Unit-5

GLOBALIZATION

Globalization means integration of countries through commerce, transfer of technology, and exchange of information and culture. In a way, it includes acting together and interacting economies through trade, investment, loan, development schemes and capital across countries. In a different sense, these flows include knowledge, science, technology, skills, culture, information, and entertainment, besides direct human resource, tele-work, and outsourcing. This interdependence has increased the complex tensions and ruptures among the nations. For the engineers, the issues such as multinational organizations, computer, internet functions, military development and environmental ethics have assumed greater importance for their very sustenance and progress.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

Organisations who have established business in more than one country, are called Multinational Corporation. The headquarters are in the home country and the business is extended in many host countries. The Western organizations doing business in the less-economically developed (developing, and overpopulated) countries gain the advantage of inexpensive labour, availability of natural resources, conducive-tax atmosphere, and virgin market for the products. At the same time, the developing countries are also benefited by fresh job opportunities, jobs with higher remuneration and challenges, transfer of technology, and several social benefits by the wealth developed. But this happens invariably with some social and cultural disturbance. Loss of jobs for the home country, and loss or exploitation of natural resources, political instability for the host countries are some of the threats of globalization.

International Human Rights

 To know what are the moral responsibilities and obligations of the multinational corporations operating in the host countries, let us discuss with the framework of rights ethics. Common minimal rights are to be followed to smoothen the transactions when the engineers and employers of MNCs have to interact at official, social, economic and sometimes political levels. At international level, the organizations are expected to adopt the minimum levels of (a) values, such as mutual support, loyalty, and reciprocity,

(b) the negative duty of refraining from harmful actions such as violence and fraud, and

(c) basic fairness and practical justice in case of conflicts.

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Environmental ethics is the study of (a) moral issues concerning the environment, and (b) moral perspectives, beliefs, or attitudes concerning those issues. Engineers in the past are known for their negligence of environment, in their activities. It has become important now that engineers design eco-friendly tools, machines, sustainable products, processes, and projects. These are essential now to

(a) ensure protection (safety) of environment

(b) prevent the degradation of environment, and

(c) slow down the exploitation of the natural resources, so that the future generation can survive.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) code of ethics, has specifically requires that “engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of professional duties” The term sustainable development emphasizes on the investment, orientation of technology, development and functioning of organizations to meet the present needs of people and at the same time ensuring the future generations to meet their needs.

Compaq Computer Corporation (now merged with HP) was the leader, who exhibited their commitment to environmental health, through implementation of the concept of ‘Design for environment’ on their products, unified standards all over the world units, and giving priority to vendors with a record of environmental concern.

Engineers as experimenters have certain duties towards environmental ethics, namely:

 1. Environmental impact assessment: One major but sure and unintended effect of technology is wastage and the resulting pollution of land, water, air and even space. Study how the industry and technology affects the environment.

 2. Establish standards: Study and to fix the tolerable and actual pollution levels.

 3. Counter measures: Study what the protective or eliminating measures are available for immediate implementation

4. Environmental awareness: Study on how to educate the people on environmental practices, issues, and possible remedies.

Disasters

1.      Plastic Waste Disposal

In our country, several crores of plastic bottles are used as containers for water and oil, and plastic bags are used to pack different materials ranging from vegetables to gold ornaments. Hardly any of these are recycled. They end up in gutters, roadsides, and agricultural fields. In all these destinations, they created havoc. The worse still is the burning of plastic materials in streets and camphor along with plastic cover in temples, since they release toxic fumes and threaten seriously the air quality. Cities and local administration have to act on this, collect and arrange for recycling through industries.

2.      e-Waste Disposal

The parts of computers and electronic devices which have served its useful life present a major environmental issue for all the developing countries including India. This scrap contains highly toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Even the radioactive waste will lose 89% of its toxicity after 200 years, by which time it will be no more toxic than some natural minerals in the ground. It will lose 99% of its remaining toxicity over the next 30,000 years. The toxic chemical agents such as mercury, arsenic, and cadmium retain toxicity undiminished for ever.

