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Practical Engineering Ethics -A Short Course, New Edition Japanese Text with Extended English Synopsis by NAKAMURA Shuzo August 2008, ISBN 978-4-7598-1155-1 Kagaku-Dojin Publishing Co.,Inc  
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●Synopsis Practical Engineering Ethics−A Short Course, New Edition What is engineering ethics? People everywhere in the world look upon engineers as honest and ethical professionals. Japanese engineers have earned a particularly high degree of trust and respect from the public by establishing outstandingly safe and reliable technologies. However, accidents and scandals in which ethics of engineers are questioned continue to take place. Throughout the history of mankind engineers have been fighting fierce battles to secure safety and to protect the environment. Contemporary technology is based upon the buildup of the booty from all these battles. However, the public question ethics of engineers every time a safety or environmental issue comes up. They cry out that engineers cause problems because engineers lack ethical sensitivity or because engineers do not pay enough attention to the society and the environment. How should engineers accept such criticism? The more the technology advances, engineers must possess so much more advanced professional knowledge and skill. The more the technology advances, it becomes so much more difficult for the public to understand it. The more difficult it becomes for the public to understand the technology, it becomes so much more important for engineers to maintain the trust by the public. Then do engineers need to practice higher and higher standard of ethics? Every profession, engineer or any other profession, possesses special knowledge and skill that the public do not, and performs professional work under the trust by the public. Because of that every profession is expected to practice a high standard of professional ethics. Then in what sort of way should the ethics of engineers differ from that of other professions? These will be the theme of engineering ethics. In order to answer these questions it is necessary for us to make it clear what are left with the ethics of engineers and in what circumstances the ethics of engineers is questioned. This book looks at these questions from a variety of view points. I sincerely hope that engineering students and young engineers will get the courage to join the new battles by learning from the wisdom their predecessors have built up. I also hope that “Practical Engineering Ethics” will be able to help them to do so. You may look upon all modern technologies as the wisdom for utilizing dangerous matters safely. Therefore engineers must possess professional knowledge and skill necessary for their job and at the same time maintain a high standard of ethics. Engineering ethics differs from other professional ethics only in that respect. The view that technology is the wisdom for utilizing dangerous matters safely is not limited to modern technologies. Fire best represents dangerous matters. Our ancestors became human being by mastering how to use fire safely. Engineering ethics started around that time. If you think that way, engineering ethics is nothing particularly new or difficult. “Engineering ethics” deals with ethics of engineers in a narrow sense, namely ethics of individual engineers. On the other hand “techno ethics” deals with the relationship between technology and society. The latter nearly coincides with the ethics of collective engineers; engineers at large or a group of engineers responsible for a specific field of technology. Ethics of engineers in a broader sense includes both of them. If you fail to differentiate these two properly, you will create confusion and cause unnecessary reactions from among the students. The objective of engineering ethics education is neither to convert engineering students to more ethical individuals nor to teach them how to make ethical judgments. Engineers, just like other individuals, practice ethics in their daily lives, dealing with matters ranging from simple and easy to complex and difficult. An ethical person does not always behave ethically, and vice versa. Nevertheless, engineers must practice the highest possible standard of ethics when they make professional judgments. This book focuses on fostering the students' awareness of engineering ethics, and attempts to give them some practical wisdom useful in living their engineering lives ethically. A comparative study Japanese engineers and Japanese society had not been particularly conscious of the concept of engineering ethics until recently. The concept had developed in the United States. Japanese engineers live in significantly different society as compared to their Western counterparts. This book begins with a comparative study of Japan and US. It provides Japanese students with a useful approach in understanding what the issues are. Americans value rules and manuals most. Manuals for process control and quality control at American factories are surprisingly elaborate and voluminous. Japanese value KAIZEN and group activities rather than manuals. It is well recognized that Japanese industry performs considerably better than American counterpart in both process control and quality control. Group safety activities also achieved unsurpassed safety records. Japan has set an excellent example. The society of professional engineers is structured quite differently. There are numerous ‘societies of engineering’ in this country but there is hardly any ‘society of engineers’. Membership to the ‘societies of engineering’ is not limited to qualified engineers. Their organization and function are more like those of academic societies. These societies had not adopted codes of ethics, as such, until very recently. It had been arbitrarily presumed that the general principle of ethics would guide the engineers. Many of the societies lately adopted ones, but they are expected to serve only educational purposes rather than to restrict the conduct of their members. Very few include provisions for whistle blowing. Just about the only exception is that of Atomic Energy Society of Japan. A series of special laws govern nuclear engineers. Legal system is also very different. In Japan even in the case of incidents involving engineering issues, criminal prosecution assumes the top priority. Judicial authorities care far less about clarifying their technical aspects and seldom release detailed information. Whereas the US laws provide for exemption of criminal liability in order to facilitate resolution of technical problems and publication of relevant information. The liberal criminal laws are counterbalanced with powerful civil liability suites in the US legal system. A Group Approach I deem that the most important role of engineering ethics education, at least in this country, is to make it easy for engineers to point out and talk about ethical issues within their organization. It will minimize the cases of engineers being forced to blow a whistle. It should not be misunderstood, however, that it in no way denies individual engineer's responsibility of confronting ethical issues. I am only emphasizing that the ethical issues, too, could be dealt with most effectively by a group approach. Whistle blowing must be left as the very last resort. Famous Heinrich's law, which was originally derived from the statistics of industrial accidents, also applies to engineering ethics. Behind a fatal scandal there are tens of major scandals. And behind them there are hundreds of minor scandals. Behind them there are thousands of near hit incidents and many times more ethically questionable