The Global Business Environment: What Engineers Should Know

This chapter discusses global business environments in relation to engineering, especially the ethical implications of this relation. It begins with the case of Toshiba Machine Tools, highlighting potential conflicts between ethics, politics, and business when engineering in international contexts. The chapter moves on to explore the place of engineering within business, nature of business, role of ethics in business, and differences between business and engineering ethics. On this basis, ethical principles for organizations are outlined—dealing with corporate responsibility in terms of harm, fairness, laws, discrimination, compensation, and contracts—as well as for employees—in terms of performance, confidentiality, harm, honesty, and ethics. The application of these principles to engineering-business contexts—points of convergence and conflict within these principles—is then more fully explained. The chapter ends by inviting readers to reconsider the Toshiba case in light of these discussions and that of the Volkswagen emissions scandal.