Unit-5

GLOBALIZATION

Globalization means integration of countries through commerce, transfer of technology, and exchange of information and culture. In a way, it includes acting together and interacting economies through trade, investment, loan, development schemes and capital across countries. In a different sense, these flows include knowledge, science, technology, skills, culture, information, and entertainment, besides direct human resource, tele-work, and outsourcing. This interdependence has increased the complex tensions and ruptures among the nations. For the engineers, the issues such as multinational organizations, computer, internet functions, military development and environmental ethics have assumed greater importance for their very sustenance and progress.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

Organisations who have established business in more than one country, are called Multinational Corporation. The headquarters are in the home country and the business is extended in many host countries. The Western organizations doing business in the less-economically developed (developing, and overpopulated) countries gain the advantage of inexpensive labour, availability of natural resources, conducive-tax atmosphere, and virgin market for the products. At the same time, the developing countries are also benefited by fresh job opportunities, jobs with higher remuneration and challenges, transfer of technology, and several social benefits by the wealth developed. But this happens invariably with some social and cultural disturbance. Loss of jobs for the home country, and loss or exploitation of natural resources, political instability for the host countries are some of the threats of globalization.

International Human Rights

 To know what are the moral responsibilities and obligations of the multinational corporations operating in the host countries, let us discuss with the framework of rights ethics. Common minimal rights are to be followed to smoothen the transactions when the engineers and employers of MNCs have to interact at official, social, economic and sometimes political levels. At international level, the organizations are expected to adopt the minimum levels of (a) values, such as mutual support, loyalty, and reciprocity,

(b) the negative duty of refraining from harmful actions such as violence and fraud, and

(c) basic fairness and practical justice in case of conflicts.

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Environmental ethics is the study of (a) moral issues concerning the environment, and (b) moral perspectives, beliefs, or attitudes concerning those issues. Engineers in the past are known for their negligence of environment, in their activities. It has become important now that engineers design eco-friendly tools, machines, sustainable products, processes, and projects. These are essential now to

(a) ensure protection (safety) of environment

(b) prevent the degradation of environment, and

(c) slow down the exploitation of the natural resources, so that the future generation can survive.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) code of ethics, has specifically requires that “engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of professional duties” The term sustainable development emphasizes on the investment, orientation of technology, development and functioning of organizations to meet the present needs of people and at the same time ensuring the future generations to meet their needs.

Compaq Computer Corporation (now merged with HP) was the leader, who exhibited their commitment to environmental health, through implementation of the concept of ‘Design for environment’ on their products, unified standards all over the world units, and giving priority to vendors with a record of environmental concern.

Engineers as experimenters have certain duties towards environmental ethics, namely:

 1. Environmental impact assessment: One major but sure and unintended effect of technology is wastage and the resulting pollution of land, water, air and even space. Study how the industry and technology affects the environment.

 2. Establish standards: Study and to fix the tolerable and actual pollution levels.

 3. Counter measures: Study what the protective or eliminating measures are available for immediate implementation

4. Environmental awareness: Study on how to educate the people on environmental practices, issues, and possible remedies.

Disasters

1.      Plastic Waste Disposal

In our country, several crores of plastic bottles are used as containers for water and oil, and plastic bags are used to pack different materials ranging from vegetables to gold ornaments. Hardly any of these are recycled. They end up in gutters, roadsides, and agricultural fields. In all these destinations, they created havoc. The worse still is the burning of plastic materials in streets and camphor along with plastic cover in temples, since they release toxic fumes and threaten seriously the air quality. Cities and local administration have to act on this, collect and arrange for recycling through industries.

2.      e-Waste Disposal

The parts of computers and electronic devices which have served its useful life present a major environmental issue for all the developing countries including India. This scrap contains highly toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Even the radioactive waste will lose 89% of its toxicity after 200 years, by which time it will be no more toxic than some natural minerals in the ground. It will lose 99% of its remaining toxicity over the next 30,000 years. The toxic chemical agents such as mercury, arsenic, and cadmium retain toxicity undiminished for ever.

