefragment s,plus2ort hreeneutr
ons-and
l
ikelysomegammar [Link]
onspr oducedbyt hisreactionstri
kes
anotheratom, whichinturnproducesmoreener gyandmor eneut [Link]
n
reacti
oncont i
nuesf rom oneat om t
oanotherpr oducingnuclearfissionenergy.

 TheTMI -
2ReactorCoreheld100t onsofur anium tofuelt
henuclearreacti
[Link]
i
nt hefor
m ofcyli
ndri
calurani
um oxidepelletsthatwereoneinchtallandroughlyone
hal
[Link]
etswerest ackedinside12-footl
ongfuelrodsmadeofa
zi
rconi
um all
oy(Zir
caloy
-4).Theentirereactorconsist
edof36,816suchf uelrodsal
ong
wit
h69cont r
olrods,52instr
umentt ubesandspacesbet weenthem forthecooli
ng
watertofl
ow.

 Controlrodsareusedt ocontrol t
heamountofpowerpr oducedbyt hereactor,ort
o
compl et
elyhaltthereacti
onint hecaseofanemer gency .Thecontrolr
odsar eableto
controlt
her ateofnuclearfi
ssiontakingplacebyabsorbingapor ti
onofthef r
ee
[Link] atevariesdependingonthenumberofr odsandt helengt
hof
therodinsertedintothecoreoft hereact
or .TMI
-2usedcont rol
rodsmadeof80%
Sil
ver,15%indium and5%cadmi um.

 Controlr
odsaredesignedsucht
hati
ntheeventofanemergencyt
hemagneticcl
amps
holdi
ngthem r
eleasetherodsi
ntot
hecoreofthereact
ort
huscomplet
elyhal
ti
ngthe
react
ion.
  TheInstr
umentTubescontai
ninst
rument
susedt
omeasur
esucht
hingsast
he
temperat
urewi
thi
nthereactor
.

WATERSYSTEMS

 Ther
earet
hreebasi
ccl
osedl
oopWat
erSy
stemsi
nanucl
earpowerpl
antsuchast
he
oneatTMI
.

 Thef i
rstwatersystem i
sthePrimaryLooport [Link]
closedloopsystem thatcir
cul
ateswat ert
hroughthenuclearcoreandservestwo
[Link]
stl
y,bycomi ngincontactwit
ht hehotf
uel r
odsthewat erisheat
[Link]
samet imethewat erfl
owingthroughthecorecoolsdownt hefuelrodspreventi
ng
them from melt
ing.

 Itisimpor t
antthatthewat ercomingincontactwiththereact orcoreremaininli
qui
d
form sothatitcaneffectiv
[Link]
opr eventt hewaterfrom t
urni
ng
i
nt osteam iti
spressurizedtoabout2,155psi .I
ntheeventofanacci denteit
heran
i
ncr easeintemperatureoradecr easeinpressurecanconver ttheheatedwat ert
o
steam, t
hisisundesirablebutnotdangerousbecauset hesteam t oocanhel pcoolt
he
reactorcore.

 Oncet hesteam fr
om t heFeedwat erSy st
em hasdriv
ent heturbi
nesi tgoestothe
condenserwher eitiscool edandconv ert
edbackt [Link] is
theCondenserWat [Link] erusedt ocool
thesteam f r
om t
het urbinesandi salsoaclosedloopwat [Link] esthat
theradioacti
vewat erfrom t her
eactorcannotcontaminatethewat erinthecooling
towersort hewaterv aport hati
srel
easedf r
om thecoolingtower stotheatmospher e.

 Undernor
mal oper
ati
ngcondi
ti
onst
hepr
imar
yloopi
stheonl
ysy
stem whi
chcont
ains
tr
acesofradi
ati
on.

STEAM GENERATORS

Heat edwaterfrom ther eactorgoestotheSteam Generatorwher ei

tispassedt hr
ough
corrosionresi
[Link] hesamet i
mewat erfr
om theSecondaryLooporFeedwat er
System ispassedt hrought hesteam gener
atoraroundt hetubescontaini
nghotwat erfr
om
[Link] er
tst heSecondaryLoopwat erint
ost eam andalsocoolsdownt he
[Link] ntdoeswaterfrom thetwo
separ at
esy st
emsmi xwi t
heachot her.

STEAM TURBI
NE

Thest eam i
sthensenttotheSteam Turbineswhereitrunstheelect
ri
cit
y-pr
oducing
generatorwhil
etherel
ati
velycool
erwat eroftheReactorCoolantSyst
em issentbacki
ntot
he
react
orcoretopickupmor eheatandr epeatthewholecy cl
e.

