O R I G I N A L P A P E RAn Engineering Dilemma Sustainab.docx

O R I G I N A L P A P E R
An Engineering Dilemma: Sustainability in the Eyes
of Future Technology Professionals
S. Haase
Received: 26 June 2012 / Accepted: 4 November 2012 /
Published online: 30 November 2012
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract The ability to design technological solutions that
address sustainability
is considered pivotal to the future of the planet and its people.
As technology
professionals engineers are expected to play an important role
in sustaining society.
The present article aims at exploring sustainability concepts of
newly enrolled
engineering students in Denmark. Their understandings of
sustainability and the role
they ascribe to sustainability in their future professional
practice is investigated by
means of a critical discourse analysis including metaphor
analysis and semiotic

analysis. The sustainability construal is considered to delimit
possible ways of
dealing with the concept in practice along the engineering
education pathway and in
professional problem solving. Five different metaphors used by
the engineering
students to illustrate sustainability are identified, and their
different connotative and
interpretive implications are discussed. It is found that
sustainability represents a
dilemma to the engineering students that situates them in a
tension between their
technology fascination and the blame they find that
technological progress bears.
Their sustainability descriptions are collected as part of a
survey containing among
other questions one open-ended, qualitative question on
sustainability. The survey
covers an entire year group of Danish engineering students in
the first month of their
degree study.
Keywords Sustainability � Technology � Societal challenges �
Qualitative analysis � Survey analysis
S. Haase (&)

The Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy,
School of Business and Social
Sciences, Aarhus University, Finlandsgade 4, 8200 Aarhus,
Denmark
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Sci Eng Ethics (2013) 19:893–911
DOI 10.1007/s11948-012-9417-0
Introduction
One of the main prejudices about engineers—and a serious
obstacle for young
people taking up the engineering profession—is that engineers
pave the world
with asphalt, create pollution, and generally wreck the
environment.
(Henriksen 2006, 44.)
Technology is often expected to hold the potential key to
overcome—or at least
make bearable—a range of the environmental, social and
economic issues that
humanity must tackle. The list of such societal challenges
threatening the existence

of present societies, living conditions, and environment is long.
Since the so-called
Brundtland report (United Nations 1987), the need to address
these challenges
systematically and in international coordination has been on the
public agenda.
(Lozano 2008; Carew and Mitchell 2002, 2008; Jamison 2012;
UN 1987). The
balancing of different elements of sustainability and practical
operationalisation of
the term into concrete action is not straight-forward, though.
This makes
sustainability a highly contested concept (Gallie 1956; Connolly
1993). In this
article, the term is used in the widest possible way as
encompassing the overall aims
of efforts to address societal challenges. No prior, theoretical
definition of
sustainability is selected; focus here is instead on sustainability
concepts of some
of the people that are often expected to play an important role
for sustainable
development, namely future technology professionals (ABET
2004, 2006; Lehmann

et al. 2008; RAE 2005, 2007; Sheppard et al. 2008, 2009). The
article seeks to
explore and map the empirical landscape of sustainability
conceptions reported by
newly enrolled engineering students in Denmark.
An entire year group of engineering students in Denmark has
been surveyed
during September 2010, and the responses to an open-ended
question in the survey
serve as the empirical base for this article. The question reached
more than 3,600
engineering students from 105 different engineering degree
programmes. One-third
(1211) of the students decided to answer the open-ended
question on sustainability.
1
The question formulation was ‘‘How would you characterise
sustainability? Please
describe in your own words how you understand the concept’’.
Previous research often focuses on evaluations of outcome of
specific course-
work on sustainability, life cycle assessment or related subjects
(Carew and Mitchell

2002; Lehmann et al. 2008; Jamison and Mejlgaard 2009, 2010).
Attempts have
been made to map and quantify the complexity of student
understandings of
sustainability (Segalàs et al. 2008; Carew and Mitchell 2002;
Lourdel et al. 2005),
and the taxonomy level of the understanding of the concept has
been assessed
1
In total the survey response rate was 46 %, but with a somewhat
skewed representation of different
engineering education institutions. This equally applies for the
respondents to the open-ended question
where there is also an overrepresentation of men (3
percentagepoints in difference) as compared to the
total engineering student year group of which 24 % are women.
The survey was administered as a
bilingual web-survey where non-Danish speakers could answer
the English version of the survey. Unless
otherwise stated, quotations are translated from Danish to
English. The survey was deployed as part of the
Programme of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in
Engineering Education in Denmark funded
by the Strategic Research Council. The survey focused on the
role of societal challenges in the nascent

professional identity of a year group of engineering students at
all education institutions in Denmark.
894 S. Haase
123
(Carew and Mitchell 2002). Azapagic et al. (2005)
operationalise sustainability as
environmental sustainability and assess student knowledge
about a range of specific
issues as environmental legislation and standards in their large-
scale, international
survey. One example of an in depth analysis of student
understandings is presented
by Kilgore et al. (2010) focusing on life cycle issues.
This article has an ambition of providing knowledge on the
mental starting
position of future technology professionals in Denmark in terms
of an in-depth
understanding of the sustainability concepts of engineering
students at the very
beginning of their pathway to engineering. It will be
investigated with an

explorative approach how these newly enrolled engineering
students conceive of
sustainability and how they construe their future professional
roles in relation to
sustainability, technology and nature.
Analytical Approach and Methods
A form of discourse analysis based on Fairclough (1989, 1992,
1995, 2003) is used as
the analytical approach to interpret meaning from the
descriptions that form the
empirical data. According to Fairclough, the use of language
involves a passive role
restrained to refer to already established words, genres and
discourses. It also
involves, though, an active, creative role of restructuring the
language system and a
potential to challenge existing ways of using these words,
genres and discourses.
Discursive practice is constituted and constituting at the same
time (Fairclough 1989:
14, 23, 30ff, Fairclough 2003: 8, 22, 205ff). Here, Fairclough is
on a par with
Giddens (1984) and his theory of structuration pinpointing the
reciprocal interplay

between actors and structures characteristic of social practice.
The focus on discourse
as text, discursive practice and social practice and the ambition
of linking textual
analysis to social theory are among the particular assets of
Fairclough’s critical
discourse analysis (CDA). The three dimensions of CDA are
illustrated in Fig. 1.
Analysing text as discursive practice is difficult to distinguish
from textual
analysis focusing on meaning (Fairclough 1992: 73ff) but in this
case it involves the
fact that the texts are formulated as part of a survey that the
engineering students
were confronted with in their capacity as engineering students
at a specific
educational institution. This dimension is also considered a
matter of critically
scrutinising consequences of the contingency of the processes in
which the
responses were produced. This means that alternative or
missing, potential
meanings and discourses are included in the analysis.

To Fairclough, the analysis of text as social practice is
paramount because it
paves the way for his desire to contribute to ‘‘…emancipatory
change’’ (Fairclough
2003: 209). In particular, the early works of Fairclough have
highly political
objectives and a focus on hegemony, ideology and power
structures invested in
discourse and social practice (Fairclough 1989, 1992). The
ambition of this article is
less political, although a contribution to the qualification of the
(engineering)
education system’s changes towards a higher degree of
sustainability emphasis is
aspired to. At the level of social practice, the discourse analysis
concerns
theoretically based discussion of the societal implications of the
sustainability
An Engineering Dilemma 895
123
conceptions and the anticipated professional roles discursively
constructed by these
future engineers. The explorative approach implies that theory

was not à priori
selected but will be used to illuminate the results that emerge
from the analysis. (See
also Fairclough 1989: 22.) Survey results are used in a similar
manner.
The term discourse underlines—in contrast to ‘‘issue’’, for
example—the role of
language in social practice and interaction. Discourse is
understood as certain
structures or patterns of ways for language users to represent
their understandings
(Fairclough 1992, 2003).
An order of discourse is considered a network of interconnected
social practice in
terms of acts of language. Temporarily, they are relatively
stable and represent the
socially structured conventions among possibilities of language
usage (Fairclough
2003: 24, 220; Fairclough 1992: 68ff.). In this article, analytical
insight into
language use of engineering students on sustainability is sought.
The texts by the
engineering students are considered to give an overview of the
order of discourse of

the engineering profession as they experience it.
The textual analysis includes micro-levels of textual analysis
only insofar as they
contribute to the interpretation of meaning above the level of
individual sentences.
Analysis of grammar (based on Fairclough 1992, 2003),
metaphors (based on
Fairclough 2003; Lakoff and Johnson 2002) and a semiotic
analysis focusing on
oppositions in text (based on Greimas 1974; Feldman 1995;
Hallbäck 1983) are the
analytical techniques used for this purpose. The motive for the
selection of these
analytical strategies was inductively led by the empirical
finding of metaphors and
oppositions as recurring means to communicate sustainability
concepts.
The metaphor analysis will be conducted first, followed by the
semiotic analysis
of the opposing discourses identified. Both analytical
approaches combined with
grammatical analyses and theoretical contributions prepare the
ground for the

critical discourse analysis.
TEXT
production process
interpretation process
DISCURSIVE PRACTICE, INTERACTION
social conditions of production
social conditions of interpretation
SOCIAL PRACTICE, CONTEXT
Fig. 1 Fairclough’s three-
dimensional model for critical
discourse analysis illustrates
discourse as text, discursive
practice and social practice
(Fairclough 1989: 21, 1992: 73)
896 S. Haase
123
Initially, the student responses were coded using computer
assisted qualitative
data analysis software by means of an open type of coding
following a grounded,
explorative approach without previously formulated hypotheses

as a basis of the
categories. This is a demanding way of coding, since it requires
a recoding of all the
material every time a new category is taken into use (Andersen
et al. 2010: 177 ff).
Sustainability Metaphors
This section presents the different metaphors used by the
engineering students to
illustrate the sustainability concept. Five different main
metaphors were found
employed by the students illustrating sustainability as an
efficient machine, as a
cycle, as balance, as profitability and as a (mental) condition.
The metaphors coexist
in student responses and are not mutually exclusive, even at an
individual level.
Their exact distinction is the result of an analytical process.
Apart from these metaphorical understandings of the concept, a
minor part of the
students express a sustainability concept taking the word at its
face-value only
relating to the denotations of the word which in its Danish
translation is similar to

