This document discusses confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and occupational crime in engineering. It defines confidential information as information that should be kept secret to effectively run an organization. Confidential information includes privileged, proprietary, trade secrets and patent information. Engineers have an obligation to keep clients' and companies' information confidential. Conflicts of interest occur when an engineer's personal interests prevent them from serving clients. Occupational crimes are illegal acts enabled by lawful employment, like industrial espionage and price fixing. The document also discusses engineers' professional rights and responsibilities regarding confidentiality.

1. Confidentiality, Conflicts of
Interest, Occupational Crime
Mrs.V.SrirengaNachiyar, AP(ECE)
Ramco Institute of Technology
Academic Year: 2018-2019

2. Introduction
• A distinguishing characteristic of the
professional is keeping certain information of
the client‟s secret confidentially
• Well organized principle in a profession such
as medicine, where the patients medical
information must be kept confidential
• In law, the defense attorneys must keep client‟s
information confidential and teacher‟s must
keep at least personal information about their
students confidential

3. Cont…
• In case of engineering, the engineers have an
obligation to keep the proprietary information
of their companies and their clients
confidential

4. Confidential information
• Information which is to be kept secret
• Any confidential information should be kept in
secret for the purpose of running the
organization effectively

5. Terms associated with confidential
information:
1. Privileged information:
• Available only on the basis of special privilege
such as the privilege consistent with an
employee who is working on a special
assignment
• It includes information that has not yet become
to public or known within an organization

6. Cont…
2. Proprietary information:
• Owned by a company
• Refers to a new knowledge established within
the organization that can be legally protected
from use by others

7. Cont…
3. Trade secrets:
• Given limited legal protection against
employee or contractor abuse (mis-treatment)
• Secrets may be about designs, technical
processes, plant facilities, quality control
methods, list of customers, business plans etc.

8. Cont…
4. Patents:
• Patents differ from trade secrets
• Legally protect some specific products being
manufactured and sold by other competitors
without any written permission of the patent
holder
• In case of trade secrets, the legal protection is
limited to keeping relationships of
confidentiality and trust

9. Why should engineering
information be kept confidential?
• Most of the information can directly affect the
company‟s ability to compete in the market
place
• These information may be used by a
competitor to capture the market

10. Types of confidential information
1. Obvious information of confidentiality:
This refers to test results and data,
information about the unreleased products,
design of products, formulae for products and
technical processes of the products etc.

11. Types of confidential information
2. Information of lesser confidentiality:
• Includes all business information such as the
number of employees working on a project, the
identity of suppliers, marketing strategies,
production costs and production yields etc

12. Justification and limit of
confidentiality
• The confidentiality obligation can be justified
at two levels.
• First level focuses on three moral
considerations
1. Respect for autonomy
2. Respect for promises
3. Respect for public or social well-
being

13. Cont…
• Respect for autonomy: respect the autonomy
freedom and self-determination of individuals
and corporations in-order to identify their
legitimate control over the private information
of themselves
• Respect for promises: refers to giving respect
for the promises between the employer and the
employees. Employees should not disclose the
promises which are made with their employer

14. Cont…
3. Respect for public or social well-being: for
the sake of the public benefits, this moral
consideration is essential in identifying
confidentiality relationships within
professional circumstances
Example: the patients may get confidence in
doctors, if the doctors do not reveal their
private information. Then only patients can
discuss their personal problems with doctors
freely. It is based on confidentiality

15. Justification and limit of
confidentiality
• The second level is to appeal to the major
ethical theories.
• There are different ethical theories which help
to justify the rights in different ways. They are
1. Right based theories
2. duty-based theories
3. utilitarian theories

16. Cont…
1. Right-based theories:
• Justify employees obligations of
confidentiality by appealing to basic human
rights. Example: whistle-blowing
2. Duty-based theories:
• Stress the basic duties of employers and
employees to upkeep the trust placed

