Contextualizing the Code: Ethical Support and Professional Interests in the Creation and Institutionalization of the 1974 IEEE Code of Ethics

Abstract

ABSTRACT In many engineering ethics classes, codes of ethics are presented as if they are self-evident yardsticks for gauging ethical decisions in engineering. In this article, we argue that focusing solely on the content of ethics codes without examining the professional contexts in which codes are created – and are made meaningful – misses important opportunities to understand the engineering profession's ethical aspirations and how such codes affect engineers’ professional identities. Our analysis demonstrates a ‘contextualized reading’ of an engineering code of ethics through a historical case study consisting of two successive episodes: In the first episode, we show how engineers’ yearning for ethical support and their competing interpretations of professional interests catalyzed the creation of the first Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Code of Ethics in 1974; the second episode of the case documents the complex institutional processes followed by IEEE members to ensure compliance with the code of ethics in professional practice. For engineering studies scholars, tracing the historical context of codes of ethics offers a pathway to understand engineers’ ‘existential struggles’ – that is, how engineers responded to major challenges and crises as a profession – at a particular historical moment. For engineering ethics educators, revealing how ethics codes operate in the institutional context of professional organizations prepares students to appreciate the ethical horizon of the profession they inherit as well as to redirect or expand that horizon moving into the future.