Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

1.1 Research question and objective
Introduction
Technology has a profound influence on society. New possibilities and new risks
arise as a consequence of the employment of new technologies and products.
Decisions made during design processes shape the possibilities and risks of
products. These decisions are ethically relevant. Some decisions, for example, can
have a large influence on the safety of people using the product. Although there
is extensive literature on design processes and on engineering ethics, specific
attention for ethical issues in design processes is relatively new. A lot of the
literature on engineering ethics has been developed from the study of disasters
such as the Herald of Free Enterprise or cases of whistle-blowing but in these
studies only little attention is given to the design process. In this research I will
focus on daily practice in engineering design. It might seem strange to start this
chapter with the description of a disaster given that I will look at daily
engineering practice, the description of the Herald disaster is only intended to
make it clear that engineers make choices regarding ethical issues during design
processes. These decisions can, but need not, have detrimental consequences.
With or without the actual occurrence of the Herald disaster, the design of this
ro/ro ferry may be seen as an example of daily engineering practice. My research
question is as follows:
What kind of ethical issues come up and how do engineers deal with these ethical
issues during design processes?
This analysis of design practice will contribute to engineering ethics. 2 It will
provide detailed information on which ethical issues play a part in engineering
design and how engineers decide about these issues. This information should
enrich discussions on the moral responsibility of engineers in design processes.
The objective of this research can be summarised as follows:
To provide a contribution to discussions on the moral responsibilities of
engineers in engineering design processes.
The contribution will consist of detailed descriptions of engineering design
practices and a normative analysis of these design practices. As can be seen in
the Herald case there can be regulation pertaining to the design of the product.
This research should provide information for answering, amongst others, the
following question: do engineers behave in a morally responsible manner if they
follow the existing regulations or should responsible engineers do more than
just follow the regulations?
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2 People interested in design research and not engineering ethics might be interested in the
case descriptions because actual design processes are described.
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