Engineers Ethics to Engineering Ethics; a Decade in Japan

160

Kiyoshi SHIBATA

Chiba Institute of Technology 2-17-1 Tsudanuma, Narashino-shi

275-0016, Japan +81-47-478-0344

kyshibt@sky.it-chiba.ac.jp

ABSTRACT The introductory period of Japanese engineering ethics education

was briefly reviewed, and Japanese engineers attitude and its

effect on engineering ethics was discussed , comparing those in

the United States. Then, based on the survey of published

textbooks and syllabus for engineering ethics course in Japan, the

elements in the engineering ethics were extracted, and

approaching directions depending on who and to whom teaches

was analyzed. Various approaches should be determined,

depending on the students specialty, interest, and grade.

However, consideration for the side effects of technology would

be most important. Social context of the engineering, in other

words, aim of the application of each technology, should be

focused in engineering ethics. Of course, to be an ethical engineer

is desirable, but ethical technology is essential. In that sense, it is

also essential to educate ordinal non-engineering people to what is

ethical technology/engineering.

Keywords Engineering ethics, Engineering Education, Syllabus, Design,

Compliance, Japanese engineer, STS

1. INTRODUCTION In the past decade, most engineering departments in Japanese

universities and technical colleges have introduced

engineering/engineers ethics into their curriculum. There are two

main reasons for the introduction and rapid spread of engineering

ethics. The first is the collapse of reputation in safety legends in

Japanese engineering products in mid 1990s. Japanese engineers

used be regarded as highly trust-worthy people and engines for the

economic success of Japan. However various technological

accidents or disasters destroyed the trust in engineers. For

example, molten sodium used in fast reactor Monju was leaked

because of primitive and incorrect miss-design and important

information on that accident was not disclosed. The 1990s also

witnessed the recruiting of highly educated scientists with

advanced knowledge by a cult group involved in terrorism.

The earthquake in 1995 destroyed highway bridges, although

engineers had insisted that they would never collapse. As a result

of such technological accident, Japanese engineers lost their

prestige. therefore, it became necessary to rebuild their credibility.

Second, the Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education (JABEE; established in 1999) introduced engineering ethics into

programme in order to exchange international mutual recognition

with accreditation agencies abroad. JABEE has defined

engineering ethics as an understanding of the effects and impact

of engineering on society and nature as one of the seven items in

its learning and educational objectives criteria for accreditation [6].

In this paper, the trends in Japanese engineering ethics education

are reviewed on the basis of curriculum that are publicly available

on web-site and in published textbook.

In addition to the engineering ethics, various courses have been

offers, such as Engineers Ethics, Ethics in Engineering, Legal and

Ethical Issues in Engineering or Ethics of Techno-scientist, which

deal with similar subjects. In this paper, the term Engineering

Ethics is used to represent these educational activities in a broad

sense.

2. JAPANESE ENGINEER AND ETHICS

2.1 Starting Engineering Ethics Courses in

Japan According to a survey by conducted by Shirabe [10] in 2003,

more than 70% of civil and electronic engineering departments

had introducing or been preparing to introduce the engineering

ethics course. The engineering ethics education in Japan had been started by introducing that in US. The first Japanese

textbook of Engineering Ethics was a translation of Harris et al.s

textbook in 1998[3]. More than five American textbooks on

Engineering Ethics were translated in three years.

The Institution of Professional Engineers, Japan contributed a lot

towards the introduction of engineering ethics in Japan. Many

engineering societies established a code of ethics or ethical

committees around 2000, as listed in Table 1. Note that Japan

Society of Civil Engineers framed the principles and code of

practice in 1938, in which the ethics was included as one of the

components.

WEE2011, September 27-30, 2011, Lisbon, Portugal.

Editors: Jorge Bernardino and Jos Carlos Quadrado.

mailto:kyshibt@sky.it-chiba.ac.jp

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Table 1 Establishment of an ethical code and committee in

Japanese major engineering societies

Engineers Society Code Committee

The Institute of Professional Engineers, Japan 1961 1961

Information Processing Society of Japan 1996

The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan 1998

Architectural Institute of Japan 1999 2004

The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers 1999 2000

Japan Society for Civil Engineers 1999 1999

Japan Society for Engineering Educations 1999

The Chemical Society of Japan 2000

Atomic Energy Society of Japan 2001 2001

The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan 2002 2002

The Japan Society for Precision Engineering 2003

The Japanese industry is keen on ethical issue as well. According

to a survey conducted by Kurata in 2003[7], 76.7% of 133 firms

had established code of ethics or conduct and 31.6% had

introduced ethical education as their employees training program.

