Abstract
This study was conducted in Serbian companies on licensed engineers and in its first part included a total of 336 licensed engineers who voluntarily completed the questionnaires about their ethical orientation and attitudes toward corruption and in the second part 214 engineers who participated in the first survey, who voluntarily evaluated their company’s business operations characteristics. This study has clearly shown that there is a direct significant influence of the engineer’s ethical orientations and attitudes toward corruption on their evaluation of the characteristics of their respective companies regarding business operations. This research also clearly shows that only engineers with a strong deontological orientation, low ethical subjectivity, and strong readiness to fight corruption, low corruption acceptance and high awareness of corruption can successfully fight corruption, improve the business operations of their companies and make beneficial changes to society. Otherwise, they should be considered as corruption perpetrators, not just as its victims.
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Notes
Basart and Serra (2013) wrote: “Engineering is more than what engineers do in their work. While working there is always a private or a public organization by whom the engineer is employed. This organization is a more or less complex entity where many stakeholders, interests, and boundaries (external as well as internal) interrelate. Suppliers also play a role as another organization with an analogous structure. Laws and public regulations establish what is allowed and what is forbidden. Finally, the result of his or her work is delivered and acts upon the client or society who had previously commissioned, under certain conditions, a specific product or service”.
PERFORMANCE are the effects of work per unit of the time, QUALITY is a degree of how good the product is, as a result of work. The measure of quality in industrial systems is determined by the product’s function, the accuracy of its dimensions and shape, as well as the degree of customer satisfaction and the similar parameters. EFFECTIVENESS is a complex indicator of the system quality, in the terms of the ability to perform the goal function, within a given period of time, and in the given environmental conditions. EFFICIENCY represents the ratio of the output value units against of the input value units. An efficient enterprise may not necessarily be an effective one, simply because it can be effective in activities that are not of the essential importance for it. WORK CAPABILITY represents the potential capacity of the participants in the work process. The degree of utilization of the potential capacity is subject to the effects of legal limitations, established work mode, and satisfaction of the work participants and their position in the work process.
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The authors thank the editor and the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper.
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Pecujlija, M., Cosic, I., Nesic-Grubic, L. et al. Corruption: Engineers are Victims, Perpetrators or Both?. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 907–923 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9569-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9569-1