17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
UNIVERSAL HUMAN VALUES (20HS31)
Presented by
RAGHUNATH M J
Assistant
Professor
EEE, VVCE, Mysuru
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Module-5
Implications of the Holistic Understanding of
Harmony on Professional Ethics
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• Why a person act unethically?
• It is primarily because of a lack of correct understanding about
happiness and prosperity.
• If a person views happiness in terms of maximization of
sensory enjoyment and prosperity in terms of accumulation of
physical facilities, then the motivation naturally becomes that of
wealth maximization.
• In this pursuit, all other considerations become secondary.
• Therefore, it leads to more and more unethical practices as
these seem to cater well to the above tends to make people
adhere to this wrong notion firmly.
• In this context, the ethical
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considerations are considered to be
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The development of ethical competence is a long-term process
to be achieved through appropriate value education.
• As the profession is only a subset of life activities, the
competence in the profession will only be the manifestation of
one’s right understanding.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The salient features characterizing this competence can be
summarized as fellows:
1. Clarity about the comprehensive human goal.
2. Confidence in oneself as well as confidence in the harmony,
co-existence, and self-regulation.
3. Competence of mutually fulfilling behavior.
4. Competence of mutually enriching interaction with nature.
5. Holistic vision about technologies, production systems, and
management techniques.
6. Adequate realization of one’s social responsibility
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The salient features characterizing this competence can be
summarized as fellows:
• Clarity about the comprehensive human goal
Samadhan – Samridhi – Abhay – Sah-Astitva, and its fulfillment
through universal human order i.e. right understanding and right
feeling in the individual, prosperity in the family, trust in the society,
and co-existence with nature.
This implies that one is working for the comprehensive human
goal and not just for the economic goal or for maximization of
profits through one’s profession.
Any action has to be evaluated from the point of these four-fold
objectives ingrained in the comprehensive human goal.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The salient features characterizing this competence can be
summarized as fellows:
• Confidence in oneself as well as confidence in the harmony, co-
existence, and self-regulation
prevailing in entire existence, based on the right understanding of
oneself and the rest of existence.
From it also arises the firm conviction that each human being,
including myself, will be fulfilled only in the process of working in
consonance with this existential order.
As a consequence, we are not influenced by the divergent or
conflicting opinions of others or by superficial impressions.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The salient features characterizing this competence can be
summarized as fellows:
• Competence of mutually fulfilling behavior
clarity, and confidence in ethical human conduct and its correlation
with sustainable personal as well as collective happiness and
prosperity.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• The salient features characterizing this competence can be
summarized as fellows:
• Competence of mutually enriching interaction with nature,
ability to appropriately assess the needs for the physical facility for
oneself, the family, and society as well as their sustainable
fulfillment through production systems ensuring harmony with
nature.
As a result of the right understanding, one is able to assess one’s
own needs appropriately and is also sensitive enough to the needs
of others.
In addition, it is clear that all needs are to be fulfilled only through
harmonious, sustainable, and mutually enriching interaction with
nature.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• Holistic vision about technologies, production systems, and
management techniques.
The development of a holistic vision about technologies and
systems is another important domain contributing to the
competence in professional ethics.
This aspect is generally ignored and does not feature in the
prevailing discourses on professional ethics.
However, for want of such a vision, one could be inadvertently
propagating artifacts that are not really conducive to human
welfare.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ensuring competence in Professional Ethics
• Adequate realization of one’s social responsibility.
As people advance in their profession and occupy positions of
power, their decisions and actions affect a large number of
persons in addition to the natural environment.
Therefore, it is very important for them to be continuously aware of
their social responsibility.
On the other hand, society at large has to remain watchful towards
the conduct of its constituent members.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Issues in Professional Ethics
• We may enlist some salient categories of these unethical
practices as follows:
Corruption in multiple forms and at various levels.
Tax evasion, misappropriation, and misuse of public funds.
Misleading propaganda, unethical advertisements, and sale
promotion.
Cut-throat competition.
Exploiting the weakness of consumers through various
enticements.