3.      Depletion of Ozone Layer The ozone layer protects the entire planet from the ill-effects of ultraviolet radiation and is vital for all living organisms in this world. But it is eaten away by the Chloro-fluro-carbons (CFC) such as freon emanating from the refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol can spray. This has caused also skin cancer to sun-bathers in the Western countries. Further NO and NO2 gases were also found to react with the ozone. Apart from engineers, the organizations, laws of the country and local administration and market mechanisms are required to take up concerted efforts to protect the environment.

4.      Global Warming Over the past 30 years, the Earth has warmed by 0.6 °C. Over the last 100 years, it has warmed by 0.8 °C. It is likely to push up temperature by 3 oC by 2100, according to NASA’s studies. The U.S. administration has accepted the reality of global climate change, which has been associated with stronger hurricanes, severe droughts, intense heat waves and the melting of polar ice. Greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide emitted by motor vehicles and coal-fired power plants, trap heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse, cause the Earth to warm up. Delegates from the six countries — Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and US met in California in April 2006 for the first working session of the AsiaPacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. These six countries account for about half of the world’s emissions of climate-heating greenhouse gases. Only one of the six, Japan, is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 under the Kyoto Agreement.

5.      Acid Rain Large emissions of sulphur oxides and nitrous oxides are being released in to the air from the thermal power stations using the fossil fuels, and several processing industries. These gases form compounds with water in the air and precipitates as rain or snow on to the earth. The acid rain in some parts of the world has caused sufficient damage to the fertility of the land and to the human beings.

COMPUTER ETHICS

Computer ethics is defined as (a) study and analysis of nature and social impact of computer technology, (b) formulation and justification of policies, for ethical use of computers. This subject has become relevant to the professionals such as designers of computers, programmers, system analysts, system managers, and operators. The use of computers have raised a host of moral concerns such as free speech, privacy, intellectual property right, and physical as well as mental harm. There appears to be no conceptual framework available on ethics, to study and understand and resolve the problems in computer technology.

Different types of problems are found in computer ethics.

1. Computer as the Instrument of Unethical Acts

(a) the usage of computer replaces the job positions. This has been overcome to a large extent by readjusting work assignments, and training everyone on computer applications such as word processing, editing, and graphics.

(b) Breaking privacy. Information or data of the individuals accessed or erased or the ownership changed. (c) Defraud a bank or a client, by accessing and withdrawing money from other’s bank account.

2. Computer as the Object of Unethical Act

The data are accessed and deleted or changed.

(a) Hacking: The software is stolen or information is accessed from other computers. This may cause financial loss to the business or violation of privacy rights of the individuals or business. In case of defence information being hacked, this may endanger the security of the nation.

(b) Spreading virus: Through mail or otherwise, other computers are accessed and the files are erased or contents changed altogether. ‘Trojan horses’ are implanted to distort the messages and files beyond recovery. This again causes financial loss or mental torture to the individuals. Some hackers feel that they have justified their right of free information or they do it for fun. However, these acts are certainly unethical.

(c) Health hazard: The computers pose threat during their use as well as during disposal.

3. Problems related to the Autonomous Nature of Computer

(a) Security risk: Recently the Tokyo Stock Exchange faced a major embarrassment. A seemingly casual mistake by a junior trader of a large security house led to huge losses including that of reputation. The order through the exchange’s trading system was to sell one share for 600,000 Yen. Instead the trader keyed in a sale order for 600,000 shares at the rate of one Yen each. Naturally the shares on offer at the ridiculously low price were lapped up. And only a few buyers agreed to reverse the deal! The loss to the securities firm was said to be huge, running into several hundred thousand. More important to note, such an obvious mistake could not be corrected by some of the advanced technology available. For advanced countries like Japan who have imbibed the latest technology, this would be a new kind of learning experience.

