• Fred, the chief engineer involved in designing the plant,
• plant workers,
• officials from Mexican government regulatory agencies,
• Phaust management,
• representatives from the parent French company,
• officials presiding over an engineering professional society.

Reactive Senses

1. Causal Responsibility refers to prior events (called causes) which produce or prevent subsequent events (called effects). Cheap, inacurate sensors (cause) required that Manual be present on the scene (effect) to monitor the high temperatures and pressures required to correctly prepare Phaust's paint stripper.
2. Role Responsibility delineates the obligations individuals create when they commit to a social or professional role. When Fred became an engineer he committed to holding paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public. (See NSPE code of ethics)
3. Capacity Responsibility sets forth those conditions under which someone can be praised or blamed for their actions. Praise and blame associate an agent with an action. Excuses are based on means for separating or disassociating an agent from their actions. Capacity responsibility helps us determine whether there are any legitimate excuses available for those who would disassociate themselves from untoward, harm-causing actions.
4. Blame Responsibility determines when we can legitimately praise or blame individuals for their actions.

Proactive Senses

1. Sharing Responsibility extends the sphere of responsibility to include those to whom one stands in internal relations or relations of solidarity. Shared responsibility includes answering for the actions of others within one's group. It also includes coming to the moral aid of those within one's group who have gone morally astray; this involves bringing to their attention morally risky actions and standing with them when they are pressured for trying to uphold group values. While sharing responsibility entails answering for what members of one's group have done, it does not extend to taking the blame for the untoward actions of colleagues. Sharing responsibility does not commit what H.D. Lewis calls the "barbarism of collective responsibility" which consists of blaming and punishing innocent persons for the guilty actions of those with whom they are associated.
2. Preventive Responsibility: By using knowledge of the past, one can avoid errors or repeat successes in the future. Peter French calls this the "Principle of Responsive Adjustment." (One adjusts future actions in response to what one has learned from the past.) According to French, responsive adjustment is a moral imperative. If one fails to responsively adjust to avoid the repetition of past untoward results, this loops back into the past and causes a revaluation of the initial unintentional action. The benefit of the doubt is withdrawn and the individual who fails to responsively adjust is now held responsible for the original past action. This is because the failure to adjust inserts the initial action into a larger context of negligence, bad intentions, recklessness, and carelessness. Failure to responsively adjust triggers a retroactive attribution of blame.
3. Responsibility as a Virtue: Here one develops skills, acquires professional knowledge, cultivitates sensitivies and emotions, and develops habits of execution that consistently bring about value realization and excellence. One way of getting at responsibility as an excellence it to reinterpret the conditions of imputability of blame responsibility. An agent escapes blame by restricting the scope of role responsibility, claiming ignorance, and citing lack of power and control. In responsibility as a virtue, one goes beyond blame by extending the range of role responsibilities, seeking situation-relevant knowledge, and working to skillfully extending power and control.

To hold Fred responsible for the accident at Morales, we need to...

1. Specify his role responsibilities and determine whether he carried them out
2. Identify situation-based factors that limited his ability to execute his role responsibilities (These are factors that compel our actions or contribute to our ignorance of crucial features of the situation.)
3. Determine if there is any moral fault present in the situation. For example, did Fred act on the basis of wrongful intention (Did he intend to harm Manuel by sabotaging the plant?), fail to exercise due care, exhibit negligence or recklessness?
4. If Fred (a) failed to carry out any of his role responsibilities, (b) this failure contributed to the accident, and (c) Fred can offer no morally legitimate excuse to get himself off the hook, then Fred is blameworthy.

Preventive Responsibility: Responsive Adjustment

• Responsibility to adjust future actions in response to what has been learned from the past
• Scenario One: Past actions that have led to untoward results. Failure here to adjust future actions to avoid repetition of untoward results leads to reassessing the original action and retrospectively blaming the agent.
• Scenario Two: Past actions have unintentionally and accidentally led to positive, value-realizing results. Here the agent responsively adjusts by being prepared to take advantage of being lucky. The agent adjusts future actions to repeat past successes. In this way, the agent captures past actions (past luck) and inserts them into the scope of praise.
• Nota Bene: The principle of responsible adjustment sets the foundation for responsibility in the sense of prevention of the untoward.