2.2. Japanese Engineers Ethics As mentioned above, Japanese engineering ethics education was

started through the introduction of American engineering ethics,

which aimed to promote the social status of engineers through the

good practices of individual engineer. When the term engineering

ethic was introduced in Japan, it was translated to engineers

ethics in Japanese. It is quite understandable how the Japanese

considered it to mean ethics of engineer instead of those of

engineering.

However, the attitude of Japanese engineers is quite different from

that of American engineers. Most Japanese engineers are working

in and subject to the standards of private corporations or public

organizations, and have strong loyalty to them. They are

introduced by the companys name or their position in the

company, not by their name. Furthermore, they work very

cooperatively as a team member. In general they have strong

confidence as experts but little conscious as professionals and

contractors in society. They are thought to be highly reliable

individuals but may not be treated well in an economic and social

sense. Most Japanese politicians and executives in big firms are

not engineers, though there have been several successful

engineers such as Soichiro Honda of Honda Motor Co., Ltd. or

Masaru Ibuka of SONY Corporation.

The Institution of Professional Engineers and many other

engineering societies in Japan have established a code of ethics, as

previously mentioned. Although their names in English are

engineers societies, they are actually academic societies rather

than professional societies. The most Japanese engineers belong to private firms. As a result, they cannot act individually and be an

independent professional, which is a fundamental concept in

American engineering ethics. Individual engineers ethics, in

other words micro-level engineering ethics, do not always work

effectively for all Japanese engineers.

The responsibility of engineers toward their profession is said to

be a very special and unique one, because of the growing

influence of engineering practice and products on society. This

special responsibility is often derived from the social-contract

model, and is emphasized so that individual engineer should take

it seriously. In the textbooks, the story about R. Boisjoly of the

space shuttle Challenger explosion or W.L. Messurier of City

Coop Tower is often referred to as a good example of ethical

individual engineers. Such heroic engineers, however, are not as

common in Japan.

Some private firms are eager to introduce ethics education into

their employees training program, but these programs are mostly

limited to the micro-level and focus on compliance. Thus, the

macro- and meta-levels are left to education in universities. On

the other hand, Japanese university students have very limited

experience in engineering practices and have little ability to image

up the realty of the job that engineers encounter. Therefore, the

possibility of educating ethical engineer in Japanese university

was widely discussed. The author himself has previously argued

that ethical education of the client or customer would have been

much more effective [9].

As discussed in this section, the American model of an individual

ethical engineer is not always fit into the professional profile of

Japanese engineers. Thus, engineering ethics has not been well

systemized yet, and is just an accumulation of related topics.

Under these circumstances, what should be taught to establish

engineering ethics? How do we teach? Or who is the most suitable

teacher? The searching for another approach to engineering ethics

education has started.

3. ELEMENTS AND APPROACHES IN THE COURSES

3.1 Key Elements and Directional Approaches

Since the textbook by Harris[3] was translated into Japanese in

1998, numerous textbooks have been published in Japan. Ishihara

[5], and Fujiki and Sugihara [2] published excellent reviews on

the textbooks. According to Ishiharas survey on major textbooks

published up to 2002, he pointed out the necessity of Japanese

case studies, applying risk communication studies and clarifying

the relationship between business ethics and engineering ethics.

Fujiki and Sugihara surveyed 81 books published by August, 2010

and discussed the standpoint of each authors toward the difference

between engineers in Japan and the United States, and emphasized

the necessity of further discussion on the social status and

responsibility of engineers.

In this study, to review the recent extent of engineering ethics in

Japan, key and general elements in about 40 textbooks were

extracted and categorized. These elements do not appear in all

books but are commonly found in many of them. The extracted

elements cover all engineering ethics in Japan.

The key elements were mapped, as shown in Figure 1. They were

positioned according to two axes: individual-institutional and

idealistic-practical; however their positions are not based on

quantitative but qualitative evaluation. The individual-

institutional axis can be said to be micro-macro.

.

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Moral Theory Research Ethics

Ideal Practical

Code of EthicsIndividual

Organizational, Institutional

Professional Ethics

Prevention EngineeringSafety Design

Engineering HistoryScience History

CommunicationAccountability

Social context Corporate EthicsCSR

Whistle Blowing

Managerial EngineeringQC, PC, Labour Safety

Applied EthicsEnvironmental EthicsIT Ethics, Bio Ethics

STS

Legal RegulationIntellectual Property, Product Liability, Technical Standard

Figure 1 Elements dealt in engineering ethics education in

textbooks

The position of each element in Figure 1 reflects the target and

background of the education, and the elements are classified by

the four different directional approaches listed in Table 2.