(b) Loss of human lives: Risk and loss of human lives lost by computer, in the operational control of military weapons. There is a dangerous instability in automated defence system. An unexpected error in the software or hardware or a conflict during interfacing between the two, may trigger a serious attack and cause irreparable human loss before the error is traced. The Chinese embassy was bombed by U.S. military in Iraq a few years back, but enquiries revealed that the building was shown in a previous map as the building where insurgents stayed.

 (c) In flexible manufacturing systems, the autonomous computer is beneficial in obtaining continuous monitoring and automatic control.

WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

Military activities including the world wars have stimulated the growth of technology. The growth of Internet amply illustrates this fact. The development of warfare and the involvement of engineers bring out many ethical issues concerned with engineers, such as the issue of integrity in experiments as well as expenditure in defense research and development, issue of personal commitment and conscience, and the issues of social justice and social health. Engineers involve in weapons development because of the following reasons:

1. It gives one job with high salary.

2. One takes pride and honour in participating in the activities towards the defence of the nation (patriotic fervor).

3. One believes the he fights a war on terrorism and thereby contribute to peace and stability of the country. Ironically, the wars have never won peace, only peace can win peace!

 4. By research and development, the engineer is reducing or eliminating the risk from enemy weapons, and saving one’s country from disaster

. 5. by building-up arsenals and show of force, a country can force the rogue country, towards regulation. Engineers can participate effectively in arms control negotiations for surrender or peace, e.g., bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima led to surrender by the Japanese in 1945.

MORAL LEADERSHIP

 Engineers provide many types of leadership in the development and implementation of technology, as managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, academics and officials of the government. Moral leadership is not merely the dominance by a group. It means adopting reasonable means to motivate the groups to achieve morally desirable goals. This leadership presents the engineers with many challenges to their moral principles.

Moral leadership is essentially required for the engineers, for the reasons listed as follows:

1. It is leading a group of people towards the achievement of global and objectives. The goals as well as the means are to be moral. For example, Hitler and Stalin were leaders, but only in an instrumental sense and certainly not on moral sense.

 2. The leadership shall direct and motivate the group to move through morally desirable ways. 3. They lead by thinking ahead in time, and morally creative towards new applications, extension and putting values into practice. ‘Morally creative’ means the identification of the most important values as applicable to the situation, bringing clarity within the groups through proper communication, and putting those values into practice.

4. They sustain professional interest, among social diversity and cross-disciplinary complexity. They contribute to the professional societies, their professions, and to their communities. The moral leadership in engineering is manifested in leadership within the professional societies. The professional societies provide a forum for communication, and canvassing for change within and by groups.

5. Voluntarism: Another important avenue for providing moral leadership within communities, by the engineers is to promote services without fee or at reduced fees (pro bono) to the needy groups. The professional societies can also promote such activities among the engineers. This type of voluntarism (or philanthropy) has been in practice in the fields of medicine, law and education. But many of the engineers are not self-employed as in the case of physicians and lawyers. The business institutions are encouraged to contribute a percentage of their services as free or at concessional rates for charitable purposes.

6. Community service: This is another platform for the engineers to exhibit their moral leadership. The engineers can help in guiding, organising, and stimulating the community towards morally- and environmentally-desirable goals. The corporate organizations have come forward to adopt villages and execute many social welfare schemes, towards this objective.

The Codes of Ethics promote and sustain the ethical environment and assist in achieving the ethical goals in the following manner:

1. It creates an environment in a profession, where ethical behavior is the basic criterion.

2. It guides and reminds the person as to how to act, in any given situation.

3. It provides support to the individual, who is being pressurized or tortured by a superior or employer, to behave unethically.

4. Apart from professional societies, companies and universities have framed their own codes of ethics, based on the individual circumstances and specific mission of the organisations. These codes of conduct help in employees’ awareness of ethical issues, establish, and nurture a strong corporate ethical culture.

Unit-4

SAFETY AND RISK:

 Safety was defined as the risk that is known and judged as acceptable. But, risk is a potential that something unwanted and harmful may occur. It is the result of an unsafe situation, sometimes unanticipated, during its use.

