Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR.

工程道德要求工程师注意职业道德责任和个人价值观，但企业环境中的道德实践可能比这两者都更复杂。公司也拥有通常包括企业社会责任 (CSR) 实践和政策的文化，但很少有关于工程伦理的讨论明确提及 CSR。本文提出了对 CSR 和角色道德的批判性关注，以此作为帮助工程师准备好思考其职业实践道德的机会。在简要概述了美国工程伦理中社会责任的演变之后，本文与采矿和能源行业的执业工程师分享实证研究，以探讨他们的正式道德培训如何让他们准备好应对职业实践的道德层面。然后说明了这些困境的方式以及用于解决这些困境的策略在企业社会责任政策和实践中的框架，并与角色伦理学，而不是目前在大多数美国工程项目中教授的伦理学理论。文章的结论是，工程伦理学的教学和学习将受益于明确纳入角色伦理和企业社会责任的批判性讨论。