Question

Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability are hot topics in engineering management. Having a grasp of these issues is vital for future leaders of engineering industries in the 21st Century. After conducting a comprehensive review of literature in the context of an engineering sector of your choice, find out what ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability (or a subset of these topics) means and what approaches is currently use to lead the organizations. Based on your findings and understanding of best practices in the literature develop recommendations for future leaders.

Answer 1

Ethics, Corporate social responsibility, and sustainability have got its different understanding and meaning in an engineering firm and for its leaders. As we know that the engineering firms mostly involved in working on the development and usage of technology and generates the business. Ethics for leaders as well the engineering organization is mostly as per the utilitarian approach which aims at bringing greater good for a larger section of the society and tries to improve the economic performance of the society by bringing in efficiency in everything we do. While the CSR is mostly aimed at gaining some sort of short term competitive advantage where the focus is to improve the performance of the society and improving the living standard of the bottom of the pyramid. Sustainability is mostly about gaining long term and sustainable competitive advantage and also improving environmental performance. The recommendation for future leaders would be to understand the importance of ethics in business which is mainly dwelling upon leveraging the technology. Ethics is the most important aspect to be looked at for the technology-based business, as the society should never make the perception that the technology is not ethical and there is a disadvantage for society while the advantage for the organization. Technology should not take advantage of the customer conditions rather technology should be inclusive and affordable for the larger section of the society. The impact of technology needs to be positive and the same must be communicated to all the stakeholders in a time-bound manner. Leaders should focus on making the technology sustainable and accepted by society. Technology can not work in isolation from the society because such technology would not be sustainable.