3.      Depletion of Ozone Layer The ozone layer protects the entire planet from the ill-effects of ultraviolet radiation and is vital for all living organisms in this world. But it is eaten away by the Chloro-fluro-carbons (CFC) such as freon emanating from the refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol can spray. This has caused also skin cancer to sun-bathers in the Western countries. Further NO and NO2 gases were also found to react with the ozone. Apart from engineers, the organizations, laws of the country and local administration and market mechanisms are required to take up concerted efforts to protect the environment.

4.      Global Warming Over the past 30 years, the Earth has warmed by 0.6 °C. Over the last 100 years, it has warmed by 0.8 °C. It is likely to push up temperature by 3 oC by 2100, according to NASA’s studies. The U.S. administration has accepted the reality of global climate change, which has been associated with stronger hurricanes, severe droughts, intense heat waves and the melting of polar ice. Greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide emitted by motor vehicles and coal-fired power plants, trap heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse, cause the Earth to warm up. Delegates from the six countries — Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and US met in California in April 2006 for the first working session of the AsiaPacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. These six countries account for about half of the world’s emissions of climate-heating greenhouse gases. Only one of the six, Japan, is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 under the Kyoto Agreement.

5.      Acid Rain Large emissions of sulphur oxides and nitrous oxides are being released in to the air from the thermal power stations using the fossil fuels, and several processing industries. These gases form compounds with water in the air and precipitates as rain or snow on to the earth. The acid rain in some parts of the world has caused sufficient damage to the fertility of the land and to the human beings.

COMPUTER ETHICS

Computer ethics is defined as (a) study and analysis of nature and social impact of computer technology, (b) formulation and justification of policies, for ethical use of computers. This subject has become relevant to the professionals such as designers of computers, programmers, system analysts, system managers, and operators. The use of computers have raised a host of moral concerns such as free speech, privacy, intellectual property right, and physical as well as mental harm. There appears to be no conceptual framework available on ethics, to study and understand and resolve the problems in computer technology.

Different types of problems are found in computer ethics.

1. Computer as the Instrument of Unethical Acts

(a) the usage of computer replaces the job positions. This has been overcome to a large extent by readjusting work assignments, and training everyone on computer applications such as word processing, editing, and graphics.

(b) Breaking privacy. Information or data of the individuals accessed or erased or the ownership changed. (c) Defraud a bank or a client, by accessing and withdrawing money from other’s bank account.

2. Computer as the Object of Unethical Act

The data are accessed and deleted or changed.

(a) Hacking: The software is stolen or information is accessed from other computers. This may cause financial loss to the business or violation of privacy rights of the individuals or business. In case of defence information being hacked, this may endanger the security of the nation.

(b) Spreading virus: Through mail or otherwise, other computers are accessed and the files are erased or contents changed altogether. ‘Trojan horses’ are implanted to distort the messages and files beyond recovery. This again causes financial loss or mental torture to the individuals. Some hackers feel that they have justified their right of free information or they do it for fun. However, these acts are certainly unethical.

(c) Health hazard: The computers pose threat during their use as well as during disposal.

3. Problems related to the Autonomous Nature of Computer

(a) Security risk: Recently the Tokyo Stock Exchange faced a major embarrassment. A seemingly casual mistake by a junior trader of a large security house led to huge losses including that of reputation. The order through the exchange’s trading system was to sell one share for 600,000 Yen. Instead the trader keyed in a sale order for 600,000 shares at the rate of one Yen each. Naturally the shares on offer at the ridiculously low price were lapped up. And only a few buyers agreed to reverse the deal! The loss to the securities firm was said to be huge, running into several hundred thousand. More important to note, such an obvious mistake could not be corrected by some of the advanced technology available. For advanced countries like Japan who have imbibed the latest technology, this would be a new kind of learning experience.

