Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, 84604, USA.
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2021 Feb 15;27(1):12. doi: 10.1007/s11948-021-00285-x.
When there are disasters in our society, whether on an individual, organizational or systemic level, individuals or groups of individuals are often singled out for blame, and commonly it is assumed that the alleged culprits engaged in deliberate misdeeds. But sometimes, at least, these disasters occur not because of deliberate malfeasance, but rather because of complex organizational and systemic circumstances that result in these negative outcomes. Using the Boeing Corporation and its 737 MAX aircraft crashes as an example, this ethical analysis will examine some of the organizational problems that led to changes in management in Boeing and ultimately resulted in the fatal accidents. We will examine ethical blind spots within the company that led to the deadly accidents, and we will study the kinds of circumstances that are particularly acute in organizations such as Boeing, and which contributed to the malfunctions in the 737 MAX and the two resulting crashes. The Boeing 737 MAX example is not a singular case, but rather shares similarities with other engineering disasters such as the Challenger and Columbia explosions, and the ignition switch failures at General Motors each of which seem to have been at least partly the result of organizational shortcomings involving a compromise in commitment to safety. These parallels lead us to conclude that organizational malfeasance poses a serious ethical challenge for engineers and their organizations. We will conclude with some tentative suggestions for avoiding such tragic incidents in the future.
当社会发生灾难时，无论是在个人、组织还是系统层面，个人或个人群体往往会成为指责的对象，通常假设所谓的罪犯故意犯罪。但有时，至少这些灾难的发生不是因为故意的不当行为，而是因为复杂的组织和系统情况导致了这些负面结果。本文以波音公司及其 737 MAX 飞机坠毁为例，对导致波音公司管理层变更并最终导致致命事故的一些组织问题进行了伦理分析。我们将研究公司内部导致致命事故的伦理盲点，并研究波音等组织中特别突出的情况，这些情况促成了 737 MAX 的故障以及由此导致的两次坠机事故。波音 737 MAX 事件并不是一个孤立的案例，而是与挑战者号和哥伦比亚号爆炸以及通用汽车点火开关故障等其他工程灾难有相似之处，这些灾难似乎至少部分是由于组织缺陷导致对安全的承诺受到损害造成的。这些相似之处使我们得出结论，组织不当行为对工程师及其组织构成了严重的伦理挑战。我们将以一些避免此类悲剧事件发生的初步建议作为结论。
