Essay Questions on Case Studies – Essay 1
Life is filled with risks. Simply leaving ones house and driving somewhere in a car is taking a risk. There is the risk that the car will break down. There is the risk that the car will be involved in an accident, perhaps even a fatal one. Driving however, has been determined by our society to be an acceptable risk. The benefits far outweigh the costs. There are so unacceptable risks, or risks that are either unnecessary to take or are illegal because they involve such a high likelihood of unwanted consequences. In the case of XYZ Hose Co., the company took an unacceptable risk when they switched their product from what had been a demonstratively safe design to a shoddier one that would wear out in several years potentially exposing consumers to the hazardous chemical anhydrous ammonia. The company in its court case claimed that it had done nothing wrong in that it had done nothing wrong since it reported the risks on the label, but the court was not if agreement with this claim ad held XYZ Hose Co liable likely because in the name of profit it had switched from a safer design to an unsafe design. I consider this to be an ethically unacceptable move. In a further display of unethical behavior the company advertised in trade journals that the product had been recalled and they were offering full refunds for it but then negated to report the potentially hazardous outcomes of using the product. Placing an ad with that information could have protected further people from harm but the company opted not to report that likely because they were worries about harming be name of their brand instead of worrying about protecting consumers. XYZ Hose as a company has compromised its ethics and the results hurt them in the long runs
Work Cited:
Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases 4th Edition by Charles E. Harris Jr., Michael S. Pritchard, Michael J. Rabi
Essay Questions on Case Studies – Essay 2
Every product we buy at a store tells multiple stories. An egg tells both a story of a chicken who laid it, the farmer who raises it, the distributor who purchased it and the store that sold it. An iPhone tells multiple stories. It tells a macro story of the company Apple, it tells the story if Steve Jobs, the story of a design team, software engineers, and the place where it was produced. What the software engineers likely did not know when they were designing the iPhone was the conditions under which it would be made. But now with Mike Daisies reporting on This American Life and other journalists investigating the conditions under which Apple products are made. Everyone working for Apple in the western world works hard but is given equitable pay and time off. They do not work slave hours for slave wages. Apple gets around claiming their Chinese labor force as actual employees by contracting the production of its products to other manufacturers, which according to the story on this American life, are deplorable conditions that would not be acceptable on the west. It is my contention that western companies should be required to meet the same standards abroad for its workers, as it must do in their home countries. Apple has failed from within to provide ethical standards on its own. Though I've read that under public scrutiny things are improving, it is too little too late. If apple and similar companies are unable to work out and out into practice their own ethical codes, then government should step in and set the standards by which they most operate.
Work Cited:
Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases 4th Edition by Charles E. Harris Jr., Michael S. Pritchard, Michael J. Rabi
Essay Questions on Case Studies – Essay 2
The environment we live in is composed of many components. One cannot speak of protecting the environment without considering individual protections for animals and plants. Engineers have an ethical responsibility to do their work in a way that protects the environment by protecting the macro world of forests and lakes and rivers and also the micro world if individual plants and animals. I do not believe that ethical codes need to be long drown out and rigid rules, but can be guiding principles that have a wide range of applications. In Buddhism there is a principle called ahisma which means, do no harm." The same principle could be adopted by engineers and the result of a rational application of this principle would apply to the environment. All engineering work that interacts with the environment should either cause no harm to it or should not be done at all. Engineering has brought humanity many fruits, but it is also responsible for much damage to the environment. From oil wells that spill oil into the environment destroying plant an animal life and their habitats for decades to come, to strip mining which has tainted entire mountains. It is necessary for engineers to include thoughts in the environment within their ethical codes in order or their work to not just be about profit but also protection. Currently our world is in a flux with some people adopting ethical codes and other not. All we can control is our individual outlook and how we choose to act on our value system. Before we can do that though, we need to make sure that we have a strong value system and that is why it is important for engineers to adopt a solid code of ethics that includes concern for the environment.
Work Cited:
Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases 4th Edition by Charles E. Harris Jr., Michael S. Pritchard, Michael J. Rabi
