MANAGEMENT AND

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
(BNJ 30502)
CHAPTER 1
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

MDM DALILA BINTI MOHD HARUN

WHAT ARE ETHICS?

Ancient Greek: ethos

ethics (habit, custom)

Ethics can be defined broadly as

a set of moral principles or values.
 Why Professional Ethics?
To understand the importance of professional ethics might begin with
the concept of roles.
A single individual normally plays a variety of different roles, all at the
same time. Example: you may be a student, but you also may be a
friend, a brother or sister, a son or daughter, a roommate, a member
of a club, a citizen of a nation or any number of things.
With each role come certain ethical obligations. As a student, you have
an obligation not to cheat and as a friend, you have an obligation to
help your friend in his or her time of need. If you are a roommate, you
might owe your roommate the courtesy of keeping the common
areas clean. As a citizen of a nation, you are obligated to follow the
laws issued by the government.
Why Professional Ethics?
The idea is that whenever there is talk about ethics and your ethical
obligations, there is a connection that is being suggested
between those obligations and the roles from which they stem.
The topic of professional ethics concerns the obligations held by
individuals in their particular roles as professionals.
Indeed, professions already have certain formal rules in place that
must be followed:
 First: Professional are obligated to obey laws that govern their societies. Exp: In USA
– Sherman Anti-Trust Act, prohibits businesses from getting together and fixing
prices.
Why Professional Ethics?

 Second: Specific professions and industries often specify their own rules, beyond
the general requirements of the law and direct the individuals in those professions
and industries to act accordingly. Example, code of ethics for
engineers/technologist specifies obligations to avoid deceptive conduct and to
serve the public interest at all time.
 Third: Individual organizations have their own policies and even codes of ethics
designed to be even more attentive to the particular sorts of issues encountered
those organizations. The aim is to focus on rules that are more directly relevant for
the specific organization.
Definitions and concepts of
Professional Ethics
What is profession and professional?
Profession relate with the job that have group identity.
A profession has the following attributes:
1. Work requires sophisticated skills, judgment, and exercise of
discretion (work is not routine)
2. Intensive and continuous training
3. Special societies (controlled by members of the profession)
establish standards for admission into the profession and conduct of
its members
4. Significant positive public service results from the practice of the
profession
Professional : person that conducting career and ethic is guideline or
principle that should be practice in life or organization.
The term of professional only can refer to people who have
permanent career not for temporary workers, as example the
professions as doctors, engineers, lawyers and architects.
Professional is someone that possesses specialized knowledge and
skills.
They also belong to and abide by the standards of society and serve
an important aspect of the public good. Another word can be
describe as a person formally certified by an professional body of
belonging to a specific profession by virtue of having completed a
required course of studies or practices and whose competence
can usually be measures against an established set of standards
(Strahlendorf(2005)).
Professional Ethics?

Professional ethics is an important in field of applied ethics and

assesses the moral dimension of human activity in occupations
that have professional status.
Professional ethics include law, medicine, ministry and by extension
higher education, journalism, engineering and management.
Professional ethics is concerned with the moral conduct and
standards governing the profession and its members.
Professional ethics will help a professional make decision, control
their work pressure, control their task, specific the risk that will
face by professional, integrity in work and many more.
Professional Ethics?

From the point of view of philosophical ethics, professional work can

be said to embody rights and obligations that are peculiar to each
profession.
Professional work entails also the virtuous character of the
professional.
Engineering/ engineering technology can be studied in reference to
the technological system that is characterized by its autonomy of
values, technological imperative and technological determinism.
The standard view is that the values of engineering/engineering
technology are the safety, health and welfare of the public.
Professional Ethics?

Technological imperative: The concept that new technologies are

inevitable and essential and that they must be developed and
accepted for the good of society.
Technological determinism: A society’s technology drives the
development of its social structure and cultural values.
Types of Professional Ethics

“Professional ethics” is a term that can be understood in three

different ways.

First: Professional ethics is a code of values and norms that actually

guide practical decisions when they are made by professionals.
As such, professional ethics may be a more or less explicit and
conscious determinant of action.
Types of Professional Ethics

Second: Professional ethics is a fully idealized set of values whose

purpose is to explicate the best possible world in which the given
profession could be working. All professions have nowadays
formulated their own codes of conduct that explicate their own
best values, conduct and consequences. Such professional
ethics can be characterized as expressive and demonstrative and
it can be therefore be studied best by the methods of the
discipline called rhetoric.
Types of Professional Ethics

Third : Professional ethics may be a critical philosophical discipline,

and as such a part of the wider field of applied ethics. In this
case, normal methods of philosophical ethics are applied to
professional decisions, planning and action in order to evaluate,
criticize and develop them.
Issues in Professional Ethics

Issue in genetic engineering.

Issues in Professional Ethics

Ethical issues in Mechanical Engineering Technology?

Project:
Develop a video clip that discusses about ethical issues in
Mechanical Engineering Technology. Details of the project as
follow:
- A group project, max 5 people
- Duration of the video clip: 10 minutes
- Video clip such as a short movie, documentary,
musical
- Submit material: Video clip, report
- Dateline: Week 12
Issues in Professional Ethics

Project:
Report:
1. Group introduction
2. Task of each member
3. Synopsis of the video
4. Timetable Schedule
5. Minutes of meeting
6. Attendance