Responsibility in Engineering

1. Ethics in Engineering & Construction 3 Responsibility in Engineering Prof Dr. Bayan Salim
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Chapter 3: Responsibility in Engineering
The concept of responsibility is many-faceted. As a notion of accountability, it may be applied to
individual engineers, teams of engineers, divisions or units within organizations, or even
organizations themselves. It may focus primarily on legal liabilities, job-defined roles, or moral
accountability. Our focus in this chapter is mainly on the moral accountability of individual
engineers.
“Engineering is an important and learned profession. As members of this profession, engineers
are expected to exhibit the highest standards of honesty and integrity.
Engineering has a direct and vital impact on the quality of life for all people. Accordingly, the
services provided by engineers require honesty, impartiality, fairness, and equity, and must be
dedicated to the protection of the public health, safety, and welfare.
Engineers must perform under a standard of professional behavior that requires adherence to
the highest principles of ethical conduct.”
From National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE)
Engineering Standards
engineering codes of ethics require that the work of engineers conform with „„applicable
engineering standards.‟‟ These may be regulatory standards that specify technical requirements
for specific kinds of engineering design—for example, that certain standards of safety be met by
bridges or buildings.
As such, they focus primarily on the results of engineering practice—on whether the work
satisfies certain standards of quality or safety. Engineering standards may also require that
certain procedures be undertaken to ascertain that specific, measurable levels of quality or safety
are met, or they may require that whatever procedures are used be documented, along with their
results.
Types of Responsibility:
Obligation responsibility
It is a „„positive‟‟ and forward-looking conception of responsibility.
Obligation-responsibility sometimes refers to a person who occupies a position or role of
supervision. We sometimes say that an engineer is in „„responsible charge‟‟ of a design or some
other engineering project.
A person in responsible charge has an obligation to see to it that the engineering project is
performed in accordance with professional standards, both technical and ethical.
Blame responsibility
It is a fundamentally “negative” and backward-looking concept of responsibility.
Unfortunately, we have a tendency to focus on the blaming end of this evaluative spectrum. We
seem more readily to notice shortcomings and failures than the everyday competent, if not
exceptional, performance of engineers. (We expect our cars to start, the elevators and trains to

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run, and the traffic lights to work.) In any case, we speak of an engineer as „„being responsible‟‟
for a mistake or as being one of those „„responsible‟‟ for an accident.
THE STANDARD OF CARE
Engineers have a professional obligation to conform to the standard operating procedures and
regulations that apply to their profession and to fulfill the basic responsibilities of their job as
defined by the terms of their employment.
Sometimes, however, it is not enough to follow standard operating procedures and regulations.
Unexpected problems can arise that standard operating procedures and current regulations are
not well equipped to handle. In light of this, engineers are expected to satisfy a more demanding
norm, the standard of care.
An engineer is not liable, or responsible, for damages for every error. Society has decided,
through case law, that when you hire an engineer, you buy the engineer‟s normal errors.
However, if the error is shown to have been worse than a certain level of error, the engineer is
liable. That level, the line between non-negligent and negligent error, is the „„standard of care.‟‟
A good working definition of the standard of care of a professional is: that level or quality of
service ordinarily provided by other normally competent practitioners of good standing in that
field, contemporaneously providing similar services in the same locality and under the same
circumstances.
Case example
Those in charge of the construction of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency hotel were charged with
professional negligence in regard to the catastrophic walkway collapse in 1981. Although those
in charge did not authorize the fatal departure from the original design of the walkway support, it
was determined that responsible monitoring on their part would have made them aware of the
proposed change. Had it come to their attention, a few simple calculations could have made it
evident to them that the resulting structure would be unsafe.
In this case, it was determined that the engineers in charge fell seriously short of accepted
engineering practice, resulting in a failure to meet the standard of care.
Satisfying the standard of care cannot guarantee that failure will not occur. However, failure to
satisfy the standard of care itself is not acceptable. In any particular case, there may be several
acceptable ways of meeting the standard. Much depends on the kind of project in question, its
specific context, and the particular variables that (sometimes unpredictably) come into play.
BLAME-RESPONSIBILITY AND CAUSATION
Now let us turn to the negative concept of responsibility for harm. We can begin by considering
the relationship of responsibility for harm to the causation of harm.
There are three types of explanations of an accident: the physical cause, organizational causes,
and individuals responsible or accountable for the accident.
The concept of cause is related in an interesting way to that of responsibility.
Corporations can be morally responsible agents:
First, corporations, like people, have a decision-making mechanism.