Adulteration and spurious production.
Endangering the health and safety of the public at large.
Hoarding and over-charging etc.
…the list could be much longer.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Prevailing Approaches towards Promotion of
Professional Ethics – their Inadequacy
Promoting awareness about professional ethics by introducing
new courses, refresher programs, and case studies.
Administering oaths and prescribing codes of ethical conduct for
specific professional disciplines.
Setting up mechanisms for intensive audit inspection and
monitoring the activities.
Framing more stringent laws and devising harder punishments for
offenses.
Promoting transparency in working systems through mechanisms
like RTI (Right to Information Act), etc.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Prevailing Approaches towards Promotion of
Professional Ethics – their Inadequacy
Carrying out ‘string operations’ and widely publicizing serious
lapses in the ethical conduct of profession through media.
Encouraging whistleblowing by individuals or groups.
Setting up Lokpals, vigilance commissions, ethics committees,
tribunals, consumer protection forums, etc.
Filing public interest litigations, etc.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic Alternative – Basis for Humanistic Education
and Humanistic Constitution
• The right understanding prepares us for moving towards the
‘holistic alternative’ (universal human order, Swarajya) which
will be sustainable as well as conducive to fulfill the basic
human aspirations for all human beings.
• It will be a mode of living that is self-satisfying, people-friendly,
and eco-friendly.
• Then all human ingenuity, all the knowledge, and skills
available can be harnessed to actualize such a model of living.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic Alternative – Basis for Humanistic Education
and Humanistic Constitution
• The primary step to move towards the holistic alternative is to
develop the right understanding among human beings.
• And the commitment to live accordingly and then to develop the
requisite skills and know-how to implement the right
understanding in real life.
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Universal Human Order: Dynamics
Conduct that ensures
continuity of mutual Human
happiness & Conduct
prosperity
Education that
ensures the
development of the
competence to live
with
Definite
Human Human Human Human
Nature of Constitution
Tradition Education
Conduct
society
Entry Point
of people living
together in a
relationship of
mutual fulfillment
Universal
Human The society in which
Order Human Goal
is realised
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic Alternative – Basis for Humanistic Education
and Humanistic Constitution
• Humanistic education:
• Humanistic education will incorporate appropriate integration of
values and skills.
• so that human beings are able to understand their physical
needs correctly
• Adopt suitable techniques and production systems to cater to
these needs in an eco-friendly ad people-friendly manner.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic Alternative – Basis for Humanistic Education
and Humanistic Constitution
• Humanistic constitution:
• The right understanding also provides us the basis for a
humanistic constitution.
• which is essential to provide clear guidelines and policy framework
conducive to the development of an un-fragmented human society
and a universal human order.
• Working towards the comprehensive human goal and developing
the competence for ethical human conduct.
• It will safeguard social justice in the true sense.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
The holistic criteria for evaluation
• Modern technologies and systems are all human inventions in
response to the needs visualized under the influence of the
prevailing worldview.
• There are three broad criteria to guide the development of such
technologies and systems, they are:
a) Catering to appropriate needs of lifestyles
b) People friendly – safe, economical & enhancing human
capability
c) Eco friendly- (Cyclic/renewable & mutually enriching)
• In addition, these have to promote local self-sufficiency and
optimal utilization of local resources and expertise.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
The holistic criteria for evaluation
Criteria for Technologies
• Catering to real human needs
• Compatible with natural systems and cycles
• Facilitating effective utilization of human body, animals, plants, and
materials
• Safe, user-friendly, and conducive to health
• Promoting the use of renewable energy resources
• Low cost and energy-efficient
• Promoting decentralization
• Enhancing human interaction and cooperation
• Durability and life cycle recyclability of products etc.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
The holistic criteria for evaluation
For Production Systems
1. Optimal utilization of local resources and expertise
2. Economic viability and sustainability
3. Priority for local consumption
4. Decentralized systems capable of meaningful employment of
people in the community
5. Facilitating production by masses and not mass-produced in a
centralized mode
6. Ensuring requisite quality of production
7. Using people-friendly and eco-friendly technologies
8. Safe and conducive to the health of persons involved in
production as well as others
9. Promoting individual creativity and a sense of accomplishment
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
The holistic criteria for evaluation
For Management Models
Primarily management models are to be relationship based,
cooperative & ensuring justice in terms of mutual fulfilment.
