Engineering ethics beyond engineer’s ethics
2. Ethics, rights and corporate social responsibility
2.3. Channels of distribution of responsibility
2.3.2. university social responsibility (usr)
The second element to which the responsibility to spread the third generation of ethics falls is USR. According to (Vallaeys, 2006) the university has to promote the creation of “socially responsible” organizations. Thus, the university has to play an important role in arbitrating the moral training of modern humanity. It is very important to know the risks tied to profes-sional and technological-scientific activities in order to under-stand the meaning of the individual and collective responsibility.
For this reason, ethical training within technical degrees is a necessity in order to achieve an “integral citizen teaching”.
Referring to (Vallaeys, 2008) USR is an new way of looking at the social commitment that universities have to their surround-ings such as; ethical and environmental management, academic training looking at the responsible and caring citizen, knowledge production and dissemination and social participation in order to promote a more human and sustainable development. This commitment is placed principally in the ethical management of institutional processes. USR represents a great opportunity to consolidate this social commitment as universities inspired by ethical principles (institutional coherence and social bond). Thus USR seeks to align the four previous basic university processes required by a more just and sustainable local and global develop-ment. Additionally, in linkage with society we believe that USR offers a learning experience in the execution and assessment of innovating projects, in establishing applied research and by involving teachers and students in the solution of real problems.
Since the universities are the main organisations in charge of the professional training of the next generations and of the definition and evolution of science, the ethical and transparent management of its institutional processes involves:
• Promoting ethical, democratic and environmental behav-iours with the aim of having a responsible and congruent campus with the identifying values of the university.
• Academic training of responsible citizens in order to pro-mote sustainable human development through the teach-ing of the essential knowledge of citizenship, the use of the learning methods related to the management of social problems, etc.
• Social management of knowledge in order to spread it appropriately through the research and the teaching car-ried out in the classroom. The main idea is to target the scientific activity and the expert praxis towards its social responsibility taking into account all the voices, academic
or not, promoting the participation of the citizenship within a criticism reflection of the processes and results of this scientific activity (social accessibility to knowledge).
• A solidarity and efficient social involvement through social and environmental projects, communities of mutual learn-ing for the human development, creation of new social networks for decision-making which affects the whole of the community, etc.
USR as a global policy for the continuous improvement of the university towards the effective fulfilling of its social mis-sion through the previous four processes, should include all of the institution’s academics and administrative processes. In this sense, if USR contributes to a new field of study and of practice, it is because it promotes strategies of participation for interest groups (teachers, students, authorities, research lines, administra-tive, graduate, etc.) within the life of the university such as the congruence of the university’s discourse, institutional transpar-ency, the communication of the institutional results to interested parties and so on.
What is more, the university as an institution of social respon-sibility is as much a part of the problem as the solution to the situations of social injustice and inequality (de la Cruz and Sasia, 2008). The university’s responsibility should be able to promote teaching, research and social projection in the service of the social justice. In consequence, the university not only has to train responsible citizens and contribute to economic, social, and cultural development together with the generation of new knowledge through research, but it also has to influence the transformation process of social vulnerability and economic fields of current societies. The university must respond to the demands of the society, which is the real impact of its activity within the society in terms of transformation. Thus it has to pri-oritize the social welfare of its activity ahead of its own economic
interests. Therefore, the university’s responsibility is based on its transformative character, in other words, in its capacity for social innovation and cooperation with other social agents towards inclusion and social justice.
In this light, the university must deal with: the diversity of needs of the society in relation to different social spheres, all people should have the same opportunity to access the university in order to promote social cohesion; it has to encourage the crea-tion of appropriate condicrea-tions and channels for social networks, critical and active citizenship and cooperation with other social agents (i.e., corporations); the research deployed from the univer-sity should be in accordance with corporate requirements; trans-parency, self-regulation and trading balance; it has to achieve the improvement of teaching and research quality through continu-ous assessment; and so on. However, this set of assumptions is not a guarantee of achieving a responsible university. They are only facilitators for the transformative character of the university.
To carry out the transformation process the university should be able to assume the challenges of justice that the social context raises. The realities of exclusion are the first challenge to face with the university listening to the victims of this exclusion. The second challenge is the multidimensional conditions of fighting against injustice. The university could be an effective tool to manage social differences (sex, race, social status, religion, etc.).
Lastly, the university should propose new forms of inclusion for its teachers, researchers, students, management personal, and all the integral agents of the university’s structure (external and internal). It involves the participation of all the university com-munity pulling in the same direction and a constant dialogue amongst them all as well.
The university as a social organisation and the educative, cognitive and social impact that its activity generates, are pow-erful factors when teaching people because from its interior many future politicians, researchers, directors, etc. leave
think-ing in the way that the university has taught them. After their graduation from the university, these people disseminate the prejudgements, preconceptions and deontological habits estab-lished from the roots of their university professional education.
Therefore from our view point it is fundamental to communi-cate to the whole university community the approach and mean-ing of USR in order to make it understandable for all university
“stakeholders” with the intention of constantly improving the institutional processes and to carry out the final purpose, insti-tutional commitment, based on ethical duties such as integrated teaching of the professional and the citizen, social development and justice.
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profEssional Ethics:
insidE thE lEarning procEss