Probability of safety = 1 – Probability of risk

 Risk = Probability of occurrence × Consequence in magnitude

Different methods are available to determine the risk (testing for safety)

1. Testing on the functions of the safety-system components.

2. Destructive testing: In this approach, testing is done till the component fails. It is too expensive, but very realistic and useful.

3. Prototype testing: In this approach, the testing is done on a proportional scale model with all vital components fixed in the system. Dimensional analysis could be used to project the results at the actual conditions.

4. Simulation testing: With the help of computer, the simulations are done. The safe boundary may be obtained. The effects of some controlled input variables on the outcomes can be predicted in a better way.

RISK-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

 The major reasons for the analysis of the risk benefit are:

1 To know risks and benefits and weigh them each

2 To decide on designs, advisability of product/project

3 To suggest and modify the design so that the risks are eliminated or reduced

There are some limitations that exist in the risk-benefit analysis. The economic and ethical limitations are presented as follows:

1. Primarily the benefits may go to one group and risks may go to another group. Is it ethically correct?

2. Is an individual or government empowered to impose a risk on someone else on behalf of supposed benefit to somebody else? Sometimes, people who are exposed to maximum risks may get only the minimum benefits. In such cases, there is even violation of rights.

3. The units for comparison are not the same, e.g., commissioning the express highways may add a few highway deaths versus faster and comfortable travel for several commuters. The benefits may be in terms of fuel, money and time saved, but lives of human being sacrificed. How do we then compare properly?

4. Both risks and benefits lie in the future. The quantitative estimation of the future benefits, using the discounted present value (which may fluctuate), may not be correct and sometime misleading.

Voluntary Risk

Voluntary risk is the involvement of people in risky actions, although they know that these actions are unsafe. The people take these actions for thrill, amusement or fun. They also believe that they have full control over their actions (including the outcomes!) and equipment’s or animals handled, e.g., people participate in car racing and risky stunts.

 Testing becomes inappropriate when the products are

1 Tested destructively

2 When the test duration is long, and

3 When the components failing by tests are very costly. Alternate methods such as design of experiments, accelerated testing and computer-simulated tests are adopted in these circumstances.

SAFETY LESSONS FROM ‘THE CHALLENGER’

The safety lessons one can learn in the Challenger case are as follows:

1. Negligence in design efforts. The booster rocket casing recovered from earlier flights indicated the failure of filed-joint seals. No design changes were incorporated. Instead of two O-rings, three rings should have been fixed. But there was no time for testing with three rings. At least three rings could have been tried while launching.

2. Tests on O-rings should have been conducted down to the expected ambient temperature i.e., to 20 of. No normalization of deviances should have been allowed.

3. NASA was not willing to wait for the weather to improve. The weather was not favourable on the day of launch. A strong wind shear might have caused the rupture of the weakened O-rings.

4. The final decision making of launch or no-launch should have been with the engineers and not on the managers. Engineers insisted on ‘safety’ but the managers went ahead with the ‘schedule’.

5. Informed consent: The mission was full of dangers. The astronauts should have been informed of the probable failure of the O-rings (field joints). No informed consent was obtained, when the engineers had expressed that the specific launch was unsafe.

 6. Conflict of interest (Risk vs. Cost): There were 700 criticality-1 items, which included the field joints. A failure in any one of them would have cause the tragedy. No back-up or standby had been provided for these criticality-1 components.

7. Escape mechanism or ‘safe exit’ should have been incorporated in the craft. McDonnell

The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl case

The Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. This was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, although its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public. Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations. It also caused the NRC to tighten and heighten its regulatory oversight. All of these changes significantly enhanced U.S. reactor safety.

A combination of equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker errors led to TMI-2's partial meltdown and very small off-site releases of radioactivity.