17. Cont…
3. Utilitarian theories:
• Rule – Utilitarian justified the rules of
confidentiality only when such rules produce
the most good for the general public
• Act-Utilitarian focus on each situation when
an employer decides on some matters to be
counted as confidential information

18. Conflicts of interest
• A conflicts of interest occurs when the
employees have an interest to pursue.
• It prevent them from meeting their obligations
to serve the interest of their employers or
clients
• For example: an electronics engineer working
for a state department of communications
might have a financial interest in a company
which has a bid on supply of instruments

19. Types of conflicts of interest
1. Actual conflicts of interest:
• Based on weaker judgment and service
• Refers to the loss of objectivity in decision
making and inability to faithfully discharge
professional duties to employers

20. Types of conflicts of interest
2. Potential conflicts of interest:
• Based on the difference between gifts and
bribes
• Example: an engineer may find himself
becoming a friend gradually with a supplier for
his company
• This kind of potential conflicts also arise when
accepting large gifts from the suppliers

21. Cont…
• A bribe is a large amount of money or
substantial goods offered with the aim of
gaining the contract
• Another form of bribing is kickbacks
• Bribes are said to be illegal or immoral

22. Types of conflicts of interest
3. Apparent conflicts of interest:
• This may occur when an engineer is paid based on
a percentage of the cost of the design and there is
no incentive for him to cut costs.
• There are some other conflicts of interest. They
are:
1. Interest in other companies
2. Moonlighting
3. Insider information

23. Cont…
• Interest in other companies: having an
interest in the business of a competitor or a
sub-contractor
• Moonlighting: deals with a person who is
working in two companies
• Insider information: sensitive conflicts of
interest which consist of using inside
information to make an advantage or to start a
new business opportunity for oneself.

24. Occupational Crime
• Illegal acts that are made possible through a
persons lawful employment
• Secret violation of laws which rules the work
activities
• When these types of crimes are carried out by
office-workers and professionals, it is known
as white-collar crimes
• Most of the occupational crimes are the special
examples of conflicts of interest

25. Occupational Crime
• These kinds of crimes are motivated by
personal greed, corporate ambition, misguided
company loyalty
• Crimes which are done for promoting the
interest of the employers are also called
Occupational Crime
• Another for of Occupational Crime is
employee theft

26. Examples of Occupational Crime
1. Industrial Espionage:
• Means industrial spying.
Example: In northern California, one industrial
area is famous for computer industries (main
production of integrated-circuit microprocessors
or computer chips). It also has a large number of
industrial espionages

27. Cont…
• Reason for industrial espionage:
1. Development of computer chip is
extremely competitive and fast moving
2. Manufacture of the computer chips is the
most expensive one.
3. Computer chips and its parts are very
small. So they can be easily taken away from the
offices by secret means

28. Cont…
4. The enforcement of law has been
ineffective
5. Employees who are revealing secrets
won‟t be carrying out such activities directly.
There are some agents who buy the secrets of
one company and sell them to other competitors

29. Cont…
2. Price fixing:
• The American Government passed the
“Shorman Antitrust Act” in the year 1890, to
stop the companies from jointly setting prices.
• During that period the price fixing was done
buy companies in a joint manner

30. Cont…
3. Endangering lives:
• Employers who expose their employees to
safety hazards usually escape from criminal
penalties
• The companies which are responsible for the
death of people can easily escape by paying
compensation

31. Example for Endangering lives
• Asbestos industry: asbestos fibers cause a lung
disease called asbestosis and an incurable
disease named „mesothelioma‟
• In America during 1940-1979 more than 25
million asbestos workers were found to be
affected by such disease and more than
1,00,000 workers dead.

