Can Professional Institutions Save the World?

This seminar series considers the extent to which professional institutions (and the engineering profession in particular) could help to combat climate change, as well as asking what changes need to be made in order to make professional institutions effective.

Series Conveners

Rob Lawlor (Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied, Leeds); Frin Bale (Engineering); Katy Roelich (Earth and environment); Iona McCleery (History); Helen Morley (Faculty Research Impact Officer).

Project overview

Discussions of ethics and social change often neglect professional institutions, focusing on individuals or governments. However, professional institutions can make positive contributions to society, helping to respond to moral challenges. The most significant example of this potential is the World Medical Association’s 'Declaration of Helsinki'. In particular, professional institutions seem to be well placed to provide coordinated responses to a problem that requires coordinated action.

On the face of it, therefore, we have reason to hope that the engineering professional institutions would be well-placed to give clear and explicit guidance to engineers, to formulate a co-ordinated response to climate change. And, indeed, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Engineering Council, in their shared Statement of Ethical Principles, explicitly state that engineers have a duty to “minimise… any adverse effect on… the natural environment for their own and succeeding generations”, and also state that engineers should also provide “responsible leadership”.

However, the evidence suggests that the engineering profession - taken as a whole - has failed to show responsible leadership, or to limit impacts on the environment.

This project aims to explore the history and sociology of professional institutions to consider what is necessary for a profession to fully mature into a profession that is capable of protecting the public interest in an effective manner, and willing to do so.

Pessimistically, the aim of this would be to explore why the engineering institutions have failed, considering the question of whether engineering meets the criteria necessary to be considered a fully mature profession, or whether engineering is still in the process of professionalization.

More optimistically, the aim would be to explore what would need to happen in order for the engineering institutions to become significant and effective protectors of the public, future generations and the environment.