‘‘ability to carry’’. This leads to a sixth way of construing
sustainability that focuses
mainly on the ability of for instance a bridge or a building to
hold upright and
endure the physical or mechanical pressure as supposed.
Examples of this way of
describing sustainability are given below:
You can use the word about a bridge. Is that bridge for instance
sustainable?
Yes, it has been thoroughly constructed; nothing can make it
fall apart.
Sustainability, supposedly, is about that it has to be able to hold
or carry
something that is slightly heavy. Like duvets have a
sustainability of downs,
which has to do with their ability to carry the air…
The main implication of this way of construing sustainability is
that it limits the
concept to a technical aspect with relevance to specific
engineering practices instead
of an important contextual condition of all (engineering)
activity.
Sustainability as an Efficient Machine

Technical language typically employed to characterise machines
and their way of
functioning is very often used by the engineering students when
they describe
sustainability. They employ terms like ‘‘input’’, ‘‘output’’ and
refer to matters that
‘‘come out in the other end’’. This view on sustainability
emphasises a production
paradigm. Sustainability is not an end in itself but a way of
ensuring continuous
exploitation of nature’s resources for production purposes.
Sustainability as an
efficient machine has to do with human wishes to produce and
‘‘production’’ is
frequently mentioned by the engineering students.
Man-made machines have increased production rates
immensely. Thanks to
machines, humans have to a very large extent succeeded in
exploiting nature to their
benefit. And machines have marked the prevalent view on life
in modern societies.
123

But to some, machines and the mechanistic rationality they are
accused of bringing
about have had a range of negative influences on (human)
nature for instance in
terms of alienation. The machine metaphor of sustainability
implies a mechanistic
worldview which makes perfect sense if one wants to underline
certain aspects of
what can be understood by the term sustainability. But at the
same time other
aspects of sustainability are overlooked by the machine
metaphor.
A machine is a concrete construction consisting of moveable
parts that are
supposed to conduct a specific, pre-defined task of producing or
transforming input
(raw material, fuel) to output (energy, forward propulsion or a
product). A machine
can only perform the task that man has prepared it to do. The
only deviance to this
task happens if the machine breaks. In that case the machine
must be repaired, and
that is a metaphor employed by one of the engineering students

depicting
sustainability as what comes about when ‘‘…nature can’repair’
itself’’.
It does not follow directly from the use of the metaphor whether
or not
sustainability is considered within human regulation and control
as a machine. But
the expectations of technology as a means to solve challenges
are high among the
engineering students. This is illustrated by their answer to
another question in the
survey. The engineering students are asked about their
agreement with the
statement: ‘‘Science and technology can sort out any problem’’.
2
Their responses
highlight that they compared to both average Danes and Danes
at approximately the
same age are much more confident that science and technology
can be utilised by
humans to the repairal of any problem we might have. To be
more explicit, 45 % of
the newly enrolled Danish engineering students who answered
to the question

reported to agree (N = 1,466), in comparison to 21 % of Danes
in the age range of
15–24 and 11 % of all Danes (N = 89 and 993, respectively,
TNS 2010).
In line with the wish of controlling sustainability embedded in
this metaphor, the
engineering students have a large focus on efficiency. They
construe sustainability
as an efficient machine with a maximum yielding capacity and a
minimum of costs,
mainly in terms of negative ecological consequences.
The students construct sustainability discursively both as
something that ideally
functions as an efficient machine, and at the same time as a
characteristic of the
products of actual machines. Machines are referred to
metaphorically to depict
sustainability as a whole and literally to describe outcomes of
the production
process, namely the consumer goods stemming from the
machinery of the industrial
society that can or cannot be characterised as sustainable.
The machine metaphor is not capable of holding or explaining a
rationale for

human activity that gives no product and serves no immediate
purpose. The
metaphor of sustainability implies a notion of human nature as
driven by rational
choice. This leaves no room for motivations like compassion,
human concern or joy
and no emphasis of the importance of a range of generic issues
such as life-long
learning, social responsibility and communication skills etc.
that are embraced by
2
Compilation of those answering ‘‘Totally agree’’ or ‘‘Tend to
agree’’.‘‘Do not know’’-answers removed
from total. Other response options were: ‘‘Neither agree nor
disagree’’, ‘‘Tend to disagree’’ and ‘‘Totally
disagree’’. The survey question was formulated in
correspondence with the Eurobarometer survey (TNS
2010) to make possible the comparison.
898 S. Haase
123
other sustainability concepts (Læssøe 2009; Gough and Scott
2007; Scott and

Gough 2010; Svanström et al. 2008; Venkataraman 2009; Wals
and Kieft 2010).
Sustainability as a Cycle
Another metaphor that implies transformation processes is the
metaphor for
sustainability as a cycle. The connotations of the cycle
metaphor are diverse. Cycles
can be seen as organic or biological processes, emphasising
transformation. This is
often illustrated in recycling logos depicting a circle of arrows.
Unlike the machine
metaphor, a cycle rarely focuses on input or output, but is often
considered a closed
system in an ongoing dynamic continual not unlike what
characterises an autopoietic
system (Luhmann 2000; Kneer and Nassehi 2000). The
boundary concepts implied in
the cycle metaphor remain vague, though. What is considered
part of the cycle and
what is considered outside of it is not clear, just as there is no
consistent connotative
referral to either a closed or an open system-understanding of
this cycle. This means

that the cycle metaphor is strong in its emphasis on dynamic
movement but not able
to meaningfully contribute to the clarification of a more stable,
structural worldview.
The cycle metaphor is described with terms as ‘‘going in
circles’’, ‘‘revolve’’,
‘‘cycle’’, ‘‘spin around’’ and ‘‘form a ring’’. The metaphor
implies the circular
movement, an all-encompassing universalism and a time horizon
that, in principle,
stretches forever.
Something that can continue in circles and that never runs out.
Sustainability is when a system theoretically can function
infinitely if there are
no outside influences. That is a system that can be maintained
because all
resources circulate.
The coupling of the eternity of the cycle metaphor with the
machine metaphor for
sustainability gives rise to the wide-spread use of a specific
cyclical metaphor,
namely the perpetual motion unit. In the use of this metaphor
the students clearly

differ in their perceived realisability of such a concept. Some
students take the
notion of eternity for granted and argue that resources are
continually created and
recreated and pollution ‘‘repaired’’. Others take a more
pragmatic stance and
tentatively add ‘‘as much as possible’’ in their descriptions of
the, ideally,
indeterminable cycle.
Another variation of the cycle metaphor is captured in what a
range of engineering
students refer to as ‘‘cradle to cradle’’. In short, this business
concept refers to the use of
industrial (waste) products as input in the production of new
products that in themselves
are re-cyclable. The slogan has been branded by McDonough
and Braungart (2002) as a
sustainability metaphor in itself and transfers the human
experience of birth and death
and of the rise of new life from earthly reminiscence of the old
to the sphere of
production. This personification shapes the understanding of
production as something
cyclical. In the same way as the perpetual motion unit, this

metaphor bridges the gap
between the metaphors of machine and cycle which softens up
some of the inhumane
connotations of productivity within the machine metaphor.
Critical student reflections on
the implications of understanding sustainability as a cradle to
cradle-cycle are not found.
123
Sustainability as Balance
Balance is an often mentioned construal of the sustainability
concept. Alternatively,
the engineering students mention ‘‘equilibrium’’ or they use the
verb to ‘‘weigh’’
something against something else.
This metaphor involves a focus on tranquillity and stability very
different from
that of the machine and cycle metaphors. The terminology
borrows from the realm
of mechanical physics, and these ways of describing
sustainability imply no notion

