Engineering and Social Responsibility: Incorporating Environmental Culture in Management

ABSTRACT: We consider that Business Ethics, or more specifically Environmental Ethics, should not be regarded as a different type of Engineering courses, since it is much more interesting for our students to be able to explain how does Environmental Ethics work in each one of the corporation’s management aspects. We have noticed that these future professionals, from industrial engineers to computer engineers, are later on requested to work in a wide range of management fields and therefore, they need to be responsible professional workers in any area. Moreover, environmental culture is not just for the company’s senior officials but also for all the staff, who need to understand and comply with the company’s policies including those about environment. Engineers have to encourage the rest of their colleagues to behave carefully, and they may have to change jobs throughout their careers, then the environmental culture of each company might be different. To a large extent it is not only the ‘company’s problem ’ but also ‘their problem’, their professional responsibility, because environment protection is a global issue. We introduce Environmental Responsibility to our students with one of the worst industrial accidents: the Bhopal Case. It is presented as a practical problem to see all the management components that could be improved to avoid this type of accident, from Human Resources to Quality Strategy. It is our aim to have them reflect on their consequences of their professional decisions, on their responsibility about their decision-making.