As a number of high profile companies have found to their cost, corporate reputations can be significantly affected by firms' management of sustainability issue, including those that are outside their direct control, such as the environmental and social impacts of their supply networks. This paper begins by examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility, reputation, and supply network conditions. It then looks at the effectiveness of one tool for managing supply network sustainability issues, ethical sourcing codes of conduct, by examining (...) how the characteristics of three supply networks branded clothes, DIY wood products and branded confectionary affects the implementation ethical sourcing codes of conduct. It ends by setting out conclusions on why implementation of such codes has been so much more successful in some sectors than others and recommendations on effective approaches to managing sustainability issues in supply networks. (shrink)

Three frames of reference for engineering ethics are discussed—individual, professional and social—which can be further broken down into “microethics” concerned with individuals and the internal relations of the engineering profession and “macroethics” referring to the collective social responsibility of the engineering profession and to societal decisions about technology. Few attempts have been made at integrating microethical and macroethical approaches to engineering ethics. The approach suggested here is to focus on the role of professional engineering societies in linking individual and professional (...) ethics and in linking professional and social ethics. A research program is outlined using ethics support as an example of the former, and the issuance of position statements on product liability as an example of the latter. (shrink)

In this editorial contribution, two issues relevant to the question, what should be at the top of the research agenda for ethics and technology, are identified and discussed. Firstly: can, and do, engineers make a difference to the degree to which technology leads to morally desirable outcomes? What role does professional autonomy play here, and what are its limits? And secondly, what should be the scope of engineers’ responsibility; that is to say, on which issues are they, as engineers, morally (...) obliged to reflect? The research agendas proposed by the authors contributing to this special section, implicitly, give different answers to these questions. We suggest that an explicit discussion of these issues would greatly help in constructing a common research agenda. (shrink)

This paper presents a roadmap of Finnish companies adopting and managing corporate social responsibility (CSR). It discusses the companies' views on CSR and highlights the practices that Finnish companies have adopted or are currently adopting. It also presents a framework that outlines the CSR processes and management prospects. Results showed that Finnish companies are progressively managing CSR. This newly revived thinking about social responsibility is viewed as an issue traced back from Finland's history of industrial development. There is no general (...) definition of CSR; however, various concepts are connoted into it. Driven by several factors, CSR is developing gradually as indicated by the positive responses and initiatives of the companies. CSR management and practices towards employees, suppliers, community and customers are well defined locally based generally on established socially responsible behavior which could be articulated by laws and regulations, corporate values and business ethics. However, managing CSR with a global scope, problems such as; lack of information and structured management system, different views and interpretations, supply chain complexities, overlap with environmental issues, etc. often lead some companies to manage CSR haphazardly. Views and management of CSR are also influenced by some distinct Finnish cultural attributes. An initial conceptual framework for CSR is drawn reflecting the current practices and prospects for management strategies. Such framework can be used in organizing and streamlining CSR elements for effective management approaches and measuring of performance. It could be expected that in due time, the efforts of the companies will become more evident, organized and systematically managed. (shrink)

This paper argues that research for engineering ethics should routinely involve philosophers, social scientists, and engineers, and should focus for now on certain basic questions such as: Who is an engineer? What is engineering? What do engineers do? How do they make decisions? And how much control do they actually have over what they do?

Stewardship is potentially a usefulconcept in modernizing management philosophies. Use ofthe term has increased markedly in recent years, yetthe term is used loosely and rarely defined in landmanagement literature. The connections between thispractical usage and the ethical basis of stewardshipare currently poorly developed. The followingdefinition is proposed: ``Stewardship is theresponsible use (including conservation) of naturalresources in a way that takes full and balancedaccount of the interests of society, futuregenerations, and other species, as well as of privateneeds, and accepts significant answerability (...) tosociety.'''' A religious interpretation would require thephrase ``and ultimately to God'''' to be added.Stewardship has both secular and religiousinterpretations and it will be desirable to developboth of these aspects in parallel. A task forphilosophers is to establish whether the ethical basisof stewardship is sufficient to address environmentalconcerns or whether it is necessary to embrace widerethical approaches. Stewardship occupies similarground to several other concepts of use and managementof resources, particularly sustainability. It canbuild on sustainability by encouraging a broader viewof who and what should benefit from managementactivity. In particular, it focuses attention on therole of managers in providing public benefit and onenvisaging other species as a form of ``stakeholder'''' inmanagement decisions. Stewardship is applicable acrossthe widest range of fields of resource use and alsohas relevance to aspects of land tenure and propertyrights. Application of stewardship will require someadjustments in the roles of private managers/ownersvis-à-vis government. It might providemanagers with an expanded role and, importantly, amore positive image, both of themselves and in theeyes of the public. Stewardship could alsobe developed in a way that has relevance to citizensin general (as opposed to managers and owners ofresources), through their interactions with naturalresources as consumers. (shrink)