Table 2 Directional approaches in engineering education

approaches elements

Traditional ethics,

Applied ethics(Environment, Information, Bio)

Research ethics

Code of ethics/proctice of engineers society, Profesional

ethics(Physician, Lawer, )

Whistle blowing

CSR, Coperate ethics, Business ethics

Product liability, Intellectual properties, Legal regulation,

Technical standard

Prevention engineering, Safety design

Managerial engineering(QC, PC, Labor safety)

Technology assessment

Interaction b/w science, techlonogy and society

History of science and technology

Consumers' ethics

Theoretical ethics

Compliance

Design

STS

The theoretical ethics approach, including classical moral theory,

focuses on establishing a rational action standard for each

engineer who is facing conflicts. In some textbooks, classics in

ethics, such as Aristoteles or Kant, are briefly introduced, while in

some others, relatively deep discussions on philosophy and

technology are provided. The negative effects of new technology

are often discussed from the stand point of applied ethics.

The design approach emphasizes engineering practice that avoids

mistakes and unintentional accidents, by developing each

engineers skill and consciousness. Hatamura [41] proposed new

methodologies for preventing accidents or failures on the basis of

inter-disciplinary analysis. He and his co-workers have collected

more than 100 cases to develop a data base [4], which became a

good resource for the case study of this approach.

The compliance approach focuses on studying regulation rules

and technical standards which each engineer should know well.

Product liability, intellectual property, and quality control are the

major topics addressed under this approach. Business ethics and

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are closely related to this

approach.

The last one is the STS approach. STS is acronym of Science,

Technology and Society, or Science and Technology Studies, and

a trans-disciplinary approach for discussing the issues that science

and technology brings in society. The history of technology and

science is another major resource used in this approach.

3.2 Approaching Directions by Teachers

Next, the type of contents and approaches used by each instructor

takes is analyzed by collecting and extracting key elements of the

syllabus, which are available on various websites. Sixty six

syllabus were analyzed in this work.

The frequency at which these key elements appear in the syllabus

is shown in Figure 2. This figure only indicates rough tendencies,

since the numbers were not strictly or subjectively counted. Safety

design, business ethics, whistle blowing, intellectual properties

and product liability were frequently found in the syllabus. The

results indicate that the prevention engineering is widely adopted

in Japanese engineering ethic courses.

In terms of the approaches discussed in the previous section, the

design approach and compliance approach are employed most of

the courses, while ethics approach and STS approach are offered

in a limited number of courses.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Moral Theory

Normal Action

Social Contract

Professional Ethics

Moral Theory

Environmantal Ethics

Information Ethics

Bio Ethics

Resxearch Ethics

Engineers Ethics

Othres

Environmant & Resources Issue

Accident

Risk

Safety

Quality managementi

Engineers Duty

Communicatoin Skil

Regal Aspect

Product Liability

Intellectual Properties

Quality/Production Management

Corporate Ethics

Whistle browing

Conf lict in Enterprise

Risk/Crisis manegenment

Conf lict in Enterprise

Code of Ethics

Case Study

STS

History of Technology and

Social Context

Public Comunication

Figure 2 Frequency of the keywords in the syllabus

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There are almost no specialists in engineering ethics education in

Japan. The teachers of these courses are classified into three

groups. One is scholar of humanities, such as an ethicist or

philosopher. Almost all of them are teachers in universities. The

second is engineers in industry. They are mostly part-time

instructors, who are invited from industry, or professors who have

a long industrial experience. The last group is engineering

scientists, teaching engineering at universities. Among 66 courses,

14 were identified as the humanities scholars, 17 as engineers in

industry, and 25 as engineering scientists.

Figure 3 shows the relative composition of the four approaches by

each teacher type. Again this figure does not illustrate statistically

significant results, but only tendency.

0% 50% 100%

Humanities Scholars

Engineers in Industry

Engineering Scientists

Total

Ethics & Applied Ethics

Engineering Design

Compliance

STS

Figure 3 Preferred approaches by the teacher background

Industrial engineers and engineering scientist employed design

and compliance approach whereas engineers in industry seem to

have a preference for the compliance approach that might be

because of importance in their daily practice.

Humanities scholars prefer theoretical ethics as it can be predicted

easily and shows some affinity toward the STS approach. It is

obvious that they are not experts in design practice. In the

textbooks written by ethical scholars, classical ethical theories are

almost always included, but as far as approaches found in the

syllabus are concerned, even the ethicists do not spend much time

teaching such classical theories. The discussion on the applied

ethics for environmental, information or biological technologies

may be useful to imply the ethical way of thinking.

Engineers in industry often engage in education, teaching

practical engineering skills such as prevention technology or

safety design. They are keen about the importance of legal aspects

such as product liability, intellectual properties and safety

standards. The author has a hypothesis, although it cannot be

validated, that regulatory documents are well established and easy

to include in educational materials in the compliance approach. At

the same time, many of them emphasize individual effort. This

may be because highly ethical engineers are hired as instructors of

such courses. The number of engineers in industry who take the

STS approach is quite small.