The accident began about 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant (one of two reactors on the site). Either a mechanical or electrical failure prevented the main feed water pumps from sending water to the steam generators that remove heat from the reactor core. This caused the plant's turbine-generator and then the reactor itself to automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. In order to control that pressure, the pilot-operated relief valve (a valve located at the top of the pressurizer) opened. The valve should have closed when the pressure fell to proper levels, but it became stuck open. Instruments in the control room, however, indicated to the plant staff that the valve was closed. As a result, the plant staff was unaware that cooling water was pouring out of the stuck-open valve.

As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. As a result, plant staff assumed that as long as the pressurizer water level was high, the core was properly covered with water. As alarms rang and warning lights flashed, the operators did not realize that the plant was experiencing a loss-of-coolant accident. They took a series of actions that made conditions worse. The water escaping through the stuck valve reduced primary system pressure so much that the reactor coolant pumps had to be turned off to prevent dangerous vibrations. To prevent the pressurizer from filling up completely, the staff reduced how much emergency cooling water was being pumped in to the primary system. These actions starved the reactor core of coolant, causing it to overheat.

Without the proper water flow, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes that hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident. Although TMI-2 suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, consequences outside the plant were minimal. Unlike the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, TMI-2's containment building remained intact and held almost all of the accident's radioactive material.

Federal and state authorities were initially concerned about the small releases of radioactive gases that were measured off-site by the late morning of March 28 and even more concerned about the potential threat that the reactor posed to the surrounding population. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC's regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8 a.m., NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Md., was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI's owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11 a.m., all non-essential personnel were ordered off the plant's premises.

By the evening of March 28, the core appeared to be adequately cooled and the reactor appeared to be stable. But new concerns arose by the morning of Friday, March 30. A significant release of radiation from the plant's auxiliary building, performed to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core, caused a great deal of confusion and consternation. In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty about the condition of the plant, the governor of Pennsylvania, Richard L. Thornburgh, consulted with the NRC about evacuating the population near the plant. Eventually, he and NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie agreed that it would be prudent for those members of society most vulnerable to radiation to evacuate the area. Thornburgh announced that he was advising pregnant women and pre-school-age children within a five-mile radius of the plant to leave the area.

Within a short time, chemical reactions in the melting fuel created a large hydrogen bubble in the dome of the pressure vessel, the container that holds the reactor core. NRC officials worried the hydrogen bubble might burn or even explode and rupture the pressure vessel. In that event, the core would fall into the containment building and perhaps cause a breach of containment. The hydrogen bubble was a source of intense scrutiny and great anxiety, both among government authorities and the population, throughout the day on Saturday, March 31. The crisis ended when experts determined on Sunday, April 1, that the bubble could not burn or explode because of the absence of oxygen in the pressure vessel. Further, by that time, the utility had succeeded in greatly reducing the size of the bubble.

The NRC conducted detailed studies of the accident's radiological consequences, as did the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Several independent groups also conducted studies. The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area's natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year for the area. The accident's maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem above background.

In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal, and plant life in the TMI area, none could be directly correlated to the accident. Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil, and foodstuffs were collected by various government agencies monitoring the area. Very low levels of radionuclides could be attributed to releases from the accident. However, comprehensive investigations and assessments by several well respected organizations, such as Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh, have concluded that in spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.

A combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures caused the Three Mile Island accident, which permanently changed both the nuclear industry and the NRC. Public fear and distrust increased, NRC's regulations and oversight became broader and more robust, and management of the plants was scrutinized more carefully. Careful analysis of the accident's events identified problems and led to permanent and sweeping changes in how NRC regulates its licensees – which, in turn, has reduced the risk to public health and safety.

