IEEE Ethics 2021 – Corporate Social Responsibility and Engineering Education

By on April 22nd, 2022 in Conferences, Ethics, Social Implications of Technology, Videos

The “Corporate Social Responsibility and Engineering Education” session took place during IEEE ETHICS 2021 on 28 October 2021.
It was moderated by Jessica Smith, Colorado School of Mines.

Click here to view the video recording.

This roundtable session highlights current research and practice on training engineers to navigate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a heterogeneous and ethically complex field of practice. The roundtable will feature brief presentations on each topic and then be opened to discussion. Topics range from findings from a five-year research project that infused ethnographic research on CSR into engineering curricula at four different universities, to theories of “relational CSR,” to assessments of the professional prospects for “engineers for good” in the corporate job market.

Corporate social responsibility has a chameleon-like character. It exists as part of a larger ecology of related concepts: sustainability, corporate citizenship, business accountability, social performance, sustainable development, creating shared value, and ESG (environmental, social and governance). Its definition shifts by industry, geographic context, and company invoking the term. Some academics dismiss CSR as greenwash, while others uncritically treat it as a silver bullet for reconciling ethics and economics, morality and the market. This roundtable session highlights current research and practice on training engineers to navigate CSR as a heterogeneous and ethically complex field of practice. The roundtable will feature brief presentations on each topic and then be opened to discussion. Topics range from findings from a five-year research project that infused ethnographic research on CSR into engineering curricula at four different universities, to theories of “relational CSR,” to assessments of the professional prospects for “engineers for good” in the corporate job market.

Presenters:
Qin Zhu and Jessica M. Smith, “Relational CSR as an engaged communal approach to engineering ethics”

Stephanie Claussen, “Teaching opportunities for CSR in electrical engineering”

Larkin Martini, “A comparison of professor and student experiences of CSR teaching”

Carrie McClelland and Linda Battalora, “Stories from the Classroom: a Retrospective on integrating CSR into Petroleum Engineering Courses”

Jessica Smith, Greg Rulifson, and Stephanie Claussen, “Ethical pessimism and student views of engineers’ agency in corporations”

Marie Stettler Kleine, Rachel Geiger, Scott West, and Juan Lucena, “Engineering for good in/and the corporate job market”