Professors of engineering are of course involved in engineering

ethics and show a similar tendency as the engineers in industry in

the choice of approach. They may feel more comfortable teaching

innovative technology in prevention engineering rather than

established regulation to insist on their originality. Some, however,

seem to be embarrassed by the selection of teaching materials.

The author has heard several of them saying that omnibus-type

courses would be preferable, in which several teachers take part

depending on their specialties and interests.

As far as the teaching method is concerned, group discussion has

been introduced in about one third of the classes that were

investigated. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has

been encouraging the ability in discussion to promote the

development of new technologies and business. Written report

assignments, presentation based on group discussions and

examinations are employed as the bases for evaluation. Group

discussions, debates, presentations and writing assignments have

been used as methods for introducing business skills. It is possible

to assess the students study performance, but quite difficult to

assess the performance of the education over a long term. There is

no clear evidence that there has been a drastic decrease in

engineering accidents or miss-conduct among engineers. It is still

too early to evaluate the effect of engineering ethics education.

4. FROM ENGINEERS ETHICS TO ENGINEERING ETHICS

As discussed above, various approaches have been taken towards

engineering ethics education in Japanese universities. Since the

need for engineering ethics education rose rapidly, ad hoc

response was required, when engineering ethics was introduced in

Japan. The engineering ethics education was started by

professionals who were available and interested, and they chose

what they viewed as the best possible way in each course. Each

approach and element is, of course, important, useful and

meaningful. However, emphasis should be carefully placed on

tailoring the elements and approaches, depending on student

backgrounds, majors, grades, future plans and quality of work.

Currently, there is no clear guideline for constructing an adequate

study programme.

Consideration of the side effects of technology on society should

be one of the most important elements. Communication between

the general public and engineers should be developed to respond

to the anxiety and lack of trust of the general public. According to

the governmental survey in 2008, 69.6% of the Japanese public

felt that progress in science and technology move was too fast to

catch up with it [8]. In the social context of engineering, in other

words, the aim of the application of each technology should be

focused on engineering ethics. Of course, to be an ethical engineer

is desirable, but ethical technology is essential. Therefore, it is

important to educate non-engineering people on what is ethical

technology/engineering. Ethical requirements imposed by society

will make engineers and engineering more ethical. In that sense,

engineering ethics education based on the STS approach for non-

engineering people is another important task. An understanding

ethics in engineering should be established and possessed by both

engineers and ordinal public.

Engineers should learn about a societys cultural and ethical

profile, economic situation, and historical background, and

discuss the conflict that has been generated by technology and

society, including how to solve them. These measures will shift

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the focus of engineering ethics education from retroactive to

proactive.

The desired aim of public education is not to promote an

understanding of science, but to facilitate the discussion on what

is desirable science and technology, and engineering. Ethical

requirements from society will make engineer and engineering

more ethical. To accomplish this, the concept of public

engagement in science and technology policy, such as the

Consensus Meeting or Science Caf, has been introduced in some

engineering ethics course in Japan. Answering the question What

kind of world we want to live in? should be the ultimate goal of

engineering ethics.

5. REFERENCES

[1] Association for the Study of Failure, http://www.shippai.org/index1.php, May 22, 2011

[2] Fujiki,A. and Sugihara,K., On the transition of the textbooks of engineering ethics from 1998 to 2010 in Japan, Journal of

Engineering Ethics, Vol.7, (2010),pp23-71

[3] Harris,C.E, Pritchard,M.S., Rabins,M.J. Engineering Ethics; Concept and Cases Ver.3. Wadsworth, 2008

[4] Hatamura,Y., Structure and Expression of Failure Knowledge Databese,

http://www.sozogaku.com/fkd/en/index.html, May 22, 2011

[5] Ishihara,K., A Survey of textbooks on engineering ethics, Journal of Japanese Society for Science and Technology

Studues,Vol.2,(2003) , pp138-148

[6] Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education, http://www.jabee.org/english/OpenHomePage/Criteria_Bach

elor_2009.pdf, , May 22, 2011

[7] Kurata, N., Engieers ethics and corporate ethics, IEEJ Journal, Vol.124,(2004),pp638-641

[8] Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, WHITE PAPER ON SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY 2004

http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpaa200401/in

dex.html, May 22, 2011

[9] Shibata. K. and Yagi, K., Is engineering ethics to develop super-engineers? Materia Japan, Vol.42,(2003), pp693-695

[10] Shirabe, M., Current status and future task in engineering ethics education in university, IEEJ Journal,

Vol.124,(2004),pp634-637