The case-study approach is being used increasingly to teach engineering design and engineering ethics . In this section, I will talk about new kinds of cases that need to be created to complement those that already exist.
Most case studies of creative individuals and entrepreneurs focus on the successful individuals. For example, has interviewed over two hundred creative individuals and attempted to make generalizations about what makes them creative, including the fact that they experience something called ‘flow’ when they are working at peak potential. The problem with this interesting set of cases is that there is no control group, no set of cases based on individuals working in the same areas who are considered less successful.
Robert K. Merton identified the Matthew effect, named after a passage in Matthew:
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath .
According to Merton, "the Matthew effect consists of the accruing of greater increments of recognition for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark" . Merton saw this effect in the careers of some of the scientists he studied; when they started out, they had trouble getting credit for discoveries, especially if one of their collaborators was an eminent scientist. Later in their careers, after they had established their reputation, the reverse happened--they received credit for work done by junior collaborators, even when they tried to share. A classic case is the discovery of penicillin. In most accounts, Alexander Fleming is given virtually all the credit, but the actual refinement of this mold into a powerful antibiotic was due to Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and others .
Many of the successful individuals in Csiksenmihalyi’s studies, and others like Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People , will have benefited from the Matthew effect. Like Fleming, many of them will be given more credit than they deserve for their discoveries and inventions, and others laboring with them will have received less. One of the generalizations one can make about being labeled creative or effective is to be successful--success can be a cause, not an effect.
Allof which is not to disparage post-hoc cases of discoveries like electromagnetic induction and inventions like the telephone. These are valuable and important aids to education, and this book is full of examples of them. But we need at least some case-studies that focus on discoveries and inventions in the making, before the winners are known. In the telephone case, for example, Bell apparently kept better records than his rival Elisha Gray but Bell’s records are also better preserved because of Bell’s subsequent fame. We might still have Elisha Gray notebooks if Gray had received more credit for his successful telegraph inventions.
Most engineering ethics cases focus on moral failures like Bhopal and the Challenger and the Pinto rather than on successes like Climatex Lifecycle. The converse of the Matthew effect, evident in some of these ethics cases, is the tendency to blame the victim. The Dow Corning case is an example; because the company was sued successfully, it must have done something wrong. Again, one way of correcting for this potential problem is to study emerging designs with a strong ethical component.
A related problem is that few cases studies show how ethics can be integrated into the earliest phases of the invention process. For example, the Challenger and Bhopal cases focus on what to do late in the design process, when students or managers have to decide what mistakes led to these disasters. The equivalent would be a Frankenstein case in which one has to deal with the monster after it had been given life and labeled a monster--a valuable case, but one should add an earlier dilemma-point in which one looks at whether it was ethical to create this being. Similarly, in the Challenger case, it is useful to look at the original decision to create the shuttle and what constraints were accepted at that time. Cases of moral lapses late in the design process need to be complemented by others that raise ethical issues at the invention stage, when one can still consider whether bringing a human being to life makes sense, as well as how one might go about it.
In introducing cases into the engineering curriculum, in many instances ,( students are presented with short hypothetical scenarios or truncated vignettes from real events. These short cases are useful in pinpointing ethical issues. The danger of only using short cases is it might encourage students to attack the particular issue, while neglecting the actual context and practical constraints in which any decision process is imbedded. It has been shown that longer, real-life cases that describe actual ethical and engineering dilemmas are also very effective teaching tools . If so, then there is a role far longer, more detailed cases that are based on real-life events and include multiple decision points for which there is no one simple "right" answer.
At the University of Virginia, we have created a Web site (http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~meg3c/ethics/home.html) which contains a series of such case-studies. This Web Site was awarded first prize in a competition sponsored by the MIT’s Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. The site features primarily cases that have been researched and written by students, with faculty support from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Darden School of Graduate Business Administration. The website consists of a collection of cases that focus on ethical considerations in the early stages of the invention and design process, rather than as aftermath of a completed design. Because of the growing use of cases in engineering courses, and because it is difficult to separate out design issues from those in ethics and in the environment, we are developing cases that encourage students to think imaginatively about design in light of the increasing concern for the environment and other issues that will be challenging to them in their work as engineers. We hope to produce engineers who will be better able to make ethical decisions about creating and marketing new technologies .
Gioia, in his discussion of the Ford Pinto case, makes the distinction between ethical decisions, which accord with accepted professional standards and codes of ethics and moral decisions, which stem from a higher conviction about what is 'right' . Similarly, in Kohlberg’s scale of moral development, the most advanced stage involves this kind of ‘higher conviction about what is right’ . Gilligan argues this kind of conviction ought to emerge from a deep sense of compassion for others . If Gioia had really been able to put himself in the shoes of a parent whose child was driving a Pinto, as well as looking at the problem from Ford’s perspective, he might have arrived at a better decision.
Codes, like algorithms, are helpful. But codes cannot cover all possibilities, and must be tempered by compassion. Creativity requires going beyond what is known. Similarly, to apply ethical guidelines like the McDonough/Braungart protocols to novel situations, one must grasp their spirit. Lyons and Kaelin were particularly well suited to do that, because of their previous experiences trying to make environmentally-intelligent decisions. Students need to be taken through a series of case dilemmas in order to get a vicarious version of the same experience. In the section that follows, I am going to describe the dilemmas we use for each of the cases we discussed in Chapter 4.
This page was last edited: Wednesday, July 14, 1999