The document outlines the responsibilities and rights of engineers, emphasizing their internal responsibilities to employers, such as collegiality, loyalty, respect for authority, and collective bargaining, as well as external responsibilities like confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and occupational crimes. It details the importance of ethical practices in engineering, including how engineers must navigate complex situations involving confidentiality and conflicts of interest while maintaining professional standards. Additionally, the document discusses occupational crimes, providing examples and their implications for the engineering profession.

1. RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS OF ENGINEERS
By
SHIFANA FARVEEN. I(19TD1535)
CST81-PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

2. RESPONSIBILITIES
In practice engineers’ Responsibilities include much
more than preventing and responding to accidents. In
fact, during professional career of an engineer there
are many responsibilities and rights.
Responsibilities include both
 Internal – responsibilities to employers
 External – responsibilities to the outside world

3. INTERNAL RESPONSIBILITIES of
ENGINEERS
In today’s competitive world, the success of any organization
relies on its team-play. Working effectively as an engineer for a
project requires the ethics of team-play. Team-play involves
virtues of:
1. Collegiality
2. Loyalty
3. Respect for authority and
4. Collective Bargaining.

4. COLLEGIALITY
Collegiality as “a kind of connectedness grounded in
respect for professional expertise and in a commitment
to the goals and values of he profession”.
It is the tendency to support and cooperate with the
colleagues.
Elements of collegiality
 Respect to the ideas and work of others: This
results in support and cooperation with one’s
colleagues. One gets back the support and
cooperation in return, and this is mutually
beneficial .
 Commitment to moral principles: Commitment is
towards moral decisions, actions, goals of the
organization and values of the profession.

5.  Connectedness: It means the shared commitment and mutual
understanding. It ensures the absence of egoism and paves way for
progress for both.
Generally collegiality should be encouraged among engineers because
1. It is an influential value to promote the aims of professions.
Therefore it strengthens an engineer’s motivation to live up to
professional standards .
2. It is more valuable as many individuals jointly working for the
goodness of the public and society.

6. LOYALTY
It is the quality of being true and faithful in one’s
support.
It is more a function of attitudes, emotions and a
sense of identity.
It is more a function of attitudes, emotions and a
sense of identity.
Two senses of Loyalty
1. Agency loyalty
2. Identification loyalty

7. AGENCY LOYALTY
 It is an obligation to fulfill his/her contractual duties to the
employer. The duties are specific actions one is assigned, and in
general cooperating with others in the organization.
 It consists of several obligations to employers. But, for the
engineers, the paramount obligation is still “the safety, health, and
welfare of the public”.
IDENTIFICATION LOYALTY
 In contrast to agency loyalty, identification loyalty is much
concerned with attitudes, emotions and a sense of personal identity
as it does with actions.
 This is more a virtue than an obligation. It is all right when the
organization work for productivity or development of community.
 Working together in falsification of records or serious harm to the
public, does not merit loyalty

8. RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY
 Authority can be defined as the legal right to command
action by others and to enforce compliance.
 The authority fixes the personal responsibility and
accountability uniquely on each person. This is necessary to
ensure progress in action.
INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY
 The characteristics features of institutional authority are that
they allocate money and other resources and have liberty in
execution.
 It is the right given to the employees to exercise power, to
complete the task and force them to achieve their goals.

9. EXPERT AUTHORITY
It is the possession of special knowledge, skills and
competence to perform a job thoroughly, the advice
on jobs, and is a staff function.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
International Labor Organization has defined
collective bargaining as “negotiation about working
conditions and terms of employment between an
employer and one or more representative employee’s
with a view to reaching agreement”

10. PROCESS OF COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING
1. Presenting the charter of demands by
the union on behalf of the constituent
elements.
2. Negotiations at the bargaining table
3. Reaching an agreement

11. ARGUMENTS OVER UNIONS
There are two arguments in favor of and against unions.
In favor of unions
 It plays a vital role in achieving high salaries and improved
standard of living of employees.
 Gives employees a greater sense of participation in organization
decision making.
 Can act as counterforce to any radical political movements that
exploit the employees.
Against unions
 It Shatter the economy of a country by placing distorting
influences on efficient uses of labor.
 Remove negotiation between employers and employees.