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Second, corporations, like people, have policies that guide their decision making.
Third, corporations, like people, can be said to have „„interests‟‟ that are not necessarily the
same as those of the executives, employees, and others who make up the corporation.
Organizations can be held responsible in at least three senses:
First, they can be criticized for harms.
Second, an organization that harms others can be asked to make reparations for wrong done.
Finally, an organization that has harmed others is in need of reform.
One worry about treating organizations as morally responsible agents is that individual
responsibility might be lost!
LIABILITY
Concepts of liability and moral responsibility for harm:
First, a person can intentionally or knowingly and deliberately cause harm.
Second, a person can recklessly cause harm by not aiming to cause harm but by being aware that
harm is likely to result.
Third, a still weaker kind of legal liability and moral responsibility is usually associated with
negligently causing harm.
DESIGN STANDARDS
Q: If there is more than one way to satisfy safety standards, how are designers to proceed?
For a profession, the establishment of standards of practice is typically regarded as contributing
to professionalism, thereby enhancing the profession in the eyes of those who receive its
services. At the same time, standards of practice can contribute to both the quality and the safety
of products in industry. However, standards of practice have to be applied in particular contexts
that are not themselves specified in the standards.
Standards of practice allow engineers freedom to adapt their designs to local, variable
circumstances.
As engineers develop innovative designs, we should expect formal standards of practice
sometimes to be challenged and found to be in need of change.
THE RANGE OF STANDARDS OF PRACTICE
Some standards of practice are clearly only local in their scope. However, there is good reason to
believe that professional standards of engineering practice can cross national boundaries.
As technological developments and their resulting products show up across the globe, they can
be expected to be accompanied by global concerns about quality, safety, efficiency, cost-
effectiveness, and sustainability. This, in turn, can result in uniform standards in many areas
regarding acceptable and unacceptable engineering design, practice, and products.
THE PROBLEM OF MANY HANDS
Individuals often attempt to evade personal responsibility for wrongdoing. Perhaps the most
common way this is done, especially by individuals in large organizations, is by pointing out that
many individuals had a hand in causing the harm.

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The argument goes as follows:
„„So many people are responsible for the tragedy that it is irrational and unfair to pin the
responsibility on any individual person, including me.‟‟
It is called the problem of fractured responsibility or (preferably) the problem of many hands.
Principle of responsibility for inaction in groups:
In a situation in which harm has been produced by collective inaction, the degree of
responsibility of each member of the group depends on the extent to which the member could
reasonably be expected to have tried to prevent the action.
Principle of responsibility for action in groups:
In a situation in which harm has been produced by collective action, the degree of responsibility
of each member of the group depends on the extent to which the member caused the action by
some action reasonably avoidable on his part.
IMPEDIMENTS TO RESPONSIBLE ACTION
What attitudes and frames of mind can contribute to less than fully responsible action, whether it
be intentional, reckless, or merely negligent? In this section, we discuss some impediments to
responsible action.
Self-Interest
Engineers are not simply engineers. They are, like everyone else, people with personal hopes and
ambitions that are not restricted to professional ideals.
Taken to an extreme, concern for self-interest is a form of egoism—an exclusive concern to
satisfy one‟s own interests, even at the possible expense of others.
Self-Deception
One way to resist the temptations of self-interest is to confront ourselves honestly and ask if we
would approve of others treating us in the same way we are contemplating treating them.
(„„I‟m not really doing this just for myself.‟‟
„„Everyone takes shortcuts once in a while—it‟s the only way one can survive.‟‟)
This is called self-deception, an intentional avoidance of truths we would find it painful to
confront self-consciously.
Fear
We may be moved by various kinds of fear—fear of acknowledging our mistakes, of losing our
jobs, or of some sort of punishment or other bad consequences. Fears of these sorts can make it
difficult for us to act responsibly.
It is also well known that whistleblowers commonly endure considerable hardship and suffering
as a result of their open opposition. This may involve being shunned by colleagues and others,
demotion or the loss of one‟s job, or serious difficulties in finding new employment (especially
in one‟s profession).
Ignorance
An obvious barrier to responsible action is ignorance of vital information. If an engineer does not
realize that a design poses a safety problem, for example, then he or she will not be in a position
to do anything about it.

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A major conclusion of an investigation report on NASA‟s shuttle Columbia disaster said: “there
was a kind of „„cultural fence‟‟ between engineers and managers. This resulted in high-level
managerial decisions that were based on insufficient knowledge of the facts.”
Egocentric Tendencies
A common feature of human experience is that we tend to interpret situations from very limited
perspectives and it takes special efforts to acquire a more objective viewpoint.
This is what psychologists call egocentricity. It is actually a special form of ignorance.
Microscopic Vision
Like egocentric thinking, microscopic vision embraces a limited perspective. However, whereas
egocentric thinking tends to be inaccurate (failing to understand the perspectives of others),
microscopic vision may be highly accurate and precise but our field of vision is greatly limited.
Engineers sometimes need to raise their eyes from their world of scientific and technical
expertise and look around them in order to understand the larger implications of what they are
doing.
Groupthink
A noteworthy feature of the organizational settings within which engineers work is that
individuals tend to work and deliberate in groups. This means that an engineer will often
participate in group decision making rather than function as an individual decision maker.
Although this may contribute to better decisions („„two heads are better than one‟‟), it also
creates well-known but commonly overlooked tendencies to engage in groupthink—situations in
which groups come to agreement at the expense of critical thinking.
Traditionally, engineers have prided themselves on being good team players, which compounds
the potential difficulties with groupthink.
How can the problem of groupthink be minimized for engineers?
Much depends on the attitudes of group leaders, whether they are managers or engineers (or
both). It is suggested that leaders need to be aware of the tendency of groups toward groupthink
and take constructive steps to resist it.