Associations among civil engineer’s ethical education experiences, ethical beliefs, ethical perceptions and ethical behaviour

• Autores: Chung-Fah Huang
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 30, no. 5, 2014, págs. 1166-1175
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This study is to discover the current situation of the professional ethics education of engineers in Taiwan’s construction industryand also to discover which types of ethical education experiences can really shape suitable ethical attitudes and behaviours forconstruction practitioners. These engineers can be categorized into three types according to their ethical education experiences. Thisstudy included 526 civil engineers, and it showed that only 13% of the engineers studied ethics at school. Factor analysis andreliability analysis were employed in this study to explore the factors of ethical beliefs, perceptions and behaviour of constructionindustry engineers. According to the three t-tests on the three types of engineers with different ethical education experiences andthose without any ethical education experiences, it was found that ethical education experiences from on-the-job training and thestrict regulations of organizations have a significantly more positive effect on ethical attitude development. It was also found thatcivil engineers’ ethical behaviour is subject to the influences of their ethical beliefs and ethical perceptions, particularly their ethicalperceptions of interpersonal relationships. Therefore, it is suggested that construction organizations and employers shouldemphasize teamwork and respect between employees so as to achieve more effective results in boosting engineers’ ethical behaviour.