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ENGINEERING ETHICS

RESPONSIBLE ENGINEER

Concept of Responsibility

- Responsibility is attributed to person in both law and morality

Responsibility can be categorized as follow:-

Intentionally causing harm

Negligently causing harm

Recklessly causing harm

Strict liability in law legalized monetary compensation or some kind of damage repair in some area of law.

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Responsibility Views

Minimalist

Resonable Care

Good works

Minimalist View

Do minimal responsibility or scope of work. Conform duty only up to the standard operating procedure and fullfil only the basic duties

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Disadvantage of Minimalist view:

1. Define responsibility in term of exclusivity (e.g. “it’s his job not mine”)

2. Linked with the idea of individual fault or blame

3. Avoidant of blame or staying out of trouble

4. Provide problem solving assistance when there is problem, not anticipating problem and provide preventive measures

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Reasonable Care

Move beyond minimalist view concern

More directly concerned with the risk of being harmed or trying to prevent them from getting harmed

Very close related to code of professional conduct no 1

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Good Works

Above and beyond the call of duty

example 1: A statistician agrees to help analyzing data fro the sake of safety of the public and said: “ Analyzing data just for money doesn’t mean anything to me. I want it to do some good”.

example 2: A design engineer works extra hours to check safety of window washing crane even though the design and the safety aspect of it is already very safe and said: “ I have to do the best I can and that’s usually inadequate”.

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Virtues For Engineers

Virtues for engineers besides honesty, fair-minded, reliable, integrity, go beyond basic duty, such as benevolence, perseverance, spiritedness, compassion, kindness and generosity are associated with the good works criteria which upgrade the level of quality of Good works category

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Impediments of Responsibility

Self Interests : egoism or self centered

Fear : fear making mistake, punishment

Self-Deception : intentionally avoid to know

Ignorance : unintentionally avoid to know

Egocentric Tendencies : a special form of ignorance, very narrow perpective

Microscospic vision – too focus until other perspective of responsibility is overlooked

Uncritical Acceptance of Authority- tend to agree with authority even though they are wrong

Group Thninking – tends to make the member of group feel invincible, better idea with more head, to maintain solidarity tend to practice uncritical thinking

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Symptoms of GroupThinking:- An illusion of invulnerability of the group to fail A strong “we Feeling” the view of outsiders as

adversaries or enemies and thus encourage shared stereotypes of others.

Rationalizations that tend to shift responsibility to others.

An illusion of morality that assumes the inherent morality of the group and thereby discourages careful examination of the moral implications of what the group is doing

A tendency of individual members towards self-censorship , resulting from a desire not to “rock-the-boat”

An illusion of unanimity, construing silence of group member as consent

Direct pressure to those disagree by the group leader Mind-guarding, protecting the group from dissenting

views by preventing their introduction to the outsiders who has co has contrary views.

ENGINEERING ETHICS

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Bangunan berdinding kotak?

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Teka…Mana dulu siap, rumah atau tiang letrik?

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Group Works could also be cruel and devastating

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Didikan awal ke arah gangterism

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Malaysia negara ku bersih dan membangun…………uwekkkk

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Salah tafsir agama penyebab “extremism”

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Quiz 1

How many category of responsibility and why the highest level of responsibility is

lacking in an engineer

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Quiz 2

You are not satisfied as you are paid very low as a production engineer in a

factory. Is it wrong for you to adopt a minimalist view concept in order to suit

your salary with your scope of responsibility?

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Quiz 3

Group works is good to teach us how to work cooperatively in a team, but what is the effect of group thinking onto the

credibility of the decision made. Therefore is it good to work as a team?