12. EXTERNAL RESPONSIBILITIES
The responsibilities to the outside world include:
1.Confidentiality
2.Conflict of Interest and
3.Occupational crimes.
CONFIDENTIALITY
 It is widely accepted that the engineers have an obligation to
keep certain information of the employer/client secret or
confidential.
 In the same way, engineers have an obligation to keep
proprietary information of their employer/client confidential.

13. Confidential information is information deemed desirable to
keep secret.
Terms related to confidential information.
1.Privileged information – information available to an
employee who is working on a special assignment.
2.Proprietary information – PROPERTY or OWNERSHIP
- a new knowledge established within the organization that can
be legally protected from use by others
3.Trade secrets – these are given limited legal protection
against employee or contractor abuse.
4.Patents – legally protect specific products from being
manufactured and sold by competitors

14. Types of information should be kept
confidential are:
 Information about the unreleased products.
 Test results and data about the products.
 Design or formulas for products.
 Data about technical processes.
 Organization of plant facilities .
 Business information

15. JUSTIFICATION AND LIMITS OF
CONFIDENTIALITY
FIRST LEVEL:
It focuses on 3 moral considerations.
a. Respect for Autonomy – self determination of individuals and
companies in order to recognize their legitimate control over
some information.
b. Respect for promises – signing contracts
c. Respect for Public well-being – when companies maintain
some confidentiality concerning their products.

16. SECOND LEVEL:
 Justification by Right Ethicists – justify employees’
obligations of confidentiality by appealing to basic human
rights
 Justification by Duty Ethicists – insist on the basic duties
of both employers and employees to maintain the trust and to
commit themselves to an employment agreement they have
made. Justification by Utilitarians .
 View by rule Utilitarians – rules governing confidentiality as
justified to the extent that such rules protect the most good for
the greatest number of people.

17. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:
 An individual has two or more desires that all interests
cannot be satisfied given the circumstances.
 Professional conflicts of Interest are situations where
professionals have an interest, if pursued, could keep
them from meeting one of their obligations to their
employers.
For Example-
 An Employee working in a company depositing
substantial investment in a competitor’s company

18.  NSPE says engineers shall not accept financial or
other considerations from material or equipment
suppliers for specifying their product.
 Engineers shall not accept commission or
allowances directly or indirectly from the
contractors or other parties dealing with client or
employers.

19.  ABET says, Engineer shall not solicit nor accept gratuities
directly or indirectly from the contractors.
 Their agents or other parties dealing with their clients or
employers in connection with work from which they are
responsible .

20. OCCUPATIONAL CRIME:
 Occupational crimes are illegal acts made
possible through one’s lawful employment.
 It is the secretive violation of laws regulating
work activities.
 When committed by office workers or professionals, occupational
crime is called ‘white collar crime’.
 These crimes are motivated by personal greed, corporate ambition,
misguided company loyalty etc.

21.  These crimes impinge on various aspects such as
professionalism, loyalty, conflicts of interest and
confidentiality.
EXAMPLES OF OCCUPATIONAL CRIMES:
 Price Fixing
 Endangering Lives &
 Industrial espionage(spying)

22. PRICE FIXING:
 While fixing price for a
product Or service, sometimes
all competitors come together and
jointly set the prices to be
charged. These are called as
“Pricing Cartels”.
 In order to avoid these crime
laws areenforced which forbids companies from
Jointly fixing prices.

23. CASE ILLUSTRATION:
Manville Corporation, the largest producer of asbestos in
U.S, knew that asbestos dust was harmful for their employees
health. It could cause a lung disease named “Asbestosis” and an
incurable cancer named “Mesothelioma”.
The company kept this as secret from the employees and the
public. During 1940-1979, over 27 million workers were
exposed to asbestos and more than 10,000 workers have died.

24. INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE:
 Espionage means Spying.
 It refers to secret gathering of information in order to
influence relationships between two entities.
 Acquisition of other’s secret to one’s advantage is
Espionage.
 The vital information are secretly gathered/theft through
espionage agents called spies.
 The information may be intellectual properties such as
designs, prototypes, formulae, software codes,
passwords, manufacturing process, marketing plans,
supplier/contractor details etc.