#ethical failure

[firstoccupier]

The Ethical Failure of Educated Elitism

How Institutions Trained to “Know Better” Chose Extraction Over Responsibility By Cliff PottsEditor-in-Chief, WPS News The Promise of the Educated Class Modern societies place extraordinary trust in their educated classes. Universities, professional schools, policy institutes, and credentialing bodies are granted authority not merely because they possess knowledge, but because they are…

The Ethical Failure of Educated Elitism

[musingsfromastonehead]

March of the ICE Men

March of the ICE MenThey clock in before dawn.Steel chairs, stark lighting, coffee stewed too long.The handbook says procedure, but procedureis whatever the strongest calls it today.They brag about last night’s haul:the mother who begged in two languages,the boy clutching a bag with one shoe,the girl who went mute when the door slid shut.They retell it like sport.They’ve mastered the small…

March of the ICE Men

[professional1977]

Adventures with PhD engineers #3

This is the bad one.

I was working for a small company making prestressed concrete things in British Columbia. It was mostly bridge girders but occasionally building walls and roofs. We once did a funky thing for a bridge that was to be decorated to look like an old English stone arch. Some cool stuff.

We being small and lean were really competitive in the market. There was a huge job in Seattle for many hundreds of big girders to span over an interstate highway. Basically they were going to bury it so as to not bother the neighbors. We were the low bidder.

Nearby there was a big company that had built the girders for an elevated rapid transit system that was completed. They also bid on the Seattle project. Shock and amazement they were high bidder. Being part of a large well funded conglomerate they bought our company to get that project. Strangers showed up and started going through all the files. The manager said we were sold and things would change. Oh Shit.

Initially the idea was as I had done the cost breakdown on all the big girders and was familiar with it I would be employed to carry it on. The engineer they had on staff was a PhD but was also the branch manager I recall. Well it didn't happen that way. Construction especially big projects is a Dirty business. This was a big project with federal funding.

A small brand new company in Seattle also bid on the job. I kid you not they claimed their president was a part black, part first nations, woman. It was a shell created to cover for a big firm in Seattle that had also bid too high. As this new firm, which had no track record mind you, was minority owned they were permitted to lower the price to match our winning bid. Being "local" and "minority" this was allowed and looked good in the news. Yes it was a sham, but we were out.

Well that is being up shit creek, but we were offered a paddle of sorts. The big conglomerate shut down our facility and moved us to their office trailers in another town by their facility which was an otherwise open field covered in gravel. We would carry on and bring efficiencies to their operation. It was good for me as it was much closer to my home. I had hope.

Now I have to say that I now had years of experience in the industry. I had been a designer for some time and was a fully qualified and certified professional. There is a type of product called a double Tee. It is a thin broad top flange with two legs and looks like the Greek letter Pi. It is relatively light and efficient and capable of long clear spans. In parking garages it is very common as it is so efficient and very reliable. Over the years I had designed hundreds of these.

I was so familiar with them I could look at the loads and the span and just write down the design. What took me pages in earlier years was just one page of checking. My immediate boss who had also come over from the little company was familiar with them too.

One day he called me into his office and asked me to look at something. It was a design for a double Tee for a parking garage in Seattle. It was 8 feet wide, 27 inches deep and 60 feet long, very normal and standard. I looked at the prestressing strand pattern and WTF. Such a member would normally have 14 x 1/2 " strands with two point depression. That is 7 strands in each of the two legs. This design had much less. Maybe 6 or even 5 strands per leg I do not recall. My old boss told me it was going into production and he was worried.

The design had been done by the PhD. Old boss asked me to do a check calculation so I did. It did not conform to the US ACI code for prestress as it had much too much tension in the bottom under specified load. There is an alternate method where you can have more tension, but that still has to resist what are called factored loads. I calculated both ways and neither worked.