of dynamics, over time progression or change. Sustainability is
discursively
excluded from developmental and productivity spheres and
plays the role as a more
conservative concept involving ‘‘conservation’’ and
‘‘preservation’’.
The balance metaphor also implies the ideal that any movement
needs to be
stabilised or neutralised by a counter movement. Increase or
reduction of the weight
of things on the left scale must be accompanied by a
corresponding increase or
reduction on right side:
…you take something and you give something back so that there
is a balance.
The scale picture leads to another implication of the balance
metaphor, namely
the dualism related to the construal of exactly two opposing
concerns. The metaphor
assumes a sharp distinction between things that easen and things
that burden. The
students presuppose that it is possible to make an unequivocal
decision on what it
takes to cause positive and negative effects in relation to

sustainability. This
simplification does not comprise complex cases or problems
with both positive and
negative implications or circumstances that change between
beneficiality and
harmfulness over time or across space.
Furthermore, the balance metaphor leads to the simplistic
impression that the two
dual factors can be meaningfully assessed and balanced, that
they can be weighed
on the same scale and added in controlled doses, hence the
frequent use of the terms
‘‘more’’ and ‘‘less’’.
Sustainability as Profitability
Economic terminology is very common among the engineering
students when they
describe sustainability. They refer to ‘‘profit’’, ‘‘expenses’’,
‘‘costs’’ and ‘‘return’’.
The profitability metaphor does not confine the construal of
sustainability to
economic sustainability. As in general, the students mainly refer
to environmental
aspects of sustainability but economic experiences provide a

source of ways to
understand aspects of sustainability. One student uses the
profitability metaphor in
this way:
Sustainability is income = expenses. The expenses cannot get
too high. The
Earth cannot afford that.
Such economic terms result in a transferral of money’s
exchange mechanism to
the concept of sustainability. In the same way as profitability is
the result of higher
economic gains than expenses, sustainability also becomes a
question depending on
the relation between activities that have positive and negative
effects on the
900 S. Haase
123
household economy of the globe. Sustainability is construed as
the desired result of
a range of transactions between human beings and man-made
industry on one side

and nature or environment on the other.
As with the balance metaphor, duality marks the profitability
metaphor and
reduces real life complicity to gains and losses. Sustainability is
understood as
profitability according to the ‘‘total account’’ and is acquired if
‘‘…you give and
take, so that the account is still balanced.’’ In this and other
cases the metaphor for
sustainability as profitability is used in union with that of
balance which is a
common metaphor within economy. This metaphorical
combination downplays
intentions to accumulate economic gains, and instead focuses on
an economy that
breaks even.
The economic terms are not only used to describe sustainability
as profitability,
but also to assign characteristics normally attributed to the
goods within the
economic system to the concept of sustainability. Hence,
sustainability is referred to
as something that can be obtained at a price (e.g. lower
consumption or reduced

pollution). And sustainability concerns are often considered a
barrier to free market
forces and the objective of obtaining profit.
Sustainability as a (Mental) Condition
Sustainability is also compared to some kind of condition that
things can be in.
When giving closer descriptions of this condition, the
engineering students’
language is rich in personifications where nature, production
processes or an
unspecified entity (as ‘‘something’’) is attributed human
characteristics such as
‘‘needs’’. The metaphorical comparison of sustainability with
human condition,
perhaps a mental condition ‘‘…allows us to understand a
spectrum of human
experiences with non-human entities by means of human
motives, characteristics
and activities.’’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2002, p. 45, author’s
translation.) Sustain-
ability as a (mental) condition pictures a positively charged
condition often relating
to ‘‘harmony’’ and ‘‘peace’’. But the students also refer to
interrelational human

conditions such as ‘‘relationships’’ and ‘‘interplay’’. As in
everyday language, the
balance metaphor is also mixed with this metaphor in the
description of the
anthropomorphic, sustainable mental condition of ‘‘being in
balance’’.
A condition—in particular a mental condition—is in comparison
with the other
sustainability metaphors characterised by its somewhat more
intangible nature. One
could expect this kind of emotional analogy for sustainability to
be remote to a
profession of engineers that are traditionally connoted with
‘‘hard core’’, natural
scientific, mathematical-logical rationality. And this metaphor
actually is the least
predominant and the least coherent of the sustainability
metaphors identified among
the engineering students.
Metaphoric Interplay
The metaphoric interplay between the five different images used
to explain
sustainability is complex and incoherent. The students do not
stick to a consistent

use of one metaphor and as in most everyday metaphorical
language they do not
123
reflect or elaborate on the implications of the metaphors of their
sustainability
concept. The interpretation of the metaphor connotations,
implications and interplay
derive analytically. The use of metaphors is considered
contingent. This entails that
some potential worldviews are emphasised rather than others.
The social responsibility aspect of sustainability often found in
literature (e.g.
Carew and Mitchell 2008; Lozano 2008; Costanza and Pattern
1995; Jamison 2012)
is weakly represented in the student responses. Referrals to
‘‘being responsible’’ or
‘‘ethical’’ are common, but mainly in relation to environmental
sustainability. The
student construals of sustainability do hold examples of
consideration of other

people as a motive. These examples mainly relate to working
conditions of peasants
in developing countries producing coffee, cocoa or tobacco for
consumption in
industrialised countries. When mentioned, though, social
sustainability is always
represented as an addition to the dominating environmental
sustainability perspec-
tive. This may suggest that engineering students at this level do
not in general
consider socially responsible and ethical concerns for other
human beings part of
their future professional role. To a certain extent, the
engineering students seem to
experience social concerns as belonging to a realm outside of
their professional role.
This may also explain why only 2.4 and 1.4 % of the responding
students in the
same survey select societal context and ethics, respectively,
among their five most
important items practicing engineering on a list with 20 items.
3
The comments from
two of the ten students contributing to the pilot testing of the

survey point in the
same direction:
Ethics, engineers are not supposed to prepare for that…
Ethics! Others must deal with that.
The engineering students seem to conceive of these social,
interpersonal and
ethical matters as practices that are outside of their future
professional field. Social
sustainability does not appear to be considered a relevant
context of their societal
role as future professionals.
Two main themes stand out as central conceptual conflicts.
These consider the
role of the human being and the view upon nature.
When describing sustainability the engineering students almost
never include
agency in their sentence structure. Human beings are very
seldom given an active
role in the grammatical construction of their sentences. Instead
they use passive
constructions, nominalisations where things are grammatically
given the role as

objects and negations that make it possible to stray from an
active placement of
human responsibility. They largely refrain from self-referral
and reflect rarely on the
role of neither themselves nor human beings in general towards
sustainability
aspects. The lack of human action is evident in the (mental)
condition metaphor,
3
The remaining 18 items to select from were: Business
knowledge, Communication, Conducting
experiments, Contemporary issues, Creativity, Data analysis,
Design, Engineering analysis, Engineering
tools, Global context, Leadership, Life-long learning,
Management skills, Math, Problem solving,
Professionalism, Science, Teamwork. N = 3,480, weighted
figures. Response rate: 44.4 % The question
was formulated: Of the 20 items below, please put a check mark
next to the FIVE you think are MOST
IMPORTANT practicing engineering.
902 S. Haase
123

where non-human entities play the active role instead of humans
and in the cycle
metaphor where human action is considered absent from the
ideal concept of
continuous, circular movement. In the case of the balance
metaphor people are
given a larger responsibility for assuring balance between
harmful and beneficial
things or actions. But this is still mentioned on the metaphoric
level and seldom
directly related to concrete decision-making in real-life. The
following quote
illustrates how human action is downplayed by means of a
passive sentence form
and the use of a grammatical metaphor where a grammatical
structure, here an
action (e.g. killing members of a population), is substituted by a
noun (the balance
of the population).
The product can be sustainable if the balance of a population is
taken into
consideration so that it will continually be possible to produce.
Machine and profitability metaphors for sustainability
emphasise certain aspects

of human action but delimit the responsibility of human beings
to considerations of
how to fulfil either economic or efficiency purposes. These two
metaphors also
share the same view on nature. The main role of the nature or
the environment is to
contribute to human goal achievement. Whether the goal is
interpreted as efficiency
or profit, nature is considered the source of raw materials and
the unintended
receiver of waste and by-products such as CO2 emission and
pollution. Often nature
takes the grammatical position as the direct object in the
sentences, receiving the
action of a transitive verb as in these examples: ‘‘…harming the
nature’’,
‘‘…affecting the environment’’.
From this rationalistic, goal-oriented point of view
sustainability concerns are
restraining because they limit the possibilities of achieving the
primary goal.
Environmental harm is considered a risk that needs to be
minimised. The machine
and the profitability metaphors both contribute heavily to the

construction of a
discourse of utility maximisation characterised by this view of
nature and its focus
on productivity and efficiency. This implies a very
anthropocentric worldview
where ethical concerns are construed as consideration for human
needs and desires,
first and foremost. Nature is considered delimited from human
beings and subject to
human mastering and exploitation. Coexisting with this
discursively constructed
nature utilitarianism a very different discourse perhaps best
described as roman-
ticism challenges the construal of the concept of nature. The
romanticist nature
discourse is marked by collective regret on behalf of mankind
and its technological
progress. (See also Jamison 1997, 2001; Mitcham 2009; Wagner
2006 for more on
nature utilitarianism, romanticism and their ethical implications
to the engineering
profession in society.) The interplay of these two discourses and
the dilemma they
place engineering students in are described in the following

section.
The Engineering Dilemma
By means of a semiotic analysis this section investigates the
opposing discourses
reflected in the students’ ways of mentioning nature and
technology and discusses
the dilemma this might entail.
123
On the one hand, the students understand and explain
sustainability as a question
of preserving nature and the non-technical. This coins the
romanticist discourse. On
the other hand, as engineering students, the subject of their
focus and attention is
exactly technology. This is expressed through the utilitaristic
discourse.
Two semiotic squares serve to illustrate the opposition of the
romanticist and the
utilitaristic discourses found among a large part of the
engineering students. (See