AUXI
LIARI
ES
  ThePr essuri
zerensuresthatthereactorcool antwat
eriskeptatthecorrectpressur
e.
I
fforsomer easonthewat erpressureincreasesabovesafelevel
sthePi l
otOperated
Reli
efVal ve(PORV)issupposedt oopen, thusr el
i
evi
ngexcesspressurebyr el
easing
water/steam tothedrai
[Link] lethissolvesthei
mmedi ateproblem andprevent
s
thereactorvesselfr
om getti
ngdamaged, itreducesthelev
elofwat eri
nnuclearcore.

 Areduct i
oni nthereact orcor ewat erlev el
wouldleadt othecorebeinguncov [Link]
i
sundesi rablebecausei twoul dall
owt hecor etemperaturetoi
ncreasebey ondsaf e
l
[Link] etemper at
urewer et or eacharound2,200degr eesFahrenheitthe
waterwoul dbegi nt oreactwi ththecl addingproduci
nghy dr
[Link] enti
all
y
[Link] at urewer etor each5, 200degreesFahrenheitt
heur anium could
potenti
all
ymel t,releasingf armor eradioact i
vematerial
sintothesurroundings.

[Link]

I
NTRODUCTI
ON

 TheBhopal gast ragedyi sacat ast rophet hathasnopar allelinindust ri

al history .Int heear ly
mor ni nghour sofDec3, 1984, ar ollingwi ndcar riedapoi sonousgr eycl oudpastt hewal kof
theUni onCar bi
depl antinBhopal ,Madhy aPr adesh, I
ndi [Link] i
mat ed8, 000ormor epeople
di ed( ov ert hreet imest heof ficiallyannouncedt ot al),peopl ewhosehopesanddr eamswer e
ironi cal lyboundupwi tht het echnol ogyandaf fluencet hepl antsy mbol ised.
 Ov er5, 00, 000peopl ewer eexposedt omet hy lisocy anat e( MI C)[Link] ghlyt oxi c
subst ancemadei tswayi nt oandar oundt heshant yt ownsl ocat edneart hepl ant .
Estimat esv ar yont hedeat ht oll
.I naddi tion, thef ol l
owi ngwer emaj orCont ri
but orst ot hedi saster
:
 Gr adual butsust aineder osi onofgoodmai ntenancepr actices.
 Decl iningqual it
yoft echni cal trai ningofpl antper sonnel ,especi all
yitssuper visor yst aff.
 Depl et ingi nv entor i
esofv ital spar es.
 Ani ndi scr imi nateeconomydr ivet hatst arvedt hepl antofnecessar ycapi talr epl acementand
pr oducedgener alst affdemor al isat ion.
 Anexodusofsomeoft hemor eexper iencedandabl eengi neersandoper ator sf rom t he
f actor y .
 Lastbutnott hel east, incr easi ngunder manni ngofi mpor tantwor kst ationsi nmanypar tsof
thepl ant .Toget her ,thesef act or scombi nedt ocauset hemul tiplefailurest hatunder laythe
cal ami touswhi choccur edont heni ghtofDec2- 3,[Link] disast err emai nst he
wor sti ndust rialacci denti nt hehi st or y.
ENVIRONMENTALASPECT
Fir
st,thet ragedywascausedbyt hesy ner gyoft hewor stofAmer i
canandI ndi ancul tur [Link]
Amer i
cancor por at i
oncy nicall
yusedat hirdwor ldcount ryt oescapef r
om t hei ncr easi ngl yst ri
ct
safet
yst andar dsi mposedathome.
Safetypr ocedur eswer emi nimal andnei thert heAmer icanowner snort hel ocal managementseemed
toregar dt hem asnecessar [Link] hedi sast erst ruck, ther ewasnodi sast erpl ant hatcoul dbeset
i
ntoact [Link] omptact ionbyt hel ocal aut hor it
iescoul dhav esav edmany ,ifnotmost ,oft hev ict
ims.
Theimmedi at er esponsewasmar r
edbycal l
ousi ndiffer ence.
Secondl y, wemustf rankl yacknowl edget hatt hel egal sy stem f ailedt hev i
ct imsandt henbegi nt o
considerr ef or [Link] egal r
egi mer equi resar adical reor ient ation.
Givent heso- cal ledneweconomi cpol icywhi chwel comesi nv estment sinev eryconcei vabl esect or,
wewi llseet heemer genceofmul ti
nat ional si npur sui tofcheapl abourandmar [Link] ee
tober esponsi blef ort heact soft heirsubsi diariesandnotdi sownt hem liker atsl eavingasi nking
ship.