practices. Behinds them all lukewarm sense of ethics prevails. The figure illustrates that in order to avoid scandals you must let strict sense of ethics prevail in and eliminate ethically questionable practices from your organization. It also illustrates that risk prediction and near hit incident activities, just like those in group safety activities, are indispensable. If you leave lukewarm sense of ethics prevailing or do not practice risk prediction and near hit incident activities adequately, your organization is bound to face a fatal scandal in some future. It is widely acknowledged that Heinrich's law was applied to group safety activities in Japanese work places to let them achieve outstanding safety records. It is also well recognized that the group safety activity does not work effectively as long as only the management tries to enforce it to the workers and only the bosses to the subordinates. It works well only when top-down and bottom-up activities work harmoniously. The same applies to corporate ethics as well as to engineering ethics. In a corporation where this dynamics do not work properly, a serious scandal may one day suddenly surface disabling the corporation to continue its business. Heinrich's law tells you solemnly that it is indispensable for a corporation to maintain strict sense of ethics throughout its organization, if it desires to continue to prosper. I find it encouraging learning that a major Japanese corporation that was recently hit by a near fatal scandal to face imminent bankruptcy succeeded to revive promptly through drastic companywide group ethics activities. The most important objective of engineering ethics education is to make the concept of engineering ethics shared by as many engineers as possible, so that it will become easy for them to talk about ethical issues within their organization. At the end of the course I tell the students, “Most of you will work as an engineer for a corporation. If you work for 20~30 years, you are bound to experience some sort of ethical conflict many times. It is really unavoidable. Save this textbook and open the specially marked page 64 when you start working, and again when you come across with a difficult situation.” The page provides them with a series of practical instructions. Its English translation is printed in page 130. Students will learn that most of these instructions also apply to ordinary matters in their corporate life, and that engineering ethics is nothing special. It is not easy for anyone to carry out what he or she believes right, whether it is related to ethics or not. The last item is particularly important. It will deter unethical conduct of your own as well as those of the people around you. Once everybody starts taking such note, it will become a powerful deterrent. Engineering ethics taught by retired engineers Case studies are without question the most effective means for engineering ethics education. A real incident that takes place in Japan, however, seldom provides a useful case for this purpose, because it seldom becomes public what a specific engineer actually faced, how he/she struggled and what he/she actually did or did not. American cases are very useful in that respect. The classical cases of the Challenger Disaster and Citicorp Building are indispensable. No lecture can work on the engineering student's mind better than a video program on the Challenger disaster with Roger Boisjoly and others appearing. I use a recording from one of the NHK (The Public Broadcasting Corporation of Japan) documentary programs. I wrote up for myself all the cases in this book, including the American stories. Some are fictional stories assuming Japanese situations. Engineering ethics is a matter of engineer's mind. After all real stories out of the instructor's personal experience work most effectively. I studied science and engineering at three universities in Japan, Canada and US. After that I worked in American and Japanese industries for over 30 years in total as a scientist and engineer and later as a member of top management. Then I left industry to engage in international education at a Japanese university, where I was unexpectedly invited to teach “Engineering Ethics” at its engineering school. The Japan Accreditation Board of Engineering Education (JABEE) was just being envisioned. It was being proposed to make engineering ethics course mandatory. At the beginning I knew very little what engineering ethics was all about. When I was a student, there was no such course in either Japanese or North American universities. But I soon realized how important engineering ethics education is. Later a number of other universities invited me to teach the course. This book, whose first edition was published in 2003, represents the outcome of my trials and errors through these years. It differs considerably from other textbooks published in Japan and abroad. I do not think Japanese engineering schools need to offer a full semester course on engineering ethics. I use this textbook to teach a short course on engineering ethics. It usually consists of four 90 minutes classes. If you can allow more time for the subject, the extra time can better be spent on the subjects directly related to safety, environment, etc. rather than on ethics. I believe that retired engineers can teach engineering ethics most effectively. After I published the first edition, I started encouraging the retired engineers who are members of the Kinki Chemical Society, headquartered in Osaka, to join me to teach engineering ethics. We organized a study group on engineering ethics education. We meet once a month to discuss how we should teach the course. We share materials for teaching the course, including the PowerPoint presentations. Now more than twenty members are teaching the course at over a dozen different universities. We jointly edited a new textbook based on our collective experience and published it in 2006 from the same publisher as this book. It is titled “Practical Engineering Ethics by Engineers−Learning from the Battles by our Predecessors” (Japanese text without English synopsis). It consists of introduction to engineering ethics based on this book and the chapters on five particular subjects. The latter includes “safety”, “environment and natural resources”, “assessment of risks”, “laws” and “intelligent property”. Each of them includes a brief introduction to the subject and discussions on how it relates to engineering ethics. We collected many actual cases in which the ethics of engineers were questioned. We also collected many cases of good practices by engineers. The new book is suitable for a full semester course. A Japanese full semester course consists of fifteen 90 minutes classes and grants two credits. After all many universities at which my peers teach wanted to give full semester courses. I have learnt a great deal from American textbooks and also from the discussions I have had with American colleagues in engineering ethics education. It made me feel obliged to write this synopsis. I hope the colleagues in overseas will have an opportunity to review it. Readers of this book may download from the publisher's website the PDF file of the original PowerPoint presentation I use at the class. The Japanese text prints the URL and the password. Readers of this synopsis may look at a shorter English version at the following website without a password. (http://www.kagakudojin.co.jp/library/ISBN978-4-7598-1155-1English.htm)
●PowerPoint Presentation (Engllish version)  Some of the photographs included in the actual PowerPoint presentation are replaced by thier sketches in the pdf fiile posted here. |
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