Here are some of the major changes that have occurred since the accident:

 • Upgrading and strengthening of plant design and equipment requirements. This includes fire protection, piping systems, auxiliary feed water systems, containment building isolation, reliability of individual components (pressure relief valves and electrical circuit breakers), and the ability of plants to shut down automatically;

• Identifying the critical role of human performance in plant safety led to revamping operator training and staffing requirements, followed by improved instrumentation and controls for operating the plant, and establishment of fitness-for-duty programs for plant workers to guard against alcohol or drug abuse;

• Enhancing emergency preparedness, including requirements for plants to immediately notify NRC of significant events and an NRC Operations Centre staffed 24 hours a day. Drills and response plans are now tested by licensees several times a year, and state and local agencies participate in drills with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NRC;

• Integrating NRC observations, findings, and conclusions about licensee performance and management effectiveness into a periodic, public report;

• Having senior NRC managers regularly analyze plant performance for those plants needing significant additional regulatory attention;

• Expanding NRC's resident inspector program – first authorized in 1977 – to have at least two inspectors live nearby and work exclusively at each plant in the U.S. to provide daily surveillance of licensee adherence to NRC regulations;

• Expanding performance-oriented as well as safety-oriented inspections, and the use of risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities of any plant to severe accidents;

• Strengthening and reorganizing enforcement staff in a separate office within the NRC;

Establishing the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, the industry's own "policing" group, and formation of what is now the Nuclear Energy Institute to provide a unified industry approach to generic nuclear regulatory issues, and interaction with NRC and other government agencies;

• Installing additional equipment by licensees to mitigate accident conditions, and monitor radiation levels and plant status;

• Enacting programs by licensees for early identification of important safety-related problems, and for collecting and assessing relevant data so operating experience can be shared and quickly acted upon; and

 • Expanding NRC's international activities to share enhanced knowledge of nuclear safety with other countries in a number of important technical areas.

Unit 3

Unit-3

SELF-CONTROL 

It is a virtue of maintaining personal discipline. It means a strong will and motivation and avoidance of fear, hatred, and lack of efforts, temptation, self-deception, and emotional response. It encompasses courage and good judgment also. Self-respect promotes self-control.

SELF-INTEREST

Self-interest is being good and acceptable to oneself. It is pursuing what is good for oneself. It is very ethical to possess self-interest. As per utilitarian theory, this interest should provide for the respect of others also. Duty ethics recognizes this aspect as duties to ourselves. Then only one can help others. Right ethicist stresses our rights to pursue our own good. Virtue ethics also accepts the importance of self-respect as link to social practices.

In Ethical Egoism, the self is conceived in a highly individualistic manner. It says that every one of us should always and only promote one’s own interest. The ethical egoists do not accept the wellbeing of the community or caring for others. However this self-interest should not degenerate into egoism or selfishness, i.e., maximizing only own well in the pursuit of self-interest. The ethical egoists hold that the society benefits to maximum when (a) the individuals pursue their personal good and (b) the individual organizations pursue maximum profit in a competitive enterprise. This is claimed to improve the economy of the country as a whole, besides the individuals. In such pursuits, both individuals and organizations should realize that independence is not the only important value. We are also interdependent, as much as independent. Each of us is vulnerable in the society. Self-respect includes recognition of our vulnerabilities and interdependencies. Hence, it is compatible with caring for ourselves as well as others. Self-interest is necessary initially to begin with. But it should be one of the prime motives for action; the other motive is to show concern for others, in the family as well as society. One’s self-interest should not harm others. The principles of ‘Live and let (others) live’, and ‘reasonably fair competition’ are recommended to professionals by the ethicists.

CUSTOMS

Ethical Pluralism: Various cultures in our pluralistic society lead to tolerance for various customs, beliefs, and outlooks. Accordingly ethical pluralism also exists. Although many moral attitudes appear to be reasonable, the rational and morally concerned people cannot fully accept any one of the moral perspectives. There are many varied moral values, which allow variation in the understanding and application of values by the individuals or groups in their everyday transactions. It means that even reasonable people will not agree on all moral issues and professional ethics. Ethical Relativism: According to this principle, actions are considered morally right when approved by law or custom, and wrong when they violate the laws or customs. The deciding factor is the law or the customs of the society. Should we accept the principle of relativism or not? A few reasons to accept this are explained in the following paragraphs:

1. Laws appear to be objective ways for judging values. The laws and customs tend to be definite, clear and real, but not always. Further moral reasons allow objective criticism of laws, as being morally lacking. For example, the Apartheid laws of South Africa violated the human rights of the native Africans. No legal protection was available for native citizens for a long time. Now, of course, these laws have been repealed.

