moral and ethics in engineering profession

Assignment #1
An Airplane Manufacturing Case

Case #1 : An Airplane Manufacturing Case

An air plane manufacturer has spent a great deal of money
developing new airplane. The company badly needs cash because
it is financially overextended. If it does not get some large orders
soon, it will have to close down part of its operation. Doing that
will put several thousand workers out of jobs. The result will be
disastrous not only for the workers but also for the town in which
they live. The president of the company has been trying to
interest the government of a foreign country in a large purchase.
He learns that one of the key government ministers in charge of
making the final decision is heavily in debt because of gambling.
He quietly contacts that minister and offers him RM10 million in
Cash if he awards the contract for 5 planes to his firm. The
Money is paid and the contract is awarded. The president argues
that his action is justifiable because the business, the workers job,
and the town were all saved; the minister was able to pay his
debts; and the foreign country received the planes it needed. The
Good produced, he argues, is greater than any harm done
by the payment to the minister. Is he correct?

Discussion Questions
1. Did the airplane manufacturer use a utilitarian analysis
to justify his action. Apply act-utilitarianism and
rule utilitarianism in resolving the moral problem.
2. Do you find utilitarianism a plausible approach in
deciding the morality of an action? Why or why not?

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

1. Accurately state the action to be evaluated.
2. Identify all those who are directly and indirectly affected
by the action.
3. Consider whether there is some dominant, obvious
consideration that carries such importance as to
outweigh other considerations.
4. Specify all the pertinent good and bad consequences of
the action for those directly affected, as far as into the
future as appears appropriate, and imaginatively
consider various possible outcomes and the likelihood of
their occurring.
5. Weigh the total good results against the total bad
results, considering quantity, duration, propinquity or
remoteness, fecundity, and purity for each value, and
the relative importance of these values.

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

6. Carry out a similar analysis, if necessary, for those
indirectly affected, as well as for society as a whole.
7. Sum up all the good and bad consequences . If the
action produces more good than bad, the action is
morally right; if it produces more bad than good, it is
morally wrong.
8. Consider, imaginatively, whether there are various
alternatives other than simply doing or not doing the
action, and carry out a similar analysis for each of the
other alternative actions.
9. Compare the results of the various actions. The action
that produces the most good among those available is
the morally proper action to perform.

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

What is the moral Issue?
Bribery from a utilitarian point of view
What we wish to evaluate?
What the statements in this case try to implicitly
advocating
- Is it that all firms should be allowed to bribe
government Officials when they have the
opportunity to do so?
- or perhaps the rule is that only firms in
financially difficulty should be allowed to bribe
govt. officials.
The President used a truncated act utilitarian approach.

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

Those affected by the action:

1. An important Govt. official
2. The foreign govt. that
purchased planes
3. The air plane company
4. Workers at the plant
5. The town

1. Better off financially

2. Good design and
workmanship
3. Got the contract and
stayed in business
4. Did not lose the jobs
5. Benefited

The argument appears to be utilitarian as

it evaluates the results of the action,
weigh the good against the bad , and
argues that the good outweighs the bad.

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

1. An important Govt. official

2. The foreign govt. that
purchased planes
3. The air plane company
4. Workers at the plant
5. The town
6. The competitors

The argument appears to be utilitarian as

it evaluates the results of the action,
weigh the good against the bad , and
argues that the good outweighs the bad.

STEPS OF A UTILITARIAN ANLYSIS

Characterizing the action?

Act utilitarianism holds that each individual action,
in all its correctness and in all its details, is what should
subjected to the utilitarian test.
Act utilitarianism demands that we guess all
consequences of a particular act something we
cannot possibly do with any degree of accuracy.

Rule utilitarianism maintains that the proper principles

of right and wrong are those that would maximize
happiness if society adopted them.
Rule utilitarianism asks us to consider the general
consequences of the kind of act in question

Analysis
What would be the consequences of the alternative action
- not to give the bribe ?

contract might not have been awarded

all of the bad consequences indicated would have
taken place
no good would have been achieved

The president used a truncated act

utilitarian approach. The argument
may sound plausible . Nevertheless,
our moral standard tell us that
bribery is immoral.

Analysis
Is it that utilitarian does not work in this case?
IT WORKS! But it has not been properly used here.
one sided version of the situation
it describes the thinking of the president of the company
and are not the same as a moral point of view
The moral point of view is objective and considers
all consequences of an action for all the people
affected by it.

Must broaden the picture!

Analysis
Is it that utilitarian does not work in this case?
IT WORKS! But it has not been properly used here.
one sided version of the situation
it describes the thinking of the president of the company
and are not the same as a moral point of view
The moral point of view is objective and considers
all consequences of an action for all the people
affected by it.

Must broaden the picture!

Evaluation
The dominant consideration in evaluating all of them is the
harm done to the system of doing business

to the notion of fair competition

to the equality of opportunity assumed in business
to the other competing firms and their employees
to the integrity of govt. officials

Full examination of the consequences of the presidents

action will show the action to be morally unjustifiable.
what are the consequences of the bribe for the public official?
consider the effects on the general public.
consider the effect on the general system of bidding
.. On the practice of competition,
on the integrity of those engaged in these practices

Evaluation
The use of utilitarian calculation does not provide an
automatic guarantee of morality.
To produce a morally justifiable result, it must be
impartial takes into account the immediate and future
consequences for all concerned.

 Consequentialist moral theories see the moral

rightness of actions as a function of their results. If the
consequences are good, the action is right; if they are
bad, the action is wrong.
Nonconsequentialist moral theories see other factors as
also relevant to the determination of right and wrong.
Utilitarianism maintains that the morality right action is
the one that provides the greatest happiness for all those
affected .
In an engineering and other organizational context,
utilitarianism provides an objective way to resolve
conflicts of self-interest and encourages realistic and
result-oriented approach to moral decision making.

 Critics contend that

(a) utilitarianism is not really workable
(b) some actions are wrong even if they produce good
results, and
(c) utilitarianism incorrectly overlooks considerations of
justice and distribution of happiness.
Kants theory is an important example of a purely
nonconsequentialist approach to ethics. Kant held that
only when we act from duty does our action have moral
worth. Good will is the only thing that is good in itself.

Kants categorical imperative states that an action is

morally right if and only if we can will that maxim
represented by the action be a universal law.

Kants categorical imperative is binding on all rational

creatures, regardless of their specific goals or desires
and regardless of the consequences.

Two alternative formulations of the categorical

imperative :
1. An act is right only if the actor would be willing to
be so treated if the positions of the parties were
reversed.
2. One must always act so as to treat other people
as ends, never merely as means.
Kants ethics injects a humanistic element into moral
decision making and stresses the importance of acting
on principle and from a sense of duty.

Kants critics worry that :

(a) Kants view of moral worth is too restrictive
(b) the categorical imperative is not a sufficient test
of right and wrong
(c) the distinction between testing people as means
and respecting them as end in themselves may
be difficult to identify in practice.

Nonconsequentialists typically emphasize moral rights

entitlements to act in a certain way or to have others
act in a certain way.
Rights can be negative, protecting us from outside
interference, or they can be positive , requiring others
to provide us with certain benefits or opportunities.

John Rawls theory provides one approach to distributive

justice.

The principles of distributive justice:

1. each person has an equal right to the most
extensive basic liberties compatible with similar
liberties for all, and
2. social and economic inequalities are arranged so
that they are both
a. to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
persons, and
b. attached to offices and positions open to all
under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity.