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An analysis and group effort: Solving the moral and ethical issues facing an engineer and hisco-workers
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Abstract -- Engineers today are constantly faced with ethical and moral dilemmas. Through group analysis of the case study “Failure” students in CTS are able to assess the situation and provide their own opinions of what they would do if they were ever put in a compromising position. Further more, this paper examines group work and its effectiveness. In addition, it examines the societal perspective of engineering and ethics. Index Terms—Engineering and ethics, group work and effectiveness, morals, societal perspectives. I. I. INTRODUCTION “Engineers are confronted with an array of moral issues and dilemmas as the complexity of modern technology results in equally complex efforts to assess the accompanying environmental and safety risks.” The case study “Failure” is about a company supplier named R&M. R&M sent their client Exes faulty equipment. It wasn’t until R&M held a staff meeting to deal with the problem that senior Engineer Walt Winters realizes the equipment is flawed due to internal errors. He decides to stay quiet during the meeting. He tells a superior after the meeting about his discovery. They decide to keep the information a secret from their client since they were already replacing the damaged goods. The case study does not reveal what the actual flaw is nor does it reveal the potential damage. However, such a flaw may have caused serious health and safety hazards. The quote above pertains to the great responsibility that engineers and future engineers bear for the greater good of society. Because we live in such a rapidly changing technological world future engineers must be ready to deal with the ethical dilemmas that constantly arise. This work will review how a group of five engineering students and one communication student create a seemingly real world situation in which they address the harsh realities that can often occur in the business-engineering world. Through their presentation and group cooperation they provide varied opinions for what to do when confronted with ethical principles of engineering. Their perspectives are a good representation of the varied opinions of the real world. They offer actions that are governed by morals and ethics to ones rooted in economics and egos. ___________________________ Manuscript submitted on October 30, 2003. This work was supported in part by the Griffith University staff. Dina Behar is with the School of Communication, Griffith University. Email Beharb@aol.com II. VARYING BELIEFS Within the case study there are six different characters.
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