2. Ethical relativism assumes that the values are subjective at the cultural level. Moral standards also vary from culture to culture. The objectivity is supported by the existing laws of that society. The relative morality accepted, supports the virtue of tolerance of differences among
societies. This argument is also not fully acceptable. As per ethical relativism, the actions and laws of the Nazis and Hitler who vowed on Anti-Semitism and killed several million Jews would be accepted as right.

3. Moral rationalism or moral contextualise: According to this, the moral judgments must be made in relation to certain factors, which may vary from case to case. The morally important factors for making judgments include the customs and laws. The virtue ethicists hold that the practical wisdom should prevail upon assessing the facts and in the judgment.

This principle was accepted by the early anthropologists because they had a specific tendency to over-stress the scope of moral difference between cultures. The human sacrifices and cannibalism were accepted. But the modern anthropologists insist that all cultures shall exhibit the virtue of social welfare and safety against needless death or physical or mental harm. Moral differences were based on the circumstances and facts and not on the difference in moral attitudes. For example, the pharaohs buried the live attendants along with their dead king with the belief that they would continue to serve the king in his afterlife.

RELIGION

Religions have played major roles in shaping moral views and moral values, over geographical regions. Christianity has influenced the Western countries, Islam in the Middle-East countries, Buddhism and Hinduism in Asia, and Confucianism in China. Further, there is a strong psychological link between the moral and religious beliefs of people following various religions and faiths. Religions support moral responsibility. They have set high moral standards. Faith in the religions provides trust and this trust inspires people to be moral. The religions insist on tolerance and moral concern for others. Many professionals who possess religious beliefs are motivated to be morally responsible.

Each religion lays stress on certain high moral standards. For example, Hinduism holds polytheistic (many gods) view, and virtues of devotion and surrender to high order. Christianity believes in one deity and emphasizes on virtues of Love, Faith, and Hope. Buddhism is non-theistic and focuses on compassion and Islam on one deity and adherence of ishan (piety or pursuit of excellence) and prayer. Judaism stresses the virtue of ‘tsedakah’ (righteousness). But many religious sects have adopted poor moral standards, e.g., many religious sects do not recognize equal rights for women. The right to worship is denied for some people. People are killed in the name of or to promote religion. Thus, conflicts exist between the ‘secular’ and religious people and between one religion and another. Hence, religious views have to be morally scrutinized.

VALUING TIME

Time is rare resource. Once it is spent, it is lost for ever. It cannot be either stored or recovered. Hence, time is the most perishable and most valuable resource too. This resource is continuously spent, whether any decision or action is taken or not. The history of great reformers and innovators have stressed the importance of time and valuing time. The proverbs, ‘Time and tide wait for nobody’ and ‘Procrastination is the thief of time’ amply illustrate this point. An anecdote to highlight the ‘value of time’ is as follows: To realize the value of one year, ask the student who has failed in the examinations;. To realize the value of one month, ask the mother who has delivered a premature baby; to realize the value of one week, ask the editor of weekly; to realize the value of one day, ask the daily-wage labourer; to realize now the value of one hour, ask the lovers longing to meet; to realize the value of one minute, ask a person who has missed the train; to realize the value of one second, ask the person who has survived an accident; to realize the value one milli second, ask the person who has won the bronze medal in Olympics; to realize the value of one micro second, ask the NASA team of scientists; to realize the value of one Nano-second, ask a Hardware engineer!; If you have still not realized the value of time, wait; are you an Engineer?

