Citation

Durbin PT. Interdiscipl. Sci. Rev. 2008; 33(3): 226-233.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Publisher Maney Publishing)

DOI

10.1179/174327908X366914

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this paper, I try to foment change in terms of engineering and its professional societies as a guild. What I suggest is the need to modify a guild mentality. Many professional groups continue to defend their right to sanction misbehaving members as though we were back in the sixteenth century. The first effect of the change I propose would be to minimise the sanctioning of individual wrongdoers; what would become more important instead would be to maximise service to the larger society as an ethical norm. All engineering codes of ethics seem to include service to humanity as a paramount responsibility. What I advocate is that this needs not only to be given more prominence but to be implemented concretely in specific ways. When engineering professionals get involved in this way, they will of course bring to bear on the problems their expertise. But expertise does not automatically confer a privileged position relative to citizen activists on a particular issue. Finally, I argue that this modification would depend on significant behavioural changes: engineers and their professional societies would need to broaden their outlook, moving beyond a focus on individual misconduct to broader social responsibilities. And this seems to me to amount to a better definition of engineering ethics.