The
Role of Industrial Technology in Fostering Industrial Ethics
By
Dr. Samuel C. Obi & Dr. Mohan Kim
Dept of Aviation & Tech
The industrial workforce is
the most important and expensive component of all industrial resources in the
Yet, one of the biggest
problems facing industrial employers today is how to tell a bad employee from a
good one. A study of 81,000 people on integrity, work attitude and drug use by
Orion PE System (1999) found that 24.9% of them admitted to stealing from
previous employers, 28.5% admitted to some drug use, 24.0% admitted they had
problems with absences in previous jobs, while 30.0% admitted tardiness in
previous jobs. Clearly, no employer who intends to be on a competitive edge
would want to hire such employees. However, it is a true description of the
Unfortunately, these
challenges are currently facing industrial organizations, which are in dire
need of ethically moral workers in the demanding and competitive businesses
that they operate. The need to meet government standards and regulations,
societal expectations, quality products and services, domestic and foreign
competition, and safety of their workers and the public, is forcing many
companies to examine and modify the way they do things in order to survive and,
at the same time, receive maximum productivity.
This paper, while exploring the broader implications of the reaches of industrial ethics, addresses the role of Industrial Technology in helping to solve the problem through the creative power of its curriculum, administrators and educators.
The American work environments are becoming so complex that the individual workers are bombarded in different directions by ethical problems that they did not create. Too often, these workers are unprepared or confused due to, in part, the fact that society never really offered them the basic ethical foundation needed to respond adequately to meet the increasing demands of a complex world.
In
terms of values, American workers are lacking a lot when compared with their
counterparts of yesteryears. This is because many modern parents hardly have
enough time to teach their children what values are. Many, if not most,
American parents are engaged in the workforce since it now takes two incomes to
make ends meet for many households. As a result, many children are “raised” in
daycare centers and by hired care providers whose values may be different from
their parents’. In addition, today’s children grow up in media-saturated
environments with little or no ethical or spiritual guidance in moral issues.
Many individuals raised like this grow up in an ethical vacuum when it comes to
ethical issues, and too often find it difficult making responsible decisions.
These problems are later brought into the industrial workplace as described in
the findings of Orion PE System (1999) noted above.
Therefore, industrial
technology programs can help to address this problem. These programs are
recognized in the
Industrial
technology has been defined as a
field of study designed to prepare technical and/or management oriented
professionals for employment in business, industry, education, and government.
(NAIT, 2004) Moreover, industrial technology is primarily involved with the
management, operation, and maintenance of complex technological systems.
Other than
its technical tone, the social and cultural component subtly remains a major
theme in this definition. It is in this social and cultural area that industry
has experienced most of its ethical problems in its employee’s attitudes,
productivity and, in fact, the very survival of the industrial organizations
that employ these workers.
To address the moral Issues of future
industrial workers, industrial technology must provide leadership in the
following areas: (1) observing and understanding current industrial social and
cultural problems or needs, (2) creating ideal curriculum needed to address the
problems, and (3) implementing, disseminating or delivering the information.
Armed
with this knowledge, industrial technology leaders should conclude that their
students must be taught good industrial values to help clean up the morally
declining workplace. Graduates of industrial technology programs should be able
to provide a moral leadership in their workplaces and, by so doing, provide a
proper role modeling for their subordinates. These leaders should also know
that industry will benefit if students learn principles of moral values. Future
workers will graduate from the programs more equipped to face the problems and
challenges facing them on the job. The reward to industry will come in many
ways: increased corporate profit, cleaner air, decreased workplace violence,
more reliable leaders and better quality products, to name just a few.
Clearly, one of the most effective
means of addressing the ethical problems facing industry is through adequate
curriculum development. The primary aim of such curriculum development should
be to address current industrial problems. Many articles have been written on
this topic including Arterton, (1988), Kolb, (1988), and Mentkowski, (1988),
and all suggested that ethics could be effectively taught in a well-structured
curriculum. What needs to be determined is what should be included in the
curriculum so that it will be an effective one.
The moral content of any industrial
ethics curriculum should be found in what industry is yearning for. They are on
the news every day in the form of workers’ deficiencies in moral values,
including the following values recommended by Obi (1992): Personal responsibility,
integrity, mutual assistance, honesty, respect for other, fairness, self
respect, tolerance of diversity, civic responsibility, and self restraint.
Table 1 lists these 10 values and their Webster’s dictionary descriptors.
Table
1
Some
Moral Content of Industrial Education
______________________________________________________________________
Value Webster’s
Descriptor
______________________________________________________________________
Civic responsibility A person’s
duty, charge or obligation as a citizen
Fairness Straightforward
justice
Honesty Upright
conduct or disposition
Integrity State
of being upright, entire or whole
Mutual
assistance Reciprocally helping, aiding, supporting
Personal responsibility A person’s duty,
charge or obligation as a person
Respect for others Proper regard for other individuals,
their characters, or reputations
Self respect A
proper regard for one’s own person, character, or reputation
Self restraint/control Control over
oneself, temper, emotions, and desires
Tolerance
of diversity To put up
with or support different kinds of
individuals
______________________________________________________________________
The
above values are not all inclusive. Curriculum designers may need to talk to
key individuals in the area industries they serve, or conduct a local survey of
the industries to determine their immediate moral need, to help configure their
curriculum for that population. Inclusion and implementation of the right
content will ensure an effective and productive education.
