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

Ethical issues in engineering design
operation with the students at the start of their master’s or bachelor’s thesis
project. The task descriptions consisted of information about the goals the
student was expected to achieve, a time schedule and the names of the
supervisors. The partitioning of the design process into a lot of small projects
assigned to different persons seemed to diffuse the responsibility that people felt
for the project and its completion. Students only felt responsible for the part they
were designing.
Dave, Ed, Pete and Thomas in contrast to advisors and students, had vague
task descriptions, as a result it was not obvious to the other team members what
their task was: they seemed to feel responsible for the whole project.
Thomas, Pete and Charlie stated in interviews that they felt responsible for
communication between all the team members. It was very important that the
different team members communicated with each other. Decisions made
concerning one part of the car influenced how other parts of the car should be
designed and because of the rapid changes in the composition of the team, it
was difficult to keep track of who was involved in designing what part. In the
time that Charlie was doing his master’s thesis project the team communicated
more often. Team members knew what the others were doing; there were
discussions on a lot of subjects. This was not completely due to Charlie but he
played a large part in facilitating this communication. Around the time that
Charlie finished his master’s thesis some staff members decided that all the
meetings were costing too much time and the team meetings ceased to be
organised regularly. Without regular meetings only Thomas and Dave had an
overview of what was going on in the project.
4.2.1 ‘If you have thought it through then it is ok’
There was no formal decision-making structure. Team members could decide
informally on details themselves. These details were presented to the other team
members in presentations and design team members could comment on them.
Larger issues were discussed with the team.
56
William: ‘As far as I know, I calculate or design something and discuss
that with Dave and Ed. If they do not have problems with it then it is
decided.’
Charlie: ‘We decided on some rough ideas together. I have made
choices in consultation with the other team members.’
To be part of the decision making process it was necessary to be informed
about which decisions were going to be made based on what information. How
well team members were informed, and informed their colleagues, about what