Fig. 2).
The left side of the figure illustrates the romanticist ideal of
environmental
sustainability where the consideration of nature is the primary
aspect. Non-nature is
the not prescribed, and technology plays the negative part as
hampering—or maybe
even destroying—of nature and hereby forms the prohibited
element in the top right
corner of the figure. Non-nature and technology implicate each
other in the same
way as nature and non-technology do. This semiotic square
illustrates the classic,
almost mythical opposition between nature on the one side and
culture, civilisation
or technology on the other.
4
The oppositional understanding of this conceptual relation is of
course a
simplification that among other things is unable to encompass
the fact that human
beings belong in both categories as emphasised by Horkheimer
and Adorno (1944).
Nature is within the human. Human beings are nature and

culture at the same time,
exponents for nature, civilisation and technology.
The engineering students often describe sustainability with
negative definitions
such as: ‘‘Sustainability means that we do not destroy the
nature…’’ or ‘‘That one
does not damage the environment’’. Positive descriptions of
what sustainability is—
instead of what it is not—are found, but the negating ones are
by far the most
dominant. These two different ways of describing sustainability
underline a large
experienced difference between the ideals of the students and
the reality they
discursively dissociate themselves from. From their point of
view there is a large
difference between how society ought to look and how the
actual reality appears.
This implies a strong, normative ideal of how nature should be
coexisting with the
wide-spread concept that this is not the case—perhaps even
quite the contrary.
…our current consumption culture is untenable and depleting of
our natural
resources.

Technology
(prohibited)
Nature
(prescribed)
Non-nature
(not prescribed)
Non-technology
(not prohibited)
Nature
(prohibited)
Technology
(prescribed)
Non-technology
(not prescribed)
Non-nature
(not prohibited)
Fig. 2 The two semiotic squares illustrate the engineering
dilemma in relation to sustainability
4
For more theory and discussion on the societal role of this
classic opposition see Horkheimer and
Adorno (1944), Jamison (1997, 2001) and Wagner (2006).
904 S. Haase

123
Hence, it is about a world without incentive for all the bad
things that today
unfortunately characterise our world.
Unfortunately, not much on Earth today is sustainable.
The figure to the right illustrates the shift in conceptualisation
that is found when
the students relate to sustainability from within the context of
the engineering
profession they imagine to belong to in near future. As
engineering students they are
to a large extent motivated by their fascination of and flair for
technology. From this
point of view technology is the prescribed, invented to utilise
and yield from
everything non-technologic that it is in a contradictory relation
to. Nature is
depicted as the object that technology should exploit. Hereby
nature in its pure,
untreated form—assuming such a form makes sense—serving no
man-made
purpose is considered the symbolically prohibited element of

the figure. In this
version of the semiotic square the prohibited element is weakly
represented in the
engineering student responses which might be related to the
strength of the previous
semiotic square where nature serves as the prescribed element.
The impact of the
utilitaristic semiotic square mainly relates to the wide-spread
use of the utilitaristic
discourse.
The two coexisting semiotic squares are in conflict to an extent
that causes
difficulties for the engineering students. Building bridge
between these two
conceptual frameworks is no simple task, hence the notion
dilemma. How is it
possible to express romanticist ideals of environmental
sustainability and bemoan
the environmental consequences of technological progress and,
still, invest ones
time and energy in an education within technology?
To some of the engineering students this apparently is not
possible. They pick

their side and decide to rely on ‘‘the development’’ and ‘‘the
progress’’. Such words
are often attributed independent power by means of
personifications. One student
directly places his reliance in the problem solving ability of the
national community,
‘‘we’’, understood more specifically as the Danish society that
he considers an
example of a highly developed and technologically competent
society:
Engineerically the concept [sustainability, author insertion]
means a society
which is no. 1 on a global scale concerning development. A
good illustration
of such a society is Denmark. We are in 2010; the country is
fully developed
and well under way with developing new technologies and
building on the old
ones. Such a sustainable society has taken into account a range
of problems
and will find solutions to present and future issues.
The majority of the students who contribute to the discursive
construction of this
symbolic dilemma do not explicitly seek to overcome it. The

two opposing
tendencies coexist—not peacefully, nor in war. It seems, the
engineering students
try to avoid the explicit dilemma and instead deal with
romanticist nature concepts
and environmental sustainability concerns outside of their
professional and
personal interest in technology. For the most part, the students
seem to discursively
construct the two opposing worldviews as separate, but
coexisting worldviews.
Romanticism is rarely reconciled with utilitarianism although
no open conflict is
expressed either. The strong normative ideal of how nature
should be preserved
123
and considered seems to exist along with the opposing view on
nature inherent in
the utilitaristic wish to develop technology to human benefit
and exploitation of
nature. At a first glance no possible synthesis of these opposing

views appears
which must place the engineering students in a symbolic
dilemma that they appear
to try to disregard. But there is evidence to suggest that at least
some of the future
engineers do picture a way of handling the dilemma by
reinventing technology in a
new and sustainable version. They foresee that technology bears
the potential to
bring the society closer to their ideals of sustainability at some
point in time in a
not yet realised future.
Be creative and innovative to research and make/create/invent
new technol-
ogies and distribute them, so they are broadly available. [Not
translated].
Using science to develop new technologies, e.g. green
technologies could be
one example. [Not translated.]
This [sustainability, author] can be achieved by the use of the
newest
technologies…
It is also a world where people can have as many children as

they like, because
technology allows that there is enough food, space and means
for everyone to
be able to live under high standards.
One of the engineering students even indicates that he by means
of his decision to
pursue an engineering education takes on a particular societal
obligation to convince
his surroundings that the technology paradigm (here termed as
‘‘being forward-
looking’’) does not necessarily imply damaging consequences to
the environment:
‘‘It is important that engineers show others that one can be
forward-looking without
having to harm the environment.’’
Discursive Formations among Nascent Technology
Professionals
This section focuses on the level of social practices and
elaborates on the findings
drawn from actual text and from the discursive practices that it
is articulated within.
(Cf. Fairclough 1992, p. 73) The discursive formations among
these nascent

technology professionals are analysed as enactment of social
practice (Fairclough
2003). As newly enrolled engineering students the respondents
of the survey that
this article refers to have taken their first steps on the pathway
to full membership of
the engineering profession. Assuming that an order of discourse
of the engineering
profession can be analytically identified as the language aspects
of the social
practices within the engineering education institutions and
among engineering
professionals, the process of becoming an engineer involves the
inculcation, as
Fairclough calls it, of engineering discourses:
Discourses as imaginaries may also come to be inculcated as
new ways of
being, new identities… Inculcation is a matter of, in the current
jargon, people
coming to ‘own’ discourses, to position themselves inside them,
to act and
906 S. Haase
123

think and talk and see themselves in terms of new discourses
(Fairclough
2003, p. 208).
Apart from the ‘‘coming to own’’ technical and discipline-
specific discourses (see
Atman et al. 2008 for an analysis of this process) engineers-to-
come must also
familiarise themselves with and learn to use other types of
discourses adequately to
take on an engineering identity. The discursive landscape of the
newly enrolled
engineering students is of course not identical with the order of
discourse of the
engineering profession in general; to a large extent, the
engineering students take
their point of departure in expectations and assumptions about
the engineering
profession. But they already do identify with the profession and
they articulate how
they respond ‘‘as future engineer’’ or explicitly delimit their
answer to what they
consider their field of engineering e.g. energy or construction.
In this way the

discursive formations identified in this article can be considered
a window to the
initial inculcation process of these future engineers of the
profession’s order of
discourse. A first draft, so to say, of their nascent professional
identity formation.
The inculcation of engineering discourse is, hence, an important
way of acquiring
professional legitimacy, professional exclusivity and power to
define and determine
certain ways of acting in response to practical problems which
according to Harrits
and Olesen (2012) are distinguishing characteristics of a
profession. And the
professional practice and characteristics are based on the
integration and combi-
nation of knowledge of a spectrum of different science-based
disciplines with tacit,
experience-based knowledge (Harrits and Olesen 2012). These
knowledge forms are
presented to the students through the engineering education
system. The students
interpret and represent them to themselves and others e.g. as
institutionalised in