COOPERATION

 It is a team-spirit present with every individual engaged in engineering. Co-operation is activity between two persons or sectors that aims at integration of operations (synergy), while not sacrificing the autonomy of either party. Further, working together ensures, coherence, i.e., blending of different skills required, towards common goals. Willingness to understand others, think and act together and putting this into practice, is cooperation. Cooperation promotes collinearity, coherence (blend), co-ordination (activities linked in sequence or priority) and the synergy (maximizing the output, by reinforcement). The whole is more than the sum of the individuals. It helps in minimizing the input resources (including time) and maximizes the outputs, which include quantity, quality, effectiveness, and efficiency.

According to professional ethics, cooperation should exist or be developed, and maintained, at several levels; between the employers and employees, between the superiors and subordinates, among the colleagues, between the producers and the suppliers (spare parts), and between the organisation and its customers.

 The codes of ethics of various professional societies insist on appropriate cooperation to nourish the industry. The absence of cooperation leads to lack of communication, misinformation, void in communication, and undue delay between supply, production, marketing, and consumption. This is likely to demoralize and frustrate the employees, leading to collapse of the industry over time and an economic loss to the society.

 The impediments to successful cooperation are:

1. Clash of ego of individuals.

2. Lack of leadership and motivation.

3. Conflicts of interests, based on region, religion, language, and caste.

4. Ignorance and lack of interest. By careful planning, motivation, leadership, fostering and rewarding team work, professionalism and humanism beyond the ‘divides’, training on appreciation to different cultures, mutual understanding ‘cooperation’ can be developed and also sustained.

A BALANCED OUTLOOK ON LAW

The ‘balanced outlook on law’ in engineering practice stresses the necessity of laws and regulations and also their limitations in directing and controlling the engineering practice. Laws are necessary because, people are not fully responsible by themselves and because of the competitive nature of the free enterprise, which does not encourage moral initiatives. Laws are needed to provide a minimum level of compliance.

The following codes are typical examples of how they were enforced in the past:

Code for Builders by Hammurabi:

Hammurabi the king of Babylon in 1758 framed the following code for the builders: “If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his work sound and the house which he has built has fallen down and caused the death of the householder, that builder shall be put to death. If it causes the death of the householder’s son, they shall put that builder’s son to death. If it causes the death of the householder’s slave, he shall give slave for slave to the householder. If it destroys property, he shall replace anything it has destroyed; and because he has not made the house sound which he has built and it has fallen down, he shall rebuild the house which has fallen down from his own property. If a builder has built a house for a man and does not make his work perfect and the wall bulges, that builder shall put that wall in sound condition at his own cost”

This code was expected to put in self-regulation seriously in those years.

Steam Boat Code in USA:  Whenever there is crisis we claim that there ought to be law to control this. Whenever there is a fire accident in a factory or fire cracker’s store house or boat capsize we make this claim, and soon forget. Laws are meant to be interpreted for minimal compliance. On the other hand, laws when amended or updated continuously, would be counterproductive. Laws will always lag behind the technological development. The regulatory or inspection agencies such as Environmental authority of India can play a major role by framing rules and enforcing compliance.

In the early 19th century, a law was passed in USA to provide for inspection of the safety of boilers and engines in ships. It was amended many times and now the standards formulated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers are followed.

Proper Role of Laws: Good laws when enforced effectively produce benefits. They establish minimal standards of professional conduct and provide a motivation to people. Further they serve as moral support and defence for the people who are willing to act ethically. Thus, it is concluded that:

1. The rules which govern engineering practice should be construed as of responsible experimentation rather than rules of a game. This makes the engineer responsible for the safe conduct of the experiment.

2. Precise rules and sanctions are suitable in case of ethical misconduct that involves the violation of established engineering procedures, which are aimed at the safety and the welfare of the public.

3. In situations where the experimentation is large and time consuming, the rules must not try to cover all possible outcomes, and they should not compel the engineers to follow rigid courses of action.

4. The regulation should be broad, but make engineers accountable for their decisions, and

 5. Through their professional societies, the engineers can facilitate framing the rules, amend wherever necessary, and enforce them, but without giving-in for conflicts of interest.