Abstract
The mining and energy industries present unique challenges to engineers, who must navigate sometimes competing responsibilities and codes of conduct, such as personal senses of right and wrong, professional ethics codes, and their employers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the current dominant framework used by industry to conceptualize firms’ responsibilities to their stakeholders, yet has it plays a relatively minor role in engineering ethics education. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary pedagogical intervention in a petroleum engineering seminar that sought to better prepare engineering undergraduate students to critically appraise the strengths and limitations of CSR as an approach to reconciling the interests of industry and communities. We find that as a result of the curricular interventions, engineering students were able to expand their knowledge of the social, rather than simply environmental and economic dimensions of CSR. They remained hesitant, however, in identifying the links between those social aspects of CSR and their actual engineering work. The study suggests that CSR may be a fruitful arena from which to illustrate the profoundly sociotechnical dimensions of the engineering challenges relevant to students’ future careers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Babidge, S. (2013). “Socios”: The contested morality of “partnerships” in indigenous community–mining company relations, Northern Chile. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18(2), 274–293.
Baillie, C. (2011). A multidisciplinary approach to curriculum development for engineering graduates who are socially and environmentally just. 2011 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition.
Benson, P., & Kirsch, S. (2010). Capitalism and the politics of resignation. Current Anthropology , 51(4), 459–486.
Blowfield, M., & Frynas, J. G. (2005). Setting new agendas: critical perspectives on corporate social responsibility in the developing world. International Affairs, 81(3), 499–513.
Bucciarelli, L. L. (2008). Ethics and engineering education. European Journal of Engineering Education, 33(2), 141–149.
Burningham, K., Barnett, J., & Walker, G. (2015). An array of deficits: Unpacking NIMBY discourses in wind energy developers’ conceptualizations of their local opponents. Society & Natural Resources, 28(3), 246–260.
Catalano, G. D. (2006). Engineering ethics: Peace, justice, and the earth. Synthesis Lectures on Engineers, Technology, and Society, 1(1), 1–80.
Cech, E. (2014). Culture of disengagement in engineering education? Science, Technology and Human Values, 39(1), 42–72.
Clarke, C. E., Boudet, H. S., & Bugden, D. (2013). Fracking in the American mind: Americans’ views on hydraulic fracturing in September, 2012. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Retrieved from http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/reports.
Davis, R., & Franks, D. M. (2014). Costs of company–community conflict in the extractive sector. Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative Report. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Retrieved from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/CSRI/research/Costs%20of%20Conflict_Davis%20%20Franks.pdf.
Didier, C., & Huet, R. (2008). Corporate social responsibility in engineering education. A French survey. European Journal of Engineering Education, 33(2), 169–177.
Dobb, E. (2013). The new oil landscape. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/bakken-shale-oil/dobb-text.
Dolan, C., & Rajak, D. (Eds.). (2016). The anthropology of corporate social responsibility. New York: Berghahn Books.
Douglas, D., Papadopoulos, G., & Boutelle, J. (2009). Citizen engineer: A handbook for socially responsible engineering. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Fergus, J.W. (2013). Materials engineering as a catalyst for sustainability education. 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Frey, W.J., Papadopoulos, C., Castro-Sitiriche, M., Zevallos, F., & Echevarria, D. (2012). On integrating appropriate technology responsive to community capabilities: A case study from Haiti. 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Explosition.
Frynas, J. G. (2009). Corporate social responsibility in the oil and gas sector. Journal of World Energy Law and Business, 2(3), 178–195.
Galambosi, A., & Ozelkan, E. (2011). Integrating sustainability into systems engineering curriculum. 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Gardner, K., Ahmed, Z., Bashir, F., & Rana, M. (2012). Elusive partnerships: Gas extraction and CSR in Bangladesh. Resources Policy, 37(2), 168–174.
Herkert, J. R. (2001). Future directions in engineering ethics research: Microethics, macroethics and the role of professional societies. Science and Engineering Ethics, 7(3), 403–414.
Holsapple, M. A., Carpenter, D. D., Sutkus, J. A., Finelli, C. J., & Harding, T. S. (2012). Framing faculty and student discrepancies in engineering ethics education delivery. Journal of Engineering Education, 101(2), 169–186.
Kirsch, S. (2014). Mining capitalism: Dialectical relations between corporations & their critics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Koehn, J., Nagumantri, P., & Koehn, K. (2008). Environmental concepts of civil/construction engineering students. 2008 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Lucena, J., Schneider, J., & Leydens, J. (2010). Engineering and sustainable community development. San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool.
Ottinger, G. (2013). Refining expertise how responsible engineers subvert environmental justice challenges. New York: New York University Press.
Rajak, D. (2011). In good company: An anatomy of corporate social responsibility. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Rolston, J. S. (2015). Turning protesters into monitors: Appraising critical collaboration in the mining industry. Society & Natural Resources, 28(2), 165–179.
Rulifson, G., Bielefeldt, A., & Thomas, W. (2014). Understanding of social responsibility by first year engineering students: Ethical foundations and courses. 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis.
Sharpt, J. (2006). Corporate social responsibility and development: An anthropological perspective. Development Southern Africa, 23(2), 213–222.
Smith, J. M. (2017). From corporate social responsibility to creating shared value: Contesting responsibilization and the mining industry. In Competing responsibilities: The ethics and politics of contemporary life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Society of Petroleum Engineers. (2013). Our industry, public perception. Special Issue of the Way Ahead, 9(2), 1–32.
Sutkus, J., Finelli, C., Carpenter, D., & Harding, T. (2009). An examination of student experiences related to engineering ethics: Initial findings. 2009 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Tougaw, D., & Schroeder, D. (2005). Collaborative teaching of a course in technology, society and the natural environment. 2005 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
United Nations Environmental Program. (2009). Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products. New York: UNEP.
Welker, M. (2014). Enacting the corporation: An American mining firm in post-authoritarian Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wynne, B. (1991). Knowledges in context. Science, Technology and Human Values, 16(1), 111–121.
Wynne, B. (2001). Creating public alienation: Expert cultures of risk and ethics on GMOs. Science as Culture, 10(4), 445–481.
Zandvoort, H., Børsen, T., Deneke, M., & Bird, S. J. (2013). Editors’ overview perspectives on teaching social responsibility to students in science and engineering. Science and Engineering Ethics, 19(4), 1413–1438.
Acknowledgements
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1540298. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Research with Human Subjects
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, J.M., McClelland, C.J. & Smith, N.M. Engineering Students’ Views of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study from Petroleum Engineering. Sci Eng Ethics 23, 1775–1790 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9859-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9859-x