I took my figures to the PhD. Under standard Ethics you have to do that. I explained my calculations in detail. He offered no technical reply like he had used another method or anything of that nature. He said two things in reply; "We have to agree to disagree here. I think you are wrong. Also this is going into Washington State and a U.S. Professional Engineer has already sealed the drawings. It is his problem now."

He said I was wrong, but did not check my calculations for error. He did not offer to show me his calculations. He absolved himself of any responsibility as an American Engineer had sealed the drawings. I was also instructed to do nothing more on this it was not my business. Each of those things is a violation of ethics. 4 hits there.

A few weeks before writing this I completed a course on engineering practice which had several hours of ethics in it. The reason for that is engineers are often pressured to do things that are not right. The course existed because we know it has happened in the past. This story is over 30 years old. The standards have not really changed over the years. I could have done more, but what was not clear. Obviously I would have lost my job there. In short order I did. The reality of business is bosses are bosses and they have power.

I can say that even by the standards of the day that PhD failed ethically and technically. He should have checked his calculations. He should have informed the US engineer. He did neither. Had this been done today and found lacking, he would have been sanctioned. Likely a wrist slap, and I would still lose my job and likely been black balled in the industry. Maybe the competition would have hired me, but nothing is certain.

Engineering is numbers. Truth is determined by numbers. The only places for error are concept or bad math. Arguments are settled by numbers. Usually.

Current Practice demands that if I had not been satisfied I should have taken action and not stopped until I was satisfied. But there is one more thing. Soon after I started in the new company they sent me into the yard to supervise assembly of a large concrete form. The lead hand was an interesting person. He had a guaranteed job and was paid extra for special services. Those services were mostly to prevent union action against the firm. He was a teamster, and a Hell's Angel. He was short, stocky, strong as a bull and did beat people up. This was made very clear to me. Had I really pushed back I would have a Hell's Angel on my back.

I did lose that job and ended up working in Winnipeg.

[boysdeservebetter]

It no longer amazes me that ideas, values, and concepts which people normally grasp quite easily... are forgotten or overshadowed when penis cutting enters the equation. Unnecessary amputation = bad, right? Consent for body modifications = good, right? Sexism = bad, inequality = bad, ethical failure = bad. Right? Early life experiences have lasting effects, even if they are not remembered, right? Unless we aren't using the same logic, or rules, or guidelines-- which is exactly what happens with discussion of circumcision with those who are not accustomed to questioning it. ~Devon  "Many traumatized people expose themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the original trauma. These behavioral reenactments are rarely consciously understood to be related to earlier life experiences. This "repetition compulsion" has received surprisingly little systematic exploration during the 70 years since its discovery, though it is regularly described in the clinical literature. Freud thought that the aim of repetition was to gain mastery, but clinical experience has shown that this rarely happens; instead, repetition causes further suffering for the victims or for people in their surroundings. Children seem more vulnerable than adults to compulsive behavioral repetition and loss of conscious memory of the trauma. However, responses to projective tests show that adults, too, are liable to experience a large range of stimuli vaguely reminiscent of the trauma as a return of the trauma itself, and to react accordingly." van der Kolk BA. The compulsion to repeat the trauma: re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism. Psychiatr Clin North Am 1989;12(2):389-411. http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/

[psychbuilder]

Better than ever? Employee reactions to ethical failures in organizations, and the ethical recovery paradox

By Marshall Schminke, James Caldwell, Maureen L. Ambrose, Sean R. McMahon

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Volume 123, Issue 2, March 2014, Pages 206–219

Abstract

This research examines organizational attempts to recover internally from ethical failures witnessed by employees. Drawing on research on service failure recovery, relationship repair, and behavioral ethics, we investigate how witnessing unethical acts in an organization impacts employees and their relationship with their organization. In two studies—one in the lab and one in the field—we examine the extent to which it is possible for organizations to recover fully from these ethical lapses. Results reveal an ethical recovery paradox, in which exemplary organizational efforts to recover internally from ethical failure may enhance employee perceptions of the organization to a more positive level than if no ethical failure had occurred.

The entire article is here, behind a paywall.