It should be mentioned that because of
space limitations in many technology education programs, curriculum design to
include key moral principles falls into two categories. The first category is
the development of a full, stand-alone course that every student takes before
graduation. A stand-alone course normally has all the status that other courses
in the university’s catalog have, including course title, catalog description,
purpose of course, required textbooks, general course goals, outline of its
contents, unit
objectives,
unit readings, reading assignments, required materials, evaluation criteria,
and resource textbooks. A shortened sample of such a syllabus is shown in
Figure 1.
Industrial ethics for technical professionals. Ethical principles associated with industrial
practices, implications and consequences. Importance of the
industrial worker in industry and society. Practical
and theoretical principles of moral values for increased and improved
industrial productivity and quality.
This course is required of all industrial
technology students. It investigates both individual and organizational values
as they relate to industrial productivity. The course guides the student to
what must be done to improve organizations, why they must do it, and how to
effectively accomplish it.
Suitable Text on Ethics
1. Develop an understanding of basic industrial
ethical principles
2. Investigate effects of ethics on industrial
activities and productivity
3. Develop a higher responsible attitude
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL ETHICS
·
Define and
investigate industrial ethics and values
·
Understand
benefits of ethics to society
·
Explore some
ethical roles of the industrial worker
Reading List for Unit 1:
1. Suitable chapters from text and other
materials, including videos, case studies etc.
·
Explore what
responsibility is, and kinds of responsibility
·
Investigate
corporate and individual responsibility
·
Investigate
responsibility and productivity
Reading List for Unit 2:
1. Suitable chapters from text and other
materials, including videos, case studies etc.
UNIT 3: INDUSTRIAL INTEGRITY: THE EPITOME OF
INDUSTRIAL SUCCESS
·
Understand
what integrity means to an organization
·
Explore how
integrity is learned
·
Examine some
examples of cases of consequences of lack of integrity
Reading List for Unit 3:
1. Suitable chapters from text and other materials,
including videos, case studies etc.
Evaluations
To include: Quizzes, unit assignments, problem
solving, projects, midterms, final exam etc.
Figure
1:
Sample
Syllabus for an Ethics Course
But because of space limitations in some programs, this stand-alone system is not always possible. As a result, some programs opt for the second category, referred to as the integration approach. In this, curriculum designers integrate key moral principles into existing courses. Key moral principles are added into selected existing technical course units. Usually, core courses are targeted to ensure that every student in the program gets the experience before they graduate.
With the curriculum and course
syllabus developed, the information has to be delivered to the students, who
will then take it to the workplace upon graduation and, quite often, while
still in the program. Delivery of the information can be accomplished in
various ways. While the most popular and widely used delivery system is the
traditional classroom lecture format, the course can also be taught on a
contract basis in the work sites when industrial organizations request for such
service. In that case, regular employees receive the information and apply it
directly to their jobs.
For
the instructional delivery employing the stand-alone course system, the regular
formal classroom lecture discussion system can be used, whether it is taught on
the job site or in the college classroom. Instructors are free to use any or a
combination of instructional media such as text materials, video, outside
materials, invited speakers, multi media and case studies to deliver the
instruction.
For the instructional delivery
employing the integration approach, a model developed by some researchers such
as Obi’s (1996) could be employed. In this a typical eight-instructional-unit
manufacturing processes course was employed. Unit 5, which has most of the
ethics content, deals exclusively with group/team projects, and is strategically
scheduled to both flow with other units and also to end with the semester. These
handouts and videos provide rich sources of issues for class discussions. The length of time for these discussions can
be controlled as needed to suit the time available for the exercise and the
degree of learning desired by the instructor.
Student involvement and participation in discussions is a necessity at
this point. Many of these students have
interesting ideas and experiences from their workplaces, which are shared during
these discussion exercises. In many
instances some students, especially non-traditional students, have provided
better answers to younger and less experienced students on how to manage some
ethical situations that may arise in the workplace. Obi (1996) noted that group
projects provide a challenge to students particularly in the areas of personal
responsibility, integrity, mutual assistance, and tolerance of diversity.
American industrial employers are very
sensitive to two key words: “quality” and ”productivity”. They do not need
anyone to tell them that their survival as a business depends on how they
achieve on those two words.
But
while American GNP has been historically good for the most part, it should not
be forgotten that American industry is facing stiff global competition. The
occasional national economic recessions and fluctuations of some economic
indicators are constant reminders that industry needs a constant boost if the
In
the global competition battle, American industry has undertaken massive
industrial investments especially in industrial automation. For example, computer
integrated manufacturing (CIM) philosophy and technologies have been heavily
and widely implemented into American industry, education, governments and other
institutions to help bring improvement in industrial productivity and quality.
Such large-scale implementation of automation yielded many benefits.
But many companies now know
that beating a Japanese or German company on some product lines is not an easy
task. In other words, they know that although CIM technologies have been
implemented industry-wide to help
With
such a scenario facing industry, one is forced to ask whether technological
innovations, know-how and implementation are enough for fighting domestic and
global competition. How about incorporating or improving other strategies such
as industrial ethics on the part of the workers themselves? How about teaching
the workforce those critical values, which will help to improve the
productivity and quality of this nation’s industry? It is well known that an
improvement in workers’ ethics will result in an improvement in the
productivity and quality of company’s outputs. Companies should not solely
depend on technologies for their survival. The human element has a lot to offer
if it is developed properly.
This paper
has endeavored to call to attention the declining moral situation in the
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