1. The whole unit working as a well-knit family
2. Cooperative, motivational & mutually fulfilling
3. Ensuring correct appraisal of human labor & skills
4. Effectively integrating individual competencies and
complementarity
5. Targeting employer – employee as well as consumer
satisfaction and not profit maximization.
6. Sharing of responsibility & participative mode of management
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic technologies & systems
1. Renewable & decentralized energy technologies
2. Systems for water conservation and water shed management
for efficient utilization of rain water & for eco-restoration.
3. Technologies & architecture promoting green building materials
and energy conservation.
4. Organic/natural farming techniques
5. Eco-sanitation techniques for small scale decentralized sewage
disposal & waste water recycling.
6. Low cost & energy efficient technologies for small scale
production systems.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Holistic technologies & systems
7. The whole unit working as a well-knit family
8. Cooperative, motivational & mutually fulfilling
9. Ensuring correct appraisal of human labor & skills
10. Effectively integrating individual competencies and
complementarity
11. Targeting employer – employee as well as consumer
satisfaction and not profit maximization.
12. Sharing of responsibility & participative mode of management
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
Eager to have its subcompact ready for the 1971 model year, Ford
decided to compress the normal drafting-board-to-showroom time
of about three-and-a-half years into two.
The compressed schedule meant that any design changes
typically made before production-line tooling would have to be
made during it.
Ford crash-tested various prototypes, in part to learn whether they
met a safety standard proposed by the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA) to reduce fires from traffic
collisions.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
This standard would have required that by 1972 all new autos be
able to withstand a rear-end impact of 20mph without fuel loss,
and that by 1973 they be able to withstand an impact of 30 mph.
The prototypes all failed the 20-mph test.
In 1970 Ford crash-tested the Pinto itself, and the result was the
same: ruptured gas tanks and dangerous leaks.
The only Pintos to pass the test had been modified in some way–
for example, with a rubber bladder in the gas tank or a piece of
steel between the tank and the rear bumper.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
Thus, Ford knew that the Pinto represented a serious fire hazard
when struck from the rear, even in low-speed collisions. Ford
officials faced a decision.
Should they go ahead with the existing design, thereby meeting
the production timetable but possibly jeopardizing consumer
safety?
Or should they delay production of the Pinto by redesigning the
gas tank to make it safer and thus concede another year of
subcompact dominance to foreign companies?
Ford not only pushed ahead with the original design but stuck to it
for the next six years.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
What explains Ford’s decision?
Ford's conclusion, following the crash tests, was that the rear end
structure of the car was not satisfactory because of several types
of damage deformation of the gas tank, leakage and damage to
the filler pipe.
Suggested changes to repair the defects were not expensive,
something in the range of $11 per car.
A confidential company policy memo issued in late 1971, directed
that no additional safety features be adopted for the 1973 and later
cars until required by law.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
A cost-benefit analysis prepared by Ford concluded that it was not
cost-efficient to add an $11 per car cost in order to correct the
flaws.
Benefits derived from spending this amount of money were
estimated to be $49.5 million.
This estimate assumed that
each death which could be avoided would be worth $200,000,
that each major burn injury that could be avoided would be worth
$67,000 and
that an average repair cost of $700 per car involved in a rear end
accident would be avoided.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Ford Pinto ethics case
It further assumed that there would be 2,100 burned vehicles, 180
serious burn injuries, and 180 burn deaths in making this
calculation.
When the unit cost was spread out over the number of cars and
light trucks which would be affected by the design change, at a
cost of $11 per vehicle,
the cost was calculated to be $137 million, much greater then the
$49.5 million benefit.
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17EEP85-Project Phase-II Academic Year: 2020-21
Thank You
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