projects and exams and the discourses shape and reshape the
engineering practices
they begin to enact and identify themselves with during the
formation of their
professional identity.
The identification of the five overarching metaphors for
sustainability and the
dilemma between the utilitaristic and the romanticist discourses
give an insight in
the worldviews of the students and in the societal roles they
expect to play as
engineering professionals.
With few exceptions, the sustainability construals of the
engineering students all
lack the ability to comprise the ambivalence, the uncertainty
and the complexity of
the concept. If left unchallenged, such an oversimplification
may in practice result
in too little effort put in the process of estimating sustainability
consequences of
actual problem solving. Not only management of known risks
but also the fact of
having to tackle a reality of unknown, potentially harmful
effects of an engineering

solution may much more adequately depict their future working
conditions.
Furthermore, the wide gap between the ideal expressed by many
of the students as a
part of the romanticist discourse and the descriptions of the
actual state of the world
seem to cause disillusion or defeat for the majority of these
young people who find that
technology bears at least some of the blame. This might not be
the best encouragement
for engineering student retention. The state of disillusion relates
to the tendency to
dissociate oneself and other humans discursively from an active
role in relation to
sustainability by means of nominalisation and a lack of
grammatical agency of human
123
actors. Instead, most students take for granted the assumption
that concepts like ‘‘the
development’’ and ‘‘the progress’’ have an inherent logic of
progression indepen-

dently of human interference which can be traced back to a
capitalistic market
discourse with invisible laws of progression and growth. This
positive interpretation
of capitalistic market values goes hand in hand with an
optimistic assessment of the
societal role of technology which is considered a means of
production.
It [sustainability, author] is also the ability to stay in
development… In short,
sustainability equals future or prosperity…
This perspective makes it difficult to conceive of technology as
something that
can be controlled and directed to serve other purposes than
productivity and
economy. And it supports the view on sustainability as a
hindrance to market forces.
Another assumption that the students consider an unquestioned
truth is the
underlying assumption that many refer to about human
responsibility for
environmental degradation, climate change and resource
depletion. One of the
1,211 students is critical towards this. He refers to ‘‘…the

constant fear mongering
of global warming.’’ And he adds to it that:’’The earth’s
atmosphere has had
temperatures all over the scale for thousands of years and the
earth has kept its
sustainability.’’ [Not translated.] The rest of the engineering
students who mention
problems with environmental sustainability through their use of
modality accept as a
fact that the changes are man-made.
With this one exception the linkage between human productivity
and technology
on the one side and the acceptance of human responsibility for
detrimental
environmental effects on the other, the scale of the tension
between technology and
nature is emphasised.
The critical voices among the engineering students direct their
criticism at
politicians, at human beings and their ‘‘egoism’’ and—as in this
case—at the power
of economy in the society:
How and when did economy become the dominating science?
Why can

natural science not speak for itself anymore? A large-scale
global reaction
against global warming would have taken place sooner had we
not been living
in a global society ruled by an economic science that only
considers economic
growth and optimisation. This is from my point of view not
sustainable; the
results from natural science speak for themselves.
Although explicitly expressed by a minority only, many
students seem to hope
that the reinvention of a technology freed from its utilitaristic
purpose, serving
nature instead, holds the key to tackling the societal challenges.
And this might even
potentially be a way of overturning the prejudicial connotations
of the engineering
profession and regain professional pride and legitimacy.
To me sustainability is not to find the easiest solution. Humans
could decide to
use up all coal and oil, cut down the rest of the rain forest, use
chemical
products in the fields etc. etc. Sustainability is that we in many

cases choose
not to. We continue to search for new solutions that can damage
the Earth less.
It is a really good motivation to work for a long existence of
our world.
908 S. Haase
123
Conclusion
The research presented in this article gives an insight in the
baseline understandings
and anticipations of engineering students at the very beginning
of their pathway into
engineering. The engineering students enrolled in Danish
engineering degree
programmes discursively construct a dilemma between
technology and nature. On
the one side, a technology fascination is inherent in them and
contributes to their
choice of education. On the other side, they share the prevailing
focus on the
importance of environmental sustainability to which technology
is often construed

as an obstacle.
The engineering students generally accept challenges to
sustainability as a human
responsibility that technological progress bears a large part of
the blame for.
They generally use the five metaphors efficient machine, cycle,
balance,
profitability and (mental) condition to illustrate how they
conceive of sustainability.
The metaphors are not used in logical coherence and they point
to different ways of
construing the sustainability concept.
The student descriptions of sustainability show clear general
tendencies:
• to focus on environmental sustainability, mainly at the
expense of social
sustainability and ethics that appear to be considered tasks of
other professions.
• to disregard human agency including one’s own and attribute
independent
autonomy to progress and development.
• to consider profit and rationality the only motives of human
practice.
• to construe sustainable development as a dual battle between
good and bad,

beneficial and harmful, income and expense.
• to discursively construct an oversimplified sustainability
understanding without
room for the complex, internal dilemmas and the ambivalence
that are present in
discussions about how to practice sustainability.
• to construe sustainability as a hindrance to human civilisation,
productivity and
development.
• to represent two overall discourses of utilitarianism and
romanticism that coexist
in a very tense interplay and characterise the engineering
dilemma in relation to
nature and technology.
The discursive landscape of the engineering students provides
information on the
mixed emotions in relation to the role of technology in society
that they carry with
them into their profession and that might help to explain
possible image problems of
engineering in their generation. The student descriptions not
only point to this
problematic construal of their future profession, some of them
also see a way to

overcome this dilemma in a restructuring of the rational
paradigm of technology
into a sustainable, green way of practicing technological
development. But this
sustainable way of discursively constructing engineering needs
to be nurtured and
co-constructed by engineering educational discourse as well as
in engineering
practice in order to gain a foothold and become legitimate as a
dominant discourse
in the profession’s order of discourse and in the social practice
where it could make
a real difference.
123
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An Engineering Dilemma: Sustainability in the Eyes of Future
Technology ProfessionalsAbstractIntroductionAnalytical
Approach and MethodsSustainability MetaphorsSustainability as
an Efficient MachineSustainability as a CycleSustainability as
BalanceSustainability as ProfitabilitySustainability as a
(Mental) ConditionMetaphoric InterplayThe Engineering
DilemmaDiscursive Formations among Nascent Technology
ProfessionalsConclusionReferences
O R I G I N A L P A P E R
Just Sustainability? Sustainability and Social Justice
in Professional Codes of Ethics for Engineers
Cletus S. Brauer
Received: 12 September 2012 / Accepted: 25 November 2012 /
Published online: 7 December 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract Should environmental, social, and economic
sustainability be of primary
concern to engineers? Should social justice be among these
concerns? Although the
deterioration of our natural environment and the increase in
social injustices are among
today’s most pressing and important issues, engineering codes
of ethics and their par-
amountcy clause, which contains those values most important to
engineering and to
what it means to be an engineer, do not yet put either concept
on a par with the safety,
health, and welfare of the public. This paper addresses a recent
proposal by Michelfelder
and Jones (2011) to include sustainability in the paramountcy
clause as a way of rec-
tifying the current disregard for social justice issues in the
engineering codes. That
proposal builds on a certain notion of sustainability that
includes social justice as one of
its dimensions and claims that social justice is a necessary
condition for sustainability,
not vice versa. The relationship between these concepts is
discussed, and the original

proposal is rejected. Drawing on insights developed throughout
the paper, some sug-
gestions are made as to how one should address the different
requirements that theory
and practice demand of the value taxonomy of professional
codes of ethics.
Keywords Professional codes of ethics � Engineering ethics �
Paramountcy clause � Sustainability � Social justice
Introduction
Most major professional engineering bodies’ codes of ethics
contain what is known as
the paramountcy clause (PC), which states that engineers shall
‘hold paramount the
C. S. Brauer (&)
Department of Philosophy and Ethics, School of Innovation
Sciences; 3TU.Centre for Ethics
and Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, IPO
1.10, PO Box 513,
5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Sci Eng Ethics (2013) 19:875–891
DOI 10.1007/s11948-012-9421-4

safety, health, and welfare of the public’. The PC is at the heart
of professional codes of
ethics for engineers: it contains those values most fundamental
to, and even definitive of,
the engineering profession. Consequently, such values override
both subordinate and
instrumental values, as well as non-moral concerns
(‘paramountcy’).
Two candidates for inclusion in the PC that are frequently
mentioned are
sustainability and social justice, which, due to their structural
and material
similarities, are often addressed simultaneously or
subsequently. However, both
concepts have met with considerable opposition concerning
their role in engineering,
both on empirical grounds (can sustainability and/or social
justice be engineered?)
and normative grounds (should sustainability and/or social
justice be of primary
concern for engineers?). Social justice scarcely features in
engineering codes at all,

