Several ethical decision making models have been developed over the last twenty years. Past research has attempted to evaluate these models by assessing numerous factors potentially linked to the decision process involving ethical issues. Past research studying ethical decision making in organizations has focused on the business perspective and on individual decision making. Little empirical research has focused on teams ethical decision making in engineering and none (to the authors knowledge) have studied the process of ethical decision making by engineers.
For this research two primary models have been adopted: Joness Synthesis of Ethical Decision Making model and the Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins (HPR) Model widely used in engineering. These models were combined along with factors cited in the literature to form a proposed Ethical Decision Making in Engineering Model. Using this model an experimental study involving both individuals and teams of engineering students solving two ethical dilemmas of different moral intensity was used to: (1) investigate whether engineering student teams make better decisions than individual engineering students, (2) evaluate the processes used by the individuals and teams to resolve the dilemmas, (3) and assess variables that potentially affect the quality of the resolution and the quality of the decision process.
From this research, the analysis of the team decision making process and its outcomes has enabled the researcher to identify key factors that play a role in engineering ethical decision making, as well as identify potential improvement areas for engineering ethics education. In general, students who have had an engineering ethics course perform better (in teams or as individuals) than students who did not have engineering ethics course for an engineering dilemma with moderate moral intensity; and teams outperformed individuals on the Resolution attribute and spent more time on Analysis and Recognition of Dilemma attributes. Further, the derived regression analysis models showed that having had an engineering ethics course, working in teams, work experience, being female, the type of engineering major, and the dilemmas moral intensity are significant predictors of the overall Resolution as measured by the report quality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-07162009-102245 |
| Date | 25 September 2009 |
| Creators | Rudnicka, Ewa A |
| Contributors | Harvey Wolfe, Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Rosa L. Pinkus, Larry J Shuman, Kim LaScola Needy |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-07162009-102245/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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