What are the questions to be answered by Engineers in their role as experimenters?
• How does an industry affect the environment? • How far it can be controlled? • Whether protective measures are available and implemented? • Whether engineers can ensure safe & clean environment?
How is environment degraded?
1. By causing injuries to nature i. Usually this damage is caused slowly ii. Sometimes this also happens in sudden strikes 2. Misuse of our resources, fouling our environment 3. Practicing growths in consumptions and population leading to non-availability of resources 4. Industrial activity denudes land(to destroy all plant and animal life), pollutes atmosphere and water, reduces the yield from sea and land
Write in brief about Technology Transfer and Appropriate Technology?
Technology Transfer: ‘The process of moving technology to a novel setting and implementing there.’ • Novel setting is any situation containing at least one new variable relevant to success or failure of given technology • Transfer of technology from a familiar to a new environment is a complex process Appropriate Technology: ‘Identification, transfer, and implementation of the most suitable technology for a new set of conditions’ • Conditions include social factors that go beyond routine economic and technical engineering constraints • Identifying them requires attention to an array of human values and needs that ma y influence how a technology affects the novel situation…
What can MNCs do to promote morally just measures? Or what are Richard T. De George’s guidelines for moral promotion by MNCs?
• MNCs business should do more overall good than bad towards the economy…
What are the International Rights as enumerated by Thomas Donaldson?
• The right to freedom of physical movement • The right to ownership of property • The right to freedom from torture • The right to a fair deal • The right to non-discriminatory treatment • The right to physical security • The right to freedom of speech and association • The right to minimal education • The right to political participation • The right to subsistence
Which standards should guide engineers’ conduct when working in foreign countries?
Alternate 1: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ Alternate 2. Follow the identical practices which were followed in the home country. Both are unacceptable. A via media should be found based on the context.
What are the three senses of relative values?
Ethical Relativism • Actions are morally right in a particular society if they are approved by law, custom, or other conventions of the society. Descriptive Relativism • Value beliefs and attitudes differ from culture to culture and this is a fact. Moral Relationalism or Contextualism (Ethical pluralism)…
What are the benefits of Multi-National corporations doing business in less developed countries for both the MNCs and the host country?
Benefits to MNCs: • Inexpensive labor • Availability of natural resources • Favorable tax conditions • Fresh markets for products Benefits to developing host countries: • New jobs • Greater pay and greater challenge • Transfer of advanced technology • Social benefits from sharing wealth
GLOBAL ISSUES – Give an account of Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide's pesticide-manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India leaked 40 tons of the deadly gas, methyl isocyanate into a sleeping, impoverished community - killing 2,500 within a few days, 10000 permanently disabled and injuring 100,000 people. Ten years later, it increased to 4000 to 7000 deaths and injuries to 600,000. Risks taken: • Storage tank of Methyl Isocyanate gas was filled to more than 75% capacity as against Union Carbide’s spec. that it should never be more than 60% full. • The company’s West Virginia plant was controlling the safety systems and detected leakages thro’ computers but the Bhopal plant only used manual labour for control and leak detection. • The Methyl Isocyanate gas, being highly concentrated, burns parts of body with which it comes into contact, even blinding eyes and destroying lungs. Causal Factors: • Three protective systems out of service…