and claims for its inclusion are regularly rejected. In contrast,
most professional
engineering bodies have embraced the concept of sustainability
in their current codes
in one form or another. This acceptance of the importance of
sustainability takes the
form of either commitments directly to ‘sustainability’ and ‘(the
principle of)
sustainable development’ or to ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’.
However, sustain-
ability and its equivalent concepts are rarely part of the PC and
are never considered
to have a similar degree of bindingness: they are advisory
(ought to, shall strive for),
not prescriptive (must hold paramount). In terms of value
taxonomy, it seems that the
engineering profession does not perceive sustainability or social
justice as
paramount, but rather as additional values or merely as being
instrumental for the
safety, health and welfare of the public.
At the 2010 inaugural meeting of the ‘forum on Philosophy,
Engineering &
Technology’ (fPET) at the Colorado School of Mines and in a

subsequent paper,
Michelfelder and Jones (2011) made a case for including
sustainability in the PC as a
means to rectify what they viewed as severe shortcomings of the
current codes’
formulations with respect to sustainability and social justice. In
their paper, Michelfelder
and Jones discuss the relationship between sustainability and
social justice, their
respective bearing on the engineering profession and its codes
of ethics, the engineer’s
role as public trustee, and engineering education. Their work
culminates in a proposed
rewording of the PC, which prioritizes sustainability similarly
to the safety, health, and
welfare of the public, as well as a rewording of the ‘Guidelines
to Practice’ under the
main canon, featuring both explicit and implicit references to
social justice. By framing
sustainability as ‘a justice’ and applying a Rawlsian framework,
they argue that by
including sustainability in the PC, the codes’ blind spot for
social justice concerns could
be overcome if complemented by adjustments in the teachings

for undergraduate
engineering students. While I am highly sympathetic to their
cause, I will argue that the
suggested code amendment cannot deliver what it promises.
Reformulating the PC so
that it incorporates a commitment not to social justice but to
sustainability as a way to
address social injustice stemming from engineering practice
misunderstands the
relationship between the concepts of sustainability and social
justice. To make
sustainability, but not social justice, ‘paramount’ could
effectively cause engineers to
address certain social justice concerns, as argued by
Michelfelder and Jones, but would
at the same time fail to address equally important social justice
matters that are not
covered by the notion of sustainability. Consequently,
subsequent code amendments
aimed at a more holistic treatment of social justice would be
less likely to reach the status
876 C. S. Brauer
123

of paramountcy. Therefore, to change engineering codes of
ethics in the way suggested
by Michelfelder and Jones would do a disservice to their own
goals.
In this paper, I discuss Michelfelder’s and Jones’ original paper
(section ‘‘Social
Justice as a Dimension of Sustainability’’), address a number of
concerns that I believe
show that their suggested reformulation of the PC does not
deliver what it intends to
(section ‘‘Critique’’), address a number of potential objections
to my arguments
(section ‘‘Objections’’), and provide a brief conclusion (section
‘‘Conclusion’’). My
main objectives here are to rebut Michelfelder’s and Jones’
code amendment and to
suggest constructive ways to attain their main goals: to raise
awareness about the
importance of long-term environmental issues and the fair
distribution of the social
goods, in terms of harms and benefits, that are affected by
engineering practice and to
encourage both scholars and practitioners to engage in debate

on how the engineering
profession should best address these pressing matters.
Social Justice as a Dimension of Sustainability
Michelfelder’s and Jones’ central claim is that sustainability
ought to be included in
the PC. They argue that sustainability is neither made redundant
by nor of lesser value
than the safety, health, and welfare of the public and that its
inclusion is therefore
necessary. This section elaborates on their main claims and
lines of argumentation,
starting with an explication of their working definition of
sustainability.
The traditional definition of sustainability stems from the
Brundtland Report,
issued by the United Nation’s ‘World Commission on
Environment and Development
(WCED)’ in 1987 under the title ‘Our Common Future:’
‘‘sustainable development
[…] implies meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.’’ This merely
relational but materially
empty definition, however, provides no way of operationalising

sustainability in terms
of engineering. Instead, Michelfelder and Jones decide to use
the more practice-
oriented, engineering-specific definition by Mihelcic et al.
(2003:5315):
Sustainability is the design of human and industrial systems to
ensure
humankind’s use of natural resources and cycles does not lead
to diminished
quality of life due either to losses in future economic
opportunities or to
adverse impacts on social conditions, human health, and the
environment.
For the purpose of formulating a professional engineering code
of ethics,
Michelfelder and Jones prefer this latter definition, as it
explicates the needs in
question more clearly, and does so ‘‘in terms that can be more
easily operationalized
by engineers as design criteria and constraints’’ (Michelfelder
and Jones 2011:7).
Furthermore, it integrates what have come to be known as the
three pillars of
sustainability since the 2005 UN World Summit

1
: the environment, the economy,
and human society. This extended three pillars-version of
sustainability is
1
United Nations (2005) World Summit Outcome, p. 11–12, reads
‘‘efforts [to reaffirm our commitment
to achieve the goal of sustainable development] will also
promote the integration of the three components
of sustainable development—economic development, social
development and environmental protection -
as interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars’’.
Sustainability and Social Justice 877
123
preferable not only because it broadens the notion of
sustainability beyond the realm
of nature and its conservation, but is especially relevant for
engineering:
Engineering practice impacts all three domains in many ways
and conceptualising
sustainability as three interdependent and mutually enforcing
pillars enables the

revealing interdependencies between different impacts;
therefore they cannot and
must not be treated independently. This in turn helps clarifying
the role that
engineers play.
Michelfelder and Jones (2011:6) state that
from a sustainability perspective, the job of an engineer is to
design
technological systems to meet societal demand (growth), and in
so doing,
reasonably reduce negative impacts in terms of the range of
economic
opportunities, social conditions, human health, and
environmental health for
current and future generations.
By such standards virtually all engineering codes of ethics are
deficient. As
Michelfelder and Jones show, many large engineering
associations’ (NSPE, ASCE
(2010), AIChE, ASME, and IEEE) codes reduce sustainability
to its environmental
pillar by ‘‘[e]quating environment with sustainable
development’’ (Michelfelder and

Jones 2011:5). Either they implicitly distinguish between
sustainability and
allegedly superior, more genuinely ‘human’ concerns, such as
health or welfare;
or they explicitly refer to nature or the environment. In both
cases, the stipulated
commitment of the engineering community as expressed in the
codes is never
prescriptive, but only advisory.
Thus, while current codes fail to account for a holistic three-
pillar notion of
sustainability, several aspects of it are in fact already taken into
account in
standard approaches to design processes. For example economic
constraints, i.e.
financial costs, or restrictions on environmental pollution,
directly inform
decision-making in engineering practice as design constraints.
However, other
aspects of sustainability are neglected in the codes. This
indicates that they fail to
grasp the interconnectedness and mutual reinforcement of the
different pillars.
This is especially evident in their treatment of sustainability

issues that happens at
an aggregated level that makes them blind to social justice
2
concerns. This is
especially true of intragenerational concerns because the
differing effects of a
certain design, technology, human or industrial system on
specific groups or sub-
populations are not taken into account. Michelfelder and Jones
argue that some of
the standard engineering approaches to weighing the harms and
benefits related to
‘sustainability needs’—namely benefit-cost analysis, life-cycle
assessment, and
human health risk assessment—fall short of accounting for
variation in the
distribution patterns. Both intergenerational and
intragenerational social justice are
at stake. Intergenerational justice, traditionally being at the
genealogical and
taxonomical heart of sustainability, cannot be guaranteed as
long as sustainability
(especially environmental) issues are devalued against what the
engineering codes