32. Professional rights
• Engineers have many types of moral rights in
addition to their responsibilities. The rights are
as follows:
1. Human rights
2. Professional rights

33. Human rights
• Should be possessed by engineers by virtue of
being people or moral agents
• These rights includes the basic rights to pursue
legitimate personal interests, right to make a
living and right to privacy

34. Professional rights
• These rights are possessed by virtue of being
professionals having special moral
responsibilities
• Examples:
1. The right to form and express a
professional judgment without any obstacles
2. The right to refuse to participate in
unethical activities

35. Professional rights
3. Right to express professional judgment,
including the right to disagree
4. Right to warn the public about dangers
5. Right to fair recognition and
remuneration for professional services
6. Right to talk publicly about the job and
7. Right to engage in the activities of
professional societies

36. Basic rights of professional conscience
• Most fundamental right of an engineer.
• Right to do what everyone agrees is obligatory
for the professional engineer to do
• Liberty or negative right because it places an
obligation on other people not to interfere with
its exercise

37. Cont…
• Institutional recognition rights:
These rights states that the moral rights of
engineers should be respected by the employers
and should also be given institutional recognition
by them
• Specific rights:
States the importance and the difficulty of
applying the professional rights in some specific
situations.

38. Specific rights are as follows
1. Right of Conscientiousness refusal:
Right to refuse (indicate or show that one
is not willing to do something) to engage in
unethical behaviour. No employer can force the
employee to do something unethical (falsifying
data, forging documents, altering test results,
lying, giving or taking bribes)

39. Specific rights are as follows
2. Right to recognition:
Engineers also have a right to professional
recognition for their work and achievements
This includes fair monetary remunerations
and non-monetary remunerations
This right to professional recognition must
be worked out between employers and
employees in a cooperative manner

40. Cont…
• Foundations/Bases/Principles of
professional rights:
Professional rights and duties can be
justified by reference to ethical theories such as
Right ethics, Duty ethics & Utilitarianism

41. Cont…
• Right ethics states that the general public have
human rights to be warned of dangers to their
safety due to technological innovations.
• Duty ethics, the employers have a duty not to
harm the public by placing barriers in the
works of the engineers who try to meet their
obligations to the public
• Utilitarianism theory argues that the greatest
good is promoted only by permitting engineers
to follow their obligations to the public

42. Employee rights
• Employee rights are any rights, moral or legal
which refer to the status of being an employee
• These rights include some of the professional
rights such as the “Right to disobey the
unethical instructions and the rights to express
their dissatisfaction” on the company policies
without any bad effects from the side of the
employer

43. Employee rights
Choice of Outside activities:
As per this right, all the employees can engage
in non-work or outside activities of their own choice
without any compulsion or deserved punishment
from their employers.
For example: an employer can scold heavily or
threaten his employee when he tries to engage in
outside activities and also an employer can slash out
or fire by words his employee when he does some
activities which harm the image of the company.

44. Cont…
In order to protect the public image, an institution can
put some limits on the right of the employee to engage
in outside activities. They are as follows:
1. When the outside activities of employees leads to
violating to the duties, then the rights of the
employees to engage in outside activities become
limited
2. When the outside activities of employees form a
conflicts of interest then the rights of the employees
become limited
3. Employees have no rights to damage their
employer‟s interest outside the office-hours

45. Employee rights
• Privacy:
The employers should not interfere into the
private life of employees. The following examples
will show how the function of employers conflict
with the right of privacy of employees:
1. Before hiring an employee for the post of
cashier, the employer can ask questions about the
criminal records
2. Before appointing a person in the sales
department the employer should conduct
personality test

46. Cont…
• Privacy:
3. A supervisor can unlock and search the table of his
subordinate without his permission
4. In order to avoid theft, employer has the rights to fix
hidden cameras in the work place
As per theories about right action:
a. An utilitarian will answer that such activity would
make the worker unhappy
b. A duty ethicist argues that this kind of activity breaks
the duty to respect the people and demoralize them
c. The right to privacy is limited by the legitimate
actions of the employer

47. References
1. Mike W. Martin and Roland Schinzinger,
“Ethics in Engineering”, Tata Mc Graw
Hill, New Delhi, 2003.
2. Govindarajan M, Natarajan S, Senthil
Kumar V. S, “Engineering Ethics”,
Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi, 2004.
3. Charles B. Fleddermann, “Engineering
Ethics”, Pearson Prentice Hall, New
Jersey, 2004.