Responsibility as a Virtue or Excellence

1. Virtues are excellences of the character which are revealed by our actions, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. Along these lines, responsibility as a virtue requires that we reformulate responsibility from its reactive, minimalist sense (where it derives much of its content from legal responsibility) to responsibility as an excellence of character.
2. Aristotle situates virtues as means between extremes of excess and defect. Can you think of examples of too much responsibility? (Does Fred try to take on too much responsibility in certain situations?) Can you think of anyone who exhibits too little responsibility. (Does Fred take on too little responsibility or shift responsibility to others?) For Aristotle, we can have too much or too little of a good thing. From the "too much" we derive vices of excess. from the"too little" we derive the vices of defect.
3. Virtues are more than just modes of reasoning and thinking. They also consist of emotions that clue us into aspects of the situation before us that are morally salient and, therefore, worthy of our notice and response. Two emotions important for responsibility are care and compassion. Care clues us into aspects of our situation that could harm those who depend on our actions and vigilance. Do Wally and Fred pay sufficient attention to the early batch leakages in the Morales plant? If not, does this stem from a lack of care ("Let operations handle it") and a lack of compassion ("Manuel can take care of himself")? Care and compassion help to sensitize us to what is morally salient in the situation at hand. They also motivate us to act responsibility on the basis of this sensitivity.
4. Responsibility as a virtue manifests itself in a willingness to pick up where others have left off. After the Bhopal disaster, a worker was asked why, when he saw a cut-off valve open, he didn't immediately close it as safety procedures required. His response was that shutting off the value was not a part of his job but, instead, the job of those working the next shift. This restriction of responsibility to what is one's job creates responsibility gaps through which accidents and other harms rise to the surface. The worker's lack of action may not constitute moral fault but it surely signifies lack of responsibility as a virtue because it indicates a deficiency of care and compassion. Those who practice responsibility as a virtue or excellence move quickly to fill responsibility gaps left by others even if these tasks are not a part of their own role responsibilities strictly defined. Escaping blame requires narrowing the range of one's role responsibilities while practicing responsibility as a virtue often requires effectively expanding it.
5. Finally, responsibility as an excellence requires extending the range of knowledge and control that one exercises in a situation. Preventing accidents requires collecting knowledge about a system even after it has left the design and manufacturing stages and entered its operational life. Responsibility requires that we search out and correct conditions that could, under the right circumstances, produce harmful accidents. Moreover, responsibility is a function of power and control. Extending these and directing them toward good results are clear signs of responsibility as a virtue.

Mexican Government Regulatory Agencies

• Look at OSHA regulations on safety. Do any of these apply to the incident at morales. Pay particular attendion to responsibilities for providing safe working conditions and to mandated procedures for accident prevention. How as a government agency can you encourage companies to take active and positive measures to increase workplace safety and prevent accidents?
• Look at EPA or JCA for ideas on environmental issues. What are Phaust's responsibilities regarding local environmental conditions? (Should the Mexican government require lining waste water ponds?)
• As an official representing Mexican government regulatory agencies, how do you balance the safety and environmental needs of Mexican citizens and workers with the need to attract foreign companies and investors to Mexico to promote economic development. Should safety and environmental values ever be traded off to promote economic development?

Workers at Morales Plant

• Manuel, your plant manager, has just died. You and your co-workers are concerned about the safety of this new plant. Can you think of any other issues that may be of concern here?
• Develop a statement that summarizes your interests, concerns, and rights. Are these being addressed by those at Phaust and the parent company in France?
• The Mexican Commission established to investigate this "incident" will ask you questions to help determine what cause it and who is to blame. What do you think some of these questions will be? How should you respond to them? Who do you think is to blame for the incident and what should be done in response?

Designing Engineer: Fred

• Examine Fred's actions and participation from the standpoint of the three responsibilty frameworks mentioned above.
• Develop a two minute position paper summarizing Fred's interests, concerns, and rights.
• Anticipate questions that the Commission might raise about Fred's position and develop proactive and effective responses..
• Be sure to use the three responsibility frameworks. Is Fred to blame for what happened? In what way? What can professional societies do to provide moral support to members in difficult situations? How can interested parties provide moral support? Finally, what opportunities arose in the video practicing moral responsibility as a virtue? (Think about what an exemplary engineer would have done differently.)

Phaust Management: Wally and Chuck

• Chuck and Walley made several decisions reponding to the parent company's budget cuts that placed Fred under tight constraints. Identify these decisions, determine whether there were viable alternatives, and decide whether to justify, excuse,or explain your decisions.
• Develop a two minute position paper that you will present to the commission.
• Anticipate Commission questions into your responsibility and develop effective responses to possible attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.

Corporate Governance: French Parent Company

• You represent the French owners who have recently required Phaust Chemical. You have recently shifted funds from Phaust operations to finance further mergers and acquisitions for your company.
• What are your supervisory responsibilities in relation to Phaust?
• Develop a preliminary two minute presentation summarizing your position and interests.
• Anticipate likely commission questions along with possible attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.

Engineering Professional Society

• You represent the professional engineering society to which Fred belongs.
• Develop a two minute presentation that outlines your group's interests and position.
• Anticipate possible Commission questions, develop responses, and anticipate attempts by other groups to shift the blame your way.
• Respond to whether your professional society should extend moral support to engineers in difficult positions like Fred's. Should they clarify code provisions? Provide legal support and counseling? Make available a professional/ethical support hotline?

• Module Preparation Activities: Read module and visit niee.org to get general orientation to "Incident at Morales"
• Class One: Watch Video. Receive group role. Begin preparing your group role.
• Class Two: Work within your group on preparing your group's statement, anticipating questions, and developing responses.
• Class Three: Participate in the Public Hearing. The group representing the Mexican Commission will convene the public hearing, listen to the group's statements, ask questions, and prepare a brief presentation on the Commission's findings
• Class four: Class will debrief on the previous class's public hearing. This will begin with the Commission's findings