2
Michelfelder and Jones use a Rawlsian framework and define
social justice as ‘‘the fair and equitable
distribution of social goods and harms, benefits and burdens,
across a diversity of communities and
populations, including populations underrepresented by virtue
of considerations such as economic status,
race, age, gender, nationality, or physical
capability.’’(Michelfelder and Jones 2011:9).
878 C. S. Brauer
123
seem to consider to be more genuinely human concerns. If the
codes allow, for
example, for current economic preferences to override the needs
of future genera-
tions, engineering conduct might create significant injustices.
Given the current
consumption rate of raw materials and other non-renewable
natural resources, it is
hard to doubt that we are already placing future generations at a
disadvantage. Further,
the aggregation of impacts that dominates engineering

assessment techniques
effectively precludes intragenerational justice concerns from
being taken into
consideration.
Michelfelder and Jones argue accordingly that because adding
sustainability to
the PC would rectify both types of code deficiency—the focus
on some but neglect
of other aspects of sustainability and the treatment of the former
on an aggregated
level only—appending sustainability would not be redundant.
Furthermore, they
claim that sustainability’s inclusion in the PC is necessary
because social justice,
understood as inter- and intragenerational equity, is an
important but neglected
dimension of sustainability as ‘‘a necessary condition to ensure
the safety, health
and welfare of the public.’’ (Michelfelder and Jones 2011:2).
Therefore, ‘‘the
engineering disciplines as embodied by the codes of ethics need
to reaffirm the
importance of sustainability and social justice as integral to
both the practice of

engineering and the essence of what it means to be an
engineer.’’ (Michelfelder and
Jones 2011:19). Correspondingly, Michelfelder and Jones
propose the following
rewording of the PC to rectify its current shortcomings:
3
Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of
the public
and the sustainable design of human and industrial systems in
the performance
of their professional duties. (Michelfelder and Jones 2011: 20).
4
They furthermore rephrase the subsequent Guidelines to
Practice Under the
Fundamental Canons of Ethics of the code to include references
to ‘‘the distribution
of impacts’’, ‘‘sustainability’’, ‘‘sub-populations’’,
‘‘communities’’, and ‘‘the prin-
ciples of sustainable development and social justice’’. Note that
the weaker phrase
‘‘compliance with the principle of sustainable development’’
has been replaced with
‘‘sustainable design of human and industrial systems’’ and that
the appeal to

sustainability now falls under the ‘‘hold paramount’’
imperative.
3
Michelfelder and Jones have tailored their amendment to fit the
American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE)’s code (based on, but substantially extended from, the
Accreditation Board for Engineering and
Technology, Inc. (ABET)’s code). Compared to other codes, the
ASCE code seems to be the one for
which the notion of sustainability comes closest to being in the
PC. It reads: ‘‘Engineers shall hold
paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and shall
strive to comply with the principle of
sustainable development in the performance of their
professional duties.’’ (ASCE Code of Ethics,
Fundamental Canon 1). Note that although sustainability is in
the same sentence with the PC and is
conjunctively connected, it does not fall under the ‘hold
paramount’ imperative. The ASCE’s code does
not mention ‘justice’ anywhere.
4
It is noteworthy that in their 2010 presentation at the fPET
meeting, the suggested reformulation of the
PC contained an explicit reference to justice. It read as follows:

‘‘Engineers shall hold paramount the
safety, health and welfare of the public and the [just]
sustainable design of human and industrial systems
in the performance of their professional duties.’’ Michelfelder
and Jones (2010:18); emphasis and
brackets in the original.
123
In summary, Michelfelder and Jones have provided arguments
as to why the
current formulation of engineering codes of ethics in general,
and the PC in
particular, are deficient with respect to both intergenerational
and intragenerational
social justice issues. They claim that this deficiency could be
overcome by adding a
‘‘commitment to sustainability (and so to social justice)’’
(Michelfelder and Jones
2011:14). While I agree with their general analysis, I do not
believe that the
suggested reformulation of the code is able to rectify the
problem, as I will elaborate

in the following section.
Critique
As discussed above, Michelfelder’s and Jones’ suggested code
amendment builds
on the importance of sustainability considerations for
engineering, emphasising
sustainability’s social justice dimension. Furthermore, they
seem to rank sustain-
ability taxonomically higher than social justice.
5
In addition, they do not let the
codes mirror the strong bond between the concepts. This point
is surprising because
Michelfelder and Jones base their own arguments on this very
bond. By referring to
sustainability as a ‘social justice concept’ and drawing
primarily on justice theories
to support an inclusion of sustainability into the PC, they
recognise the intricate
relationship between the two concepts. However, rather than
formulating a coherent
framework that, for example, includes a commitment to justice
in the main canon or

PC that later spells out how nature preservation and the
reduction of social and
economic inequalities is an application of this framework, they
leave the ideas
conceptually unrelated in the codes. This separation fosters the
treatment of
sustainability and social justice as independent. The authors
seem to negate that
sustainability has its justificatory basis in a concept of justice
by ranking
sustainability taxonomically higher than social justice.
6
5
This hierarchy becomes evident when Michelfelder and Jones
explain what their notion of
sustainability as concept of social justice means. Namely, ‘‘that
social justice is a necessary condition
for the furtherance or development of sustainability, rather than
the other way around (as in, for example,
Barry 1999).’’ (Michelfelder and Jones 2011:9). Barry argued
that not acting sustainably deprives future
generations, thereby disadvantaging them in contrast to the
present and creating (intergenerational) social
injustice. This issue makes sustainability a necessary condition

of social justice. Sensu Barry,
sustainability (to maintain some 9 into the indefinite future) is a
means of furthering social justice.
Michelfelder and Jones, in contrast, seem to turn this
relationship upside down.
6
Most commonly, definitions of and approaches to sustainability
build primarily or exclusively on a
notion of intergenerational social justice. In that sense,
sustainability or (the principle of) sustainable
development refers to the equilibrium between the degree to
which present generations (in a timeless
sense of present, cf. Barry 1999:107) irreversibly interfere with
the entities of our natural environment,
and the degree to which similar actions remain possible for
generations to come. However, justice is not
the only possible normative, justificatory basis for
sustainability. Critique of such an approach comes
from very different directions and for a multitude of reasons.
For example, the ‘deep ecology’ movement
criticizes justice-based lines of argumentation for being too
anthropocentric and not taking account of the
(alleged) intrinsic value of nature (see section IV).
Additionally, basically all of the predominant ethical

background theories can provide justification for sustainability
according to their central values and
principles. A utilitarian approach might stress that the gain of
utility (or happiness) of a present generation
taking more than its share from nature’s provisions is
outweighed by the resulting loss of utility (or
happiness) in the future (e.g. due to population growth). A
deontological approach could focus on the duty
880 C. S. Brauer
123
Michelfelder and Jones point to almost all the important aspects
of the
sustainability/social justice-nexus and its bearing on the
engineering profession and
its professional codes of ethics. However, their proposed
rewording is not justified
and should be rejected, as should any claim that ascribes a
taxonomically higher
rank to sustainability than to social justice. This point holds
true for a professional
code of ethics, or in any other practical context, where it is an
asset not to commit to

too many specific, theory-dependent ballast, as well as any
approaches that fail to
sufficiently recognise sustainability’s foundation in justice.
My first critique is small and formal and addresses their claim
that the inclusion
of sustainability in the PC is necessary. My second critique
addresses their notion of
social justice as a dimension of sustainability and the implicit
value taxonomy that
underlies it.
Necessary Condition Critique
The first critique refers to Michelfelder’s and Jones’ claim that
sustainability should
be included in the PC because it is a necessary condition for the
safety, health and
welfare of the public. Being a necessary condition for values
that already feature in
the PC does not constitute a compelling justification for a
values’ inclusion in the
PC. If one would allow for such a justification, the PC would
bloat unacceptably
because everything that stands in a similar ‘necessary
condition’ relationship to the

newly included values would need to be included as well,
including values that are
not paramount for the engineering profession. For example,
physical and mental
health depends on myriad factors, such as access to medical
care, having friends, a
partner, cleanliness, etc., which are not, in themselves, of
paramount importance to
the engineering profession.
Considering that Michelfelder and Jones argue that social
justice is a necessary
condition for sustainability—which, in turn, is a necessary
condition for the safety,
health and welfare of the public—it seems odd that they do not
claim that social
justice should also feature in the PC. Such a claim is
structurally identical to the one
they make. Therefore, one could argue that they are forced to
also include social
justice in the PC, which they decided not to do when
transferring the 2010
presentation to the 2011 paper. Overall, it seems that being a
necessary condition for
a value in the PC is, in itself, not enough to justify further

inclusions in the PC.
Footnote 6 continued
of each successive generation towards the next (cf. e.g.,
Howarth 1995). Virtue ethics has been employed
to sustainability in different ways, e.g. by creating a genuine
‘environmental virtue ethics’ or extending
values traditionally found in virtue ethics to include nature in a
substantial way (cf. e.g., Sandler 2007; for
an overview see van Wensveen 2000). However, Michelfelder
and Jones explicitly approach sustain-
ability from a justice perspective, or more generally, a Rawlsian
social contract theory. Their line of
argument builds on sustainability being ‘a justice’. The crucial
point here is not that other approaches to
justify the normativity of sustainability might (and do) exist,
but that Michelfelder and Jones explicitly
employ a justice-based approach on the one hand, while on the
other hand, they distort the relationship
between them by reversing their roles as provider and receiver
of normative justification for the respective
other. Therefore, the mere possibility of argumentative backup
from other ethical background theories
does not present any concerns here.

123
Social Justice as Dimension of Sustainability or Vice Versa?
Let us come back to Michelfelder’s and Jones’ central
argument, which was, just a
reminder, a rather straightforward one. Sustainable development
has three different
dimensions (environmental, social, and economic) that are
interrelated, mutually
dependent, and all of high and potentially paramount
importance. Engineers are
already accustomed to considering economic dimensions
(traditionally as a design
constraint) and increasingly consider environmental concerns.
However, there is a
lack of concern for, if not recognition of, the social dimension
and the
interrelatedness of the different dimensions, which causes
engineers to engage
only with the economic and environmental aspects of
engineering practice and to do
so as if they were ‘freestanding.’