ECONOMIC ANDLEGALASPECTS
 Uni
oncarbi
de’
soper
ati
onsi
nIndi
agobackt
othebegi
nni
ngoft
hiscent
urywheni
tbegan
 mar ket
ingitsproductsinthecount ry.I
n1924, anassemblyplantforbatt
eri
eswasopenedi n
Calcutta.By1983Car bi
dehad14pl ant
sinIndiamanuf act
uri
ngchemi cal
s,pesti
cides,
batteri
esandot [Link] onCar bi
de’soperat
ionsinIndi
awer econductedt hr
ougha
subsidiary,
UnionCarbideIndia, Ltd(UCIL)
.
 Theowneroft hefactory
,UCI L,wasmaj ori
tyownedbyUCC, wit
hIndiangovernmentcontrol
l
ed
banksandt heIndi
anpublichol dinga49. 1percentstake.I
n1989,UCCpai d$470mi l
l
ion(
$907
mill
ioni n2014dollar
s)toset tl
el i
tigati
onstemmi ngfrom t
hedisaster.

 In1994,UCCsoldit
sst akeinUCILtoEv er
eadyIndust
ri
esIndi
aLi mited(EI
IL)
,which
subsequent
lymergedwi thMcLeodRussel (I
ndi
a)[Link]
eadyendedcl eanuponthesitein
1998,whenitter
minatedits99-y
earleaseandturnedovercontrolofthesi
tetothestate
governmentofMadhy [Link] calCompanypur chasedUCCi n2001,seventeen
yearsaft
erthedi
saster.

Civilandcr iminal caseswer ef iledi nt heDi strictCour tofBhopal ,Indi a, i

nvolvingUCCandWar ren
Ander son,UCCCEOatt het imeoft hedi sast er.I nJune2010, sev enf ormerempl oyees, incl
udingt he
formerUCI Lchai rman, wereconv ictedi nBhopal ofcausi ngdeat hbynegl i
genceandsent encedt o
twoy ear si
mpr isonmentandaf ineofabout$2, 000each, themaxi mum puni shmental lowedbyt he
Indianl [Link] ght hf ormerempl oy eewasal soconv icted, butdi edbef orethej udgementwas
[Link] sondi edon29, Sep2014.
ENVI RONMENTALI MPACT ASSESSMENT
Inviewoft heBhopal gast ragedy ,fut urepr oject si nadev el opingcount rylikeIndiamustappl y
Env ir
onment alImpactAssessment( EI A)tof ulf i
l t
hef ollowi ngobj ect ives:
 Toi dent i
fyadv erseenv ironment al pr obl emst hatmaybeexpect edt ooccur ;
 Toi ncor por at eintot hedev el opmentact ionappr opr iatemi tigat ionmeasur es;
 Toi dent i
fyt heenv i
ronment al benef itsanddr awbacksoft hepr oject,aswel last heeconomi c
andenv ironmentaccept abi li
tyt othecommuni ty;
 Toi dent i
fycr iti
cal env i
r onment alpr obl emswhi chr equiref urtherst udiesand/ ormoni toring;
 Toexami neandsel ectt heopt imal al ternat iv ef rom t hev ariousr elevantopt i
onsav ai
lable;
 Toi nvolv et hepubl icindeci si on- maki ngpr ocessr elatedt ot heenv i
ronment ;and
 Toassi stal lpar tiesinv ol vedi ndev el opmentandenv ir
onment al affairstounder standt heir
rol
es,responsi bil
iti
esandov er allrelat ionshi pswi thoneanot her .
CONCLUSI ON
Env ironment alImpactAssessmentpr ovidesani mpor tantmet hodol ogyf oracqui ringa
clearunder st
andi ngoft her el ationshi pbet weent heeconomy ,soci etyandenv i
ronmentandof f
er s
posi t
iv emeasur esf orbet terhar moni zingt her el ationshi pbet weeneconomi cdev elopmentand
env i
ronment alpr ot ect i
onaswel lasanef fect i
v emeansf orst rengt heni ngenv i
ronment al pl
anning
andmanagement .Theni mpl ement at ionoft hissy stem i sofgr eatsi gni f
icancet obot heconomi c
dev elopmentandenv i
ronment al pr ot ection, especi allyinadev elopingcount rylikeI ndia,withits
horrendousBhopal gast ragedy .

.
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner
Scanned by CamScanner