Construction Industry and Ethics

Business ethics

Ethics generally constitute:

(i) a system of moral principles, by which human actions and proposals may be judged good or bad, or right or wrong; (ii) the rules of conduct recognised in respect of a particular class of human actions; and (iii) moral principles, as of an individual (Delbridge et al., 2000).

They evolved initially from religion by many thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Cohen and Grace, 1998, p. 9). Their study involves the activity of examining the moral standards of society and asking how these standards apply to our lives and whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable (Velasquez, 1998, p. 13) . The outcome is the notion of rights as doing what will promote the most good, and acts that promote the general good are one of the factors that determine whether they are right (Ross, cited in Pressman, 1997, p. 48). However, ethics cannot be arbitrarily created but discovered through argument and persuasion (Johnson, 1991).

Until relatively recently, it was thought that business and ethics should not be mixed (Velasquez , 1998, pp. 35-8). Indeed, the mere term “business ethics” has been called an oxymoron (Carlin, cited Ferguson, 1994, p. 1). It is now recognised, however, that the general concepts of ethics are applicable in business (Fleddermann, 1999, p. 4) on the grounds that business exists not solely to suit certain individuals, but because it serves society and meets collective and individual needs (Cohen and Grace, 1998, p. 22) and the environment in general (Fleddermann, 1999, p. 82).

Unethical conduct, it is said, does not eventuate from a person's upbringing, but rather it is part of the process of learning practical business or being inducted into the practice (Sutherland, 1983, p. 245). The significance of this is enhanced by new US federal sentencing guidelines for not taking proactive measures to apply and emphasise ethics in all business areas (Ferguson, 1994). The reality is, however, that little training is provided to employees in the general workplace, where a recent survey by KPMG Forensic Accounting (Weait, 2001) has shown dishonest and unfair conduct to be “endemic”.

Construction industry ethics

In terms of individual professions, it is often assumed that architects are not only talented in the design and construction of buildings, but also of the highest ethical calibre (Abramowitz, 1998, p. 3; Pressman, 1997, p. 46). Pressman (1997, p. 51), for example, has traced this back to the American Institute of Architects Code of Ethics set in 1947. The current code of ethics revolves around the concept of “the common good is right” for matters not based on laws (Pressman, 1997, p. 52). Similarly, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (2001, http://www.raia.com.au/html/coc), Code of Professional Conduct, comprises principles, rules and notes. Architects have been found wanting at times, however, a recent poll on ethics in architecture carried out by the magazine Progressive Architecture, 1987 (cited in Pressman, 1997, p. 53) cited the main types of unethical behaviour in architecture to be:

concealing of construction errors and stealing someone else's drawing;

exaggerating experience and academic ...