Engineering Professor Barry D. Lichter presented an account and analysis of a project carried out jointly with philosophy Professor Michael D. Hodges, both of Vanderbilt University. They had conducted workshops for engineers on professionalism and engineering ethics at two on-site settings in the chemical industry. The first was held at Tennessee Eastman Company, Kingsport, Tennessee on March 7 and 8, 1980. The second was held at the DuPont Corporation, Old Hickory, Tennessee on March 27, 1980. The Tennessee Eastman group contained about twenty-five people at a variety of different levels within the organizational structure of the company. The DuPont group consisted of fifteen individuals all drawn from the ranks of middle management.

Both groups were given as curriculum materials Edwin Layton's Revolt of the Engineers, David Noble's America, by Design,' and; Robert Baum's and Albert Flores' Ethical Problems in Engineering. The DuPont group, however, also read some additional material on the subjects of corporate end individual responsibility. At each workshop session, Professors Lichter and Hodges introduced the topics under consideration and then opened the floor to general discussion.

Professor Lichter said that both corporations were extremely hospitable and receptive to the idea of the workshops. Yet as they dealt with the two companies, he end Professor Hodges perceived an interesting difference betweeen them in their attitudes toward professionalism in engineering. To Lichter and Hodges, DuPont appeared to adhere to an "explicit or implicit policy, the effect of which was to discourage 'professional identification'." They noticed that company personnel tended not to identify themselves by way of profession. At the outset, Lichter and Hodges were told that not many of the workshop participants would think of themselves as professional engineers. They also noticed that few DuPont personnel are either licensed as professional engineers or have memberships in professional engineering organization. Lichter said that though he and Hodges would in no way suggest that DuPont consciously discourages professional identification, it nonetheless seemed to them that this situation is the effect of the company's policies.

By contrast, as Lichter and Hodges perceived it, the situation at Tennessee Eastman was almost the exact reverse. The local chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers served as a cosponsor of the workshop, and the company appears to strongly support the professional society. Many of the engineers in the Tennessee Eastman workshops, with whom Lichter and Hodges worked closely, immediately identified themselves as professional engineers.

On the face of it, the two companies appear to represent very different attitudes toward professionalism. Lichter and Hodges, however, came to regard appearances as deceptive. According to Lichter: "A deeper look indicates that there (were) not fundamentally different attitudes at work here but simply different strategies for accomplishing the same purpose . .. . At neither location did (he and Hodges) find any sense that allegiance to a 'profession' might constitute a separate and even potentially conflicting source of duties and obligations. This result was accomplished," Lichter suggested, "in one case by ignoring and in the other by absorbing the role of the professional. But in both the result was the same. The role of the professional and that of employee were collapsed."Lichter said that "because of this inability to identify oneself in a way independent of one's employment status .... the almost universal response to particular ethical problems presented for discussion . .was that of 'individual failure'. . . in almost all cases where problems emerged they were seen as the result of some failure on the part of en individual to really do his or her job. They were never seen in terms of inherent weakness in the institutional system within which individuals worked."

Lichter cited the question of "the company doctor" as "one of the most illuminating examples of this problem. In an attempt to illustrate the way in which institutional context could affect honest professional judgement, it was proposed that two doctors, one employed by a company and the other in private practice, would reach quite different conclusions with regard to the question of when given individuals were fit to work. It was suggested that the company doctor would more often favor the company and the private doctor would favor the patient. However, instead of meeting the issue, participants (at DuPont) reduced the matter to a technical question. That is, they argued that the company doctor would be right because he knew his patients and the work situation better. The very suggestion that one's judgement might honestly be affected by the institutional setting in which that judgement was formed simply was not even an intelligible option."

Lichter concluded his presentation by summarizing four frequently advanced proposals for haw engineers should conceive of professionalism. He acknowledged that the workshop experiences he and Professor Hodges shared, do not count decisively in favor of any one approach. Yet Lichter expressed the hope that their account of the workshops will prove helpful in clarifying thought about the issue.