Responsibility The moral sense of responsibility is the sense in which one is responsible for achieving (or maintaining) a good result in some matter.
Suspected Hazardous Waste A supervisor instructs a student engineer to withhold information from a client about the suspected nature of waste on the client's property, to protect what the supervisor takes to be the client's interest.
Intellectual Property of Engineers in Private Practice An engineer submits a proposal to a county council, a member of which makes this proposal available to another engineer developing a proposal for a different county project. The second engineer uses the first engineer's information and data without the first engineer's consent.
Surprise Authorship, Credit and Responsibility In this scenario, a graduate student realizes that he/she is given credit and coauthorship of a paper. An ethical problem arises when the student is not familiar with the theoretical background of a section of the paper.
William LeMessurier and the 59-Story Crisis William LeMessurier, structural consultant on New York City's Citicorp Tower, must take responsibility to correct design flaws that could lead to the building's collapse.
A Personal Responsibilities for Sensitivity The damage done by targeted inappropriate comments can be significant. Sensitivity is a personal responsibility and cannot be dictated by law.
Responsibilities as a Team Leader This article provides many helpful tips for better relationships with one another--leader and follower. It reinforces personal trust and respect.
Relevant Literature on this Topic
Whitbeck, Caroline. 1998. Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. New York: Cambridge University Press. Other keywords for this book: ethics and prudence; preferences vs. values; negligence; trust, distrust; ambiguity; moral ambiguity; professional responsibility; public safety; worker safety; laboratory safety; design process; engineering competence; environmental issues, global; environmental issues, chemical; conflict of interest; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; harassment, sexual harassment and aggression; workplace relationships; research misconduct; falsification and fabrication; plagiarism; authorship; human subjects in research; animals in scientific research.
Gorman, M. E. (1998). Transforming nature: Ethics, invention and design. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Other keywords for this book: trust, distrust; rights; obligations; design and the environment; design process; global environmental issues; chemical environmental issues; endangered ecosystems; engineering ethics courses, pedagogy.
Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden. Oxford University Press, NY, 1964. Other keywords for this: preferences vs. values; design and the environment; self-deception; endangered ecosystems.
Sarah K. A. Pfatteicher, "Death By Design: Ethics, Responsibility, and Failure in the American Civil Engineering Community, 1852-1986." (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996). Other keywords for this: public safety; professional responsibility; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; code violations; professional societies.
Daniel W. Mead, "Why a Code of Conduct?" in Baum and Flores, Ethical Problems in Engineering (Troy, NY: Center for the Study of the Human Dimensions of Science and Technology, 1980). Other keywords for this: ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; professional responsibility; obligations; professional advice.
Carl Mitcham, "Schools for Whistleblowers," Commonweal 114 (April 10, 1987): 201-5. Other keywords for this: pedagogy; engineering ethics; professional responsibility; professional advice; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies.
Karen Fitzgerald, "Whistleblowing: not always a losing game," in IEEE Spectrum (December 1990): 49-52. Other keywords for this: public safety; professional responsibility; professional advice; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies.
Don Gotterbarn, "Infomatics and Professional Responsibility," in Reader in Ethical Computing and Business, eds T. Bynum and S. Rogerson, Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1998. Other keywords for this: accountability; criteria for competency.