Professional Responsibilities

By Yazan Osama

Click to edit Master subtitle style

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Objectives

Professional Responsibilities

- Confidentiality and proprietary information

- Conflict of interest

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Confidentiality and Proprietary Information

Confidentiality :
Is to keep certain information secret or confidential, as per what is mentioned in the codes of ethics

*Proprietary Information :

*http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/proprietary-information

Is sensitive information that is owned by a company and which gives the company certain competitive advantages. Is critical assets to the success of most businesses.

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Why must some engineering information be kept confidential?

Because most information about how the business run, its products and suppliers, can directly affects the companys ability to compete in the market place

What types of information should be kept confidential?

A- Obvious information includes test results and data, information about upcoming or pre-released products, and designs or formulas for products. B- Non-obvious information includes business information such as number of employees, business strategies, production costs, production yields and identity of suppliers.
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1.

Confidentiality Conditions Signed agreements

What information to keep ? For how long ? The rights of the employer ! My job advancement !

2.

What A

BALANCE ?
the

- the COMPETING NEEDS ENGINEERS RIGHTS

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Conflict of Interest
*Definition : A situation in which a person has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her official duties as a public official, an employee, or a professional. Types of conflict of interest
Actual conflicts Potential conflicts Appearance of a conflict

Source: Chris MacDonald, Michael McDonald, and Wayne Norman, Charitable Conflicts of Interest,Journal of Business Ethics39:1-2, 67-74, August 2002. (p.68

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Follow company guidance and policy

Conflicts of Interest Management

Consult your manager or ask a coworker Consult the professional ethics

Professional Rights
By: Ahmad Master subtitle style Click to edit Hmidan

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Professional Rights
As we mentioned before the word ( Rights ) is defined as : are shared norms of moralities and as engineers have responsibilities, also they have rights.

Those rights can be divided into a lot of sections.

Dependencies of Rights

There are rights the individuals have regardless of professional statuses like:

Right To privacy
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Participat e In activities

Objectio n Of Compan y

Right To Due process

The most fundamental right

The right of professional conscience: involves the right to exercise professional judgment in an ethical way. This right includes many aspects including the (Right of Conscientious Refusal): the right to refuse to engage in an unethical behavior.
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Engineers and the Defense industry

One of the largest employers of engineers world wide is the defense industry which includes weapons. Weapons are designed for one purpose, TO KILL HUMAN BEINGS So its important for the engineer to revise himself before stepping a foot into that path.
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With or against??

Some engineers feel that its not ethical to work on weapons While others find it ethical.

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WHISTLEBLOWING

Click to edit Master subtitle style By:Hussam al Daragma

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WHISTLE BLOWING
Whistle blowing: is the act by an employee of informing the public or higher management of unethical or illegal behavior by an employer or supervisor. There are many cases in using whistleblowing, like disclose government employee is waster or fraud by newspaper. 7/29/12

Types of Whistle blowing

Anonymous Whistle blowing

Acknowledged Whistle blowing

Anonymous Whistle blowing

Acknowledged Whistle blowing

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When should Whistle blowing be attempted?

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Preventing Whistle blowing

We will talk about the whistle blowing from the employers side of view. The employer should seek to minimize the need of whistle blowing as much as he can But how???

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Preventing Whistle blowing

There are four ways to prevent whistle blowing:

There must be a strong corporate ethics culture. 2. There should be clear lines of communication within the corporation. 3. All employees should have 7/29/12 meaningful access to high-level
1.

Click to edit Master subtitle style

Case study

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The BART Transit The Bay Area Rapid Case ( BART) system, its a system which got its genesis in late 1947, when a joint Army-Navy review board recommended the construction of a tunnel underneath San Francisco bay for high speed train service between san Francisco and Oakland. BART was to be a high- tech rail system serving many of the outlying communities along San Francisco bay
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moving on, there were three engineers. They were involved in the design construction of rail beds, tunnels, bridges, etc.; the design and manufacture of the railcars; and the design and implementation of a system for controlling the trains. The problem which will be discussed is the controlling. The system is based on computers controlling the system instead of humans. But the basic problem was:
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NON OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS WERE TESTED Including any innovative engineering design, which also had components which were not tested also, and what increased the problem was that, there was no FAIL-SAFE methods, which implies that, when the system fails, the train stops, but the system was based on REDUNDANCY, which implies that if the system fails the train switches the system and components to back-ups, 7/29/12

there is a little bit to say about the BART management, as they were using the policy of being open, and they gave freedom to the employees to define what their jobs entitled and to work independently, and encounter any concerns that they had to management,, but sadly there was a very diffuse and unclear chain of command that made it difficult for employees to take their concerns to the right person.
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The key players in this story were three engineers:

Hjortsvang, Robert Bruder, and Max Blankenzee.

As they became concerned about the system, and that there was no testing made. The company BART, on the other hand, didnt go after the company which was supposed to test the system, as they trusted it blindly to deliver what was promised.
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In November, the three engineers sent an unsigned memo to several levels of BART management that summarized the problems, and they were suspiciously viewed by the managers. In January 1972, they contacted members of BART board of directors , indicating that their concerns were not taken seriously by lower management.

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