Abstract
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.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge each of the engineers who made the research possible. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Award 1632651 through the Division of Social and Economic Sciences and the Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM program. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Smith, N.M., Zhu, Q., Smith, J.M. et al. Enhancing Engineering Ethics: Role Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. Sci Eng Ethics 27, 28 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00289-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00289-7