Standard: The Ethics of Extraction: Integrating Corporate Social Responsibility into Engineering Education

采矿、石油和天然气行业构成了目前学术界、政策界和公众圈正在辩论的一些最令人恼火的道德挑战。工程师构成了这些行业的核心，正是他们的工作直接塑造了广大公众必须努力应对的环境和社会影响。这些工程师在企业利益、社区福利、环境可持续性和专业自主权的交集下工作，但人们对他们如何理解和驾驭他们在专业实践中面临的道德挑战知之甚少。该项目通过调查企业社会责任与工程之间的关系来推进现有的企业社会责任(CSR)研究，并通过阐明企业社会责任概念相对于更广泛的社会责任文献的独特优势和局限性来促进工程伦理。这项研究有可能通过培养能够更好地准备好批判性地利用当前企业社会责任框架的机会和局限性的工程师，来提高有争议行业的社会和环境绩效。此外，向学生展示将强大的伦理感融入采矿和石油行业的可能性，也可能增加少数族裔在工程领域的参与度，这些领域历来由白人男性学生主导，因为女性和少数族裔更有可能追求具有明确机会为公共利益做出贡献的工程职业。这项研究将利用民族志访谈和参与者观察，从从事采掘业的工程师那里发现：1)企业社会责任的主导框架是否以及如何塑造他们的工作；2)特定的本科生教育经历在帮助他们应对职业实践中的社会和环境挑战方面发挥了什么作用。然后，研究小组将使用这些数据为三所与矿业和石油行业关系密切的大学(科罗拉多矿业学院、弗吉尼亚理工大学和密苏里科技大学)的本科生提供信息并改变其教育经历。这些教育创新将通过工程教育会议的教员研讨会和在线平台(如美国国家工程院在线伦理中心(http://www.onlineethics.org))和社会可持续发展综合网络(https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/).))更广泛地传播

The mining, oil and gas industries pose some of the most vexing ethical challenges currently under debate in academic, policy, and public circles. Engineers form the core of these industries, and it is their work that directly shapes the environmental and social impacts with which the wider public must grapple. These engineers work at the intersection of corporate interests, the welfare of communities, environmental sustainability, and professional autonomy, yet very little is known about how they come to understand and navigate the ethical challenges they face in their professional practice. The project advances the existing research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by investigating the relationship between CSR and engineering, and it will also advance engineering ethics by illuminating the unique strengths and limitations of the concept of CSR in relation to the literature on social responsibility more generally. The research has the potential to enhance the social and environmental performance of controversial industries by cultivating engineers who are better prepared to critically engage the opportunities and limitations of the current framework of CSR. Moreover, showing students the possibilities for integrating a robust sense of ethics into the mining and petroleum industries may also increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in engineering fields that are historically among the most dominated by white male students, given that women and racial minorities are more likely to pursue engineering careers with explicit opportunities to contribute to the public good.This research will use ethnographic interviews and participant-observation to discover from engineers practicing in the extractive industries: 1) if and how the dominant framework of CSR shapes their work and 2) what role particular undergraduate educational experiences played in preparing them to navigate the social and environmental challenges of their professional practice. The research team will then use these data to inform and transform the educational experiences for undergraduates at three universities with strong ties to the mining and petroleum industries (Colorado School of Mines, Virginia Tech, and Missouri University of Science and Technology). These educational innovations will be disseminated more broadly through faculty workshops at engineering education conferences and online platforms such as the National Academy of Engineering Online Ethics Center (http://www.onlineethics.org) and Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/).