(b) Loss of human lives: Risk and loss of human lives lost by computer, in the operational control of military weapons. There is a dangerous instability in automated defence system. An unexpected error in the software or hardware or a conflict during interfacing between the two, may trigger a serious attack and cause irreparable human loss before the error is traced. The Chinese embassy was bombed by U.S. military in Iraq a few years back, but enquiries revealed that the building was shown in a previous map as the building where insurgents stayed.

 (c) In flexible manufacturing systems, the autonomous computer is beneficial in obtaining continuous monitoring and automatic control.

WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

Military activities including the world wars have stimulated the growth of technology. The growth of Internet amply illustrates this fact. The development of warfare and the involvement of engineers bring out many ethical issues concerned with engineers, such as the issue of integrity in experiments as well as expenditure in defense research and development, issue of personal commitment and conscience, and the issues of social justice and social health. Engineers involve in weapons development because of the following reasons:

1. It gives one job with high salary.

2. One takes pride and honour in participating in the activities towards the defence of the nation (patriotic fervor).

3. One believes the he fights a war on terrorism and thereby contribute to peace and stability of the country. Ironically, the wars have never won peace, only peace can win peace!

 4. By research and development, the engineer is reducing or eliminating the risk from enemy weapons, and saving one’s country from disaster

. 5. by building-up arsenals and show of force, a country can force the rogue country, towards regulation. Engineers can participate effectively in arms control negotiations for surrender or peace, e.g., bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima led to surrender by the Japanese in 1945.

MORAL LEADERSHIP

 Engineers provide many types of leadership in the development and implementation of technology, as managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, academics and officials of the government. Moral leadership is not merely the dominance by a group. It means adopting reasonable means to motivate the groups to achieve morally desirable goals. This leadership presents the engineers with many challenges to their moral principles.

Moral leadership is essentially required for the engineers, for the reasons listed as follows:

1. It is leading a group of people towards the achievement of global and objectives. The goals as well as the means are to be moral. For example, Hitler and Stalin were leaders, but only in an instrumental sense and certainly not on moral sense.

 2. The leadership shall direct and motivate the group to move through morally desirable ways. 3. They lead by thinking ahead in time, and morally creative towards new applications, extension and putting values into practice. ‘Morally creative’ means the identification of the most important values as applicable to the situation, bringing clarity within the groups through proper communication, and putting those values into practice.

4. They sustain professional interest, among social diversity and cross-disciplinary complexity. They contribute to the professional societies, their professions, and to their communities. The moral leadership in engineering is manifested in leadership within the professional societies. The professional societies provide a forum for communication, and canvassing for change within and by groups.

5. Voluntarism: Another important avenue for providing moral leadership within communities, by the engineers is to promote services without fee or at reduced fees (pro bono) to the needy groups. The professional societies can also promote such activities among the engineers. This type of voluntarism (or philanthropy) has been in practice in the fields of medicine, law and education. But many of the engineers are not self-employed as in the case of physicians and lawyers. The business institutions are encouraged to contribute a percentage of their services as free or at concessional rates for charitable purposes.

6. Community service: This is another platform for the engineers to exhibit their moral leadership. The engineers can help in guiding, organising, and stimulating the community towards morally- and environmentally-desirable goals. The corporate organizations have come forward to adopt villages and execute many social welfare schemes, towards this objective.

The Codes of Ethics promote and sustain the ethical environment and assist in achieving the ethical goals in the following manner:

1. It creates an environment in a profession, where ethical behavior is the basic criterion.

2. It guides and reminds the person as to how to act, in any given situation.

3. It provides support to the individual, who is being pressurized or tortured by a superior or employer, to behave unethically.

4. Apart from professional societies, companies and universities have framed their own codes of ethics, based on the individual circumstances and specific mission of the organisations. These codes of conduct help in employees’ awareness of ethical issues, establish, and nurture a strong corporate ethical culture.