Introduction
Despite obviously overlapping interests in promoting good behavior and public benefit, discussions of engineering ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are seldom related. This entry argues the need to bridge the gap by briefly describing developments in the two fields and then suggesting role ethics as potentially able to combine their separate strengths to reduce their separate weaknesses. To what extent might CSR be a viable mediating contributor to engineering ethics and/or engineering ethics serve as a practical influence on CSR?
Corporate Social Responsibility
Definitions of corporate social responsibility vary by industry, region, and historical era, and debates about the societal obligations of businesses are as old as businesses themselves. A key moment in the evolution of CSR was a turn in the 1960s and 1970s, when corporations broadened their focus on philanthropy and began to include pressing...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Ames R (2011) Confucian role ethics: a vocabulary. The University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu
Auld G, Bernstein S, Cashore B (2008) The New Corporate Social Responsibility. Annu Rev Environ Resour 33:413–435
Blowfield M, Frynas J (2005) Setting new agendas: critical perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in the developing world. Int Aff 81:499–513
Cottine C (2020) That’s what friends are for: a Confucian perspective on the moral significance of friendship. In: Dare T, Swanton C (eds) Perspectives in role ethics. Routledge, New York, pp 123–142
Layton E Jr (1971) The Revolt of the Engineers: social responsibility and the American Engineering Profession. Press of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland
Mitcham C (2016) Ethics is not enough: from Professionalism to the political philosophy of Engineering. In: Leadership and personnel management: concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications. Hershey: IGI Global, pp 1350–1382
Moriarty J (2021) Business ethics: a contemporary introduction. Routledge, New York
Robison W (2016) Ethics within Engineering: an introduction. Bloomsbury Academic
Smith J (2021) Extracting accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Smith N, Zhu Q, Smith J, Mitcham C (2021) Enhancing Engineering ethics: role ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. Sci Eng Ethics 27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00289-7
Trevelyan J (2007) Technical coordination in Engineering practice. J Eng Educ 96:191–204
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Smith, J., Zhu, Q., Smith, N.M., Mitcham, C. (2022). Corporate Social Responsibility and Engineering Ethics. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1312-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1312-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences