Abstract
Ethics and equity-centered perspectives are critical for the advancement of engineering systems design. The characteristics of engineering systems, namely, their high degree of technical complexity, social intricacy, elaborate processes, and their aim to fulfill important functions in society makes them highly vulnerable to several ethical dilemmas and inequities that can lead to suboptimal performance. This chapter first highlights the varying ethical considerations within the literature, including distributive justice, procedural justice, safety ethics, privacy and trust, autonomy, and sustainability. Next, we discuss the influence of assessing ethical behavior at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of analysis and five ethical themes present in the current engineering systems design literature: integrating ethics and equity-centered perspectives into design, recognizing system boundaries, developing augmented system design criteria, managing trade-offs and conflicting values, and educating systems designers. Then, we continue our multilevel approach to explore how these might apply to a particular engineering system, systems of health. Finally, based on the key themes and our application of those themes to systems of health, we identify areas for future research.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge and appreciate the contributions of Dr. Chinweike Eseonu and Maria Fitzpatrick in the planning stages of this chapter and appreciate the editors for their feedback. The views herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy or Babson College supporters or board members.
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Glover, W.J., Hendricks-Sturrup, R. (2021). Ethics and Equity-Centered Perspectives in Engineering Systems Design. In: Maier, A., Oehmen, J., Vermaas, P.E. (eds) Handbook of Engineering Systems Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46054-9_34-1
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Ethics and Equity-Centred Perspectives in Engineering Systems Design- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46054-9_34-3
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Ethics and Equity-Centered Perspectives in Engineering Systems Design- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46054-9_34-1