7
The problematic disregard of the social dimension
and the presupposed interrelatedness could be resolved, so their
argument goes, if
sustainability were included in the PC and engineering
undergraduates were taught
in detail what sustainability entails to ‘‘[make] sure that
students know how to
include social justice as part of a sustainability design
constraint’’ (Michelfelder and
Jones 2011:19).
It is a worthwhile undertaking to teach engineers that ethical
considerations
concerning the creation and maintenance of socio-technical
systems and artefacts
also always entail distribution patterns of the resulting harms
and benefits. But, the
approach that Michelfelder and Jones propose has at least two
substantial
drawbacks, both related to the same problem. The approach
would only increase
the observance of a certain set of relevant social justice issues,
namely, those that

can be fully subsumed under the notion of sustainability. These
issues include, for
example, social injustices stemming from unfair distribution
patterns of the harms
and benefits resulting from measures taken to foster
environmental sustainability,
such as the placing of wind parks or landfills in low-income or
ethnic minority
districts or equal access to sites of unspoiled nature. Other
social justice issues that
are not so blatantly related to sustainability would not receive
increased attention.
The first resulting problem is not, strictly speaking, a
philosophical one but rather
is a practical one. Not only would those social justice issues
that cannot be
subsumed under sustainability not receive increased attention in
engineering, the
inclusion of sustainability could become a hindrance to further
efforts aiming at
establishing social justice as a value of paramount importance.
Once sustainability,
and thus the correlating set of social justice issues, was
included in the PC, social

justice allegedly would—through sustainability—already be
‘taken care of.’ Social
justice advocates would then be likely to have a harder time
arguing for a full-
fledged notion of social justice in the PC. This practical
problem has plenty of
historical analogues. Take, for example, the struggle for certain
groups’ rights, e.g.,
women’s suffrage. When the British Parliament first considered
granting women the
7
Certainly, it is not the case that engineers regularly fail to see
all interrelations between the different
dimensions; that environmental benefits regularly entail
economic costs (or rather, result in lower
economic benefits than would have been possible), for example,
is rather trivial. At least some
interrelations are regularly being missed (e.g. between the
environmental and social dimensions). This is a
problem in its own right and suggests a lack of understanding of
the underlying structure, which is based
on the interrelatedness and mutual reinforcement of the
dimensions.
882 C. S. Brauer

123
right to vote, only women of a certain social standing
(householders or wives of
householders) were envisioned as the future holders of these
rights. The question of
whether the women’s rights movement should settle for this
concession and take it
as a first promising step in the right direction or whether it
should reject the
concession as a tactic to take the momentum from an
increasingly growing social
movement without risking real change (because upper class
women were considered
to be likely to vote rather conservatively anyway) caused much
disagreement within
the movement itself.
8
A general question of principle, here related to a basic right,
can only be ignored so long. There are obviously good
arguments in favour of equal
rights to vote, whereas an amendment aiming to also include
poor lower class

women in an already established group of right holders is an
entirely different
matter. Should a group rights movement settle for being granted
some important
rights and risk remaining disadvantaged in comparison to full
rights holders and
having a harder time mobilising support for further amendments
or should they
defend an all-or-nothing position? Similarly, in a generally
contested field, such as
the role of justice for engineering, mere ‘petty adjustments’ are
more difficult to
accomplish than a general debate about questions of principle.
The latter certainly
requires stronger backup arguments but is also more likely to
draw the necessary
attention. Analogically, to amend the PC of engineering codes
to hold some, but not
all, social justice issues related to engineering practice as
paramount (and to do so
only implicitly) would endanger the inclusion the rest of these
issues. Considering
that Michelfelder and Jones base their arguments for
sustainability’s inclusion in the

PC mainly on envisioned improvements in the social justice
domain, their approach
of operationalising social justice as a mere part of sustainability
might hurt their
cause rather than help it.
Independent of the question as to whether one buys into this
practical argument,
one needs to ask whether the partial allowance for social
justice’s paramountcy that
would result from Michelfelder’s and Jones’ approach is
compatible with their own
premises. Given that Michelfelder’s and Jones’ main goal is to
strengthen the
commitment of the engineering community to social justice and
given that it is the
current neglect of social justice issues that leads them to argue
for the inclusion of
sustainability in the PC, it seems odd that they argue for such
an implicit and
indirect way of addressing social justice rather than arguing for
an explicit and
direct commitment. They limit the scope of their concerns to
special types of cases,
rather than all relevant cases where social justice is affected,

and they make the very
same argument against others. For example, they refer to
Catalano (2006a, b), who
proposes an amendment of the PC suggesting the substitution of
‘the public’ for ‘the
identified integral community’:
‘‘[…] we believe changing the codes directly by strengthening
their explicit
commitment to sustainability (and so to social justice) is
pragmatically
preferable than strengthening this commitment indirectly
through making the
8
On the history of the women’s suffrage movement in general,
and particularly that internal politics and
controversies that caused it to sprout both parliamentary and
more militant branches (suffragists and
suffragettes), cf. Crawford (1999), Fawcett (1920).
123
substitution Catalano proposes.’’ (Michelfelder and Jones
2011:14, their

emphasis)
Michelfelder and Jones suppose, for their argument to work,
that all aspects of
social justice that are relevant to engineering practice can and
should be subsumed
under sustainability. Otherwise, they would be bound to argue
for a direct, explicit
commitment to ‘sustainability and social justice’ in the PC
rather than ‘sustain-
ability (and so to social justice)’. Of course, this does not have
to be a problem per
se. It is not problematic if all social justice issues which are of
paramount
importance to engineering are of the type that can be identified
with sustainability,
while other social justice issues affected by engineering conduct
either do not exist
or, if they do, they are not paramount. Therefore, one has to ask
whether that is in
fact the case. If it can be shown, as I think it can, that
engineering practice highly
affects important social justice issues in ways that go beyond
considerations of
sustainability, then Michelfelder’s and Jones’ argument for

including sustainability
in the PC cannot account for those issues.
That social justice as such (independent of the context of
engineering and its
codes) can completely, and in all cases, be subsumed under the
notion of
sustainability is implausible. But even the milder, more
practical claim that is at
stake, namely, that this is the case at least with reference to the
question of
paramountcy for engineering, is not convincing. Consider the
social injustice of
internet censorship in some totalitarian countries, the
(im)possibility of which
heavily depends on (IT-) engineering practices. This issue
constitutes but one case
where engineers and the fruits of their labours have enormous
impact where social
justice is concerned and is not covered by the notion of
sustainability. The
justification of paramountcy in this specific case could, of
course, be rejected. It
could even be argued that there are currently no cases of that
type, although this

does not seem very plausible. However, such cases do exist, at
least in principle.
Consideration of the above argument is reason enough to dispel
the treatment of
social justice as a mere dimension of sustainability. Independent
of the question of
whether there are such cases at the moment, the aggravation of
subsequent code
amendments in favour of social justice, once sustainability is
included in the PC,
remains. Implementing sustainability in the PC does not prove
to be an adequate
way of ensuring that all relevant social justice issues are
sufficiently taken into
account in engineering practice.
It appears that the engineering profession would be ill-advised
to include
sustainability in the PC as a way to address social justice issues
as suggested by
Michelfelder and Jones. It would even be ill-advised to do so if
the motivation and
arguments to do so were different, as long as one acknowledges
the option that there

are, or might be, cases of non-sustainability-related social
justice concerns in
engineering of paramount importance.
How to Amend the PC to Address Social Justice?
There are two possible alternatives for amending the PC to
sufficiently address
social justice. Engineers could either include both sustainability
and social justice in
884 C. S. Brauer
123
the PC, or they could include social justice, but not
sustainability. The first approach
would, given the partial overlap of the two concepts explicated
above, result in
some redundancy. However, this drawback could be outweighed
by the fact that no
potentially important cases that fall under one, but not the other
concept, are lost.
The second alternative—the reversion of Michelfelder’s and
Jones’ claim—would
avoid such redundancy, but face the same potential problems
that have been

identified above: there might be aspects of sustainability that
are not covered by
social justice, but that are nevertheless of paramount
importance. If this is the case,
including both would be the only remaining option; if it is not
the case, including
social justice (and thus sustainability) would be preferable, as it
avoids redundancy.
It has been argued, for example by Barry (1999), that
sustainability could be
subsumed under the notion of social justice because
sustainability in the end
amounts to an emphasis of the intergenerational aspects of
social justice. Proponents
of this position argue that the appeal of sustainability (not to
deprive future
generations of the possibilities to enjoy the same resources as
we do) can have its
normative grounding only in a concept of intergenerational
social justice. In that
case, including social justice in the PC would account for all
dimensions of
sustainability (if it is true for the environmental pillar, then it is
even more true for

O R I G I N A L P A P E RAn Engineering Dilemma Sustainab.docx

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