Use of moral theory to analyse the ethical codes of built environment professional organisations

• Author: Joanna Poon
• Position: School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

1 Introduction

The term “ethics” broadly describes the way in which we look at and understand life, in terms of good and bad or right and wrong. Ethics is also defined as the moral principles by which a person is guided ( Mason, 2008, p. 17 ). Professional ethics concerns the moral issues that arise because of the specialist knowledge that professionals attain, and how the use of this knowledge should be governed when providing a service to the public ( Chadwick, 1998 ). Bayles (1988) defined professional ethics in social science terms when he stated that “professional ethics is commonly used descriptively to refer to criteria of behaviour accepted within a group or to the statistical average of a characteristic”. Mason (2008) shares the same view of professional ethics and he states:

[…] in the context of the behaviour of professionals, […] ethics means the duties owed to the public, to each other, and to themselves in regard to the exercise of their profession. This is often described as “doing the right thing”[…]

Mason (2008) also discusses the definition of professionalism itself. He states that the core of professionalism has been described as the possession and autonomous control of a body of specialised knowledge, which when combined with honorific status, confers power upon its holder. The exercise of this control by the respective professional bodies is often manifested in the promotion and enforcement of an ethical code. He states that there is an assumption that ethics has a role to play in general business practice. In recent times, there is a greater consensus on this issue and it is now commonly recognised that the general concepts of ethics are applicable to business in order to meet collective and social needs.

The concept of professional ethics is partly concerned with what a professional should or should not do in their professional life, but also extends beyond this. If a professional is to comply with an ethical framework then that person needs to adopt that conduct in all of his or her dealings. Mason (2008) states that in the construction context ethical behaviour is measured by the degree of trustworthiness and integrity with which companies and individuals conduct business. The built environment professional organisations, such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) each have their codes of professional practice for their members to follow, inside and outside of the work place. Concepts included in these codes of practice are professional respect, avoidance of dishonest or fraudulent activity and continuous professional development of the individual. Another aspect of this is the enhancement of the profession and the industry within which the professional works. This concerns a professional's conduct and behaviour while carrying out their professional work. This then, is work for the good of the community and mankind. The RICS Professional Ethics Working Party gave a summarised definition of professional ethics as “giving of one's best to ensure that clients' interests are properly cared for, but in doing so the wider public interest is also recognised and respected” ( RICS, 2000 ).

Mason (2008) has pointed out the fact that because different built environment professionals, such as engineers, architects, surveyors, lawyers and construction managers have different codes of practice it may be more difficult to encourage ethical practice for the entire construction industry. These professionals have different types of involvement at the different stages of procurement, and each of these professions has their own code of practice. So, emerges the question as to what is the appropriate ethical code to be used when multi-disciplinary construction work is being undertaken. Mason suggests that an answer lies in the creation of a single industry-wide code, based on the Society of Construction Law's (SCL) Statement of Ethical Principles. He makes suggestions for the structure of such a single code of practice which will be discussed further in Section 3.

Moral theory provides a useful framework for the analysis of professional ethics because moral theories can be used to justify or clarify the individuals' position when they ask themselves “what should be done in this situation?” or “what is right or wrong?” ( Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), 2009 ). Moral theory can also be used as a framework for helping individuals to make decisions as there are different criteria and foci for different moral theories (Section 2).

The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of moral theory as a philosophical analytical framework for built environment organisations' ethical contexts. The research method is a case study of the built environment organisation, the RICS. The approach for conducting the case study is through semi-structured interviews with experienced RICS qualified members in order to gather views on the application of moral theory to explain the RICS ethical principles.

2 Moral theory

Moral theory facilitates a categorisation of the underlying justifications for an individual's moral judgments. Moral theory includes “guidance” and “explanatory” functions to explain an individual's decision making and beliefs. Individuals receive guidance by applying the underlying moral principle when they make decisions. Moral theory can also be used by individuals to explain whether their beliefs are ethically correct and whether their beliefs are incompatible with the underlying moral justification ( Anon, 2009 ).

There are many moral theories and there is no one correct theory. They converge and often borrow from one another. This research has considered the most clearly understood types of normative ethical theories of consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. Consequentialism and deontology have dominated moral reasoning over the last 300 years while virtual ethics was developed in Aristole's time.

2. 1 Consequentialism

In consequentialism, the consequence of an action justifies the moral acceptability of the means taken to reach that end. The results of actions outweigh any other considerations, including intention and process, and the right action is the one that has the best consequences; in other words, “the end justifies the means” ( CETL, 2009 ). The goal of morality for consequentialism is to improve the state of the world as much as possible.

Utilitarianism is consequentialist theory developed by Bentham (1748-1832) and Mills (1808-1873). A utilitarian believes in “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. In other words, in any situation the morally right thing to do is the action that promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Bentham's disciple Mills (1981/1962, p. 257) stated:

Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

However, pain and pleasure are not the only criteria that later utilitarians have used to evaluate the consequences of actions, rules or policies. Welfare-utilitarians consider the contribution to, or lessening of, human welfare. Preference-utilitarians seek to establish and satisfy human preferences ( Slowther et al., 2004 ). The utilitarian idea is a persuasive one and has been very influential in individual morality and public policy in America in the last century, though it has been strongly attacked over the last couple of decades, primarily on the grounds that it does not give sufficient protection to individuals.

The simple analysis for making a utilitarian decision is based on cost/benefit or risk/benefit analysis. However, there are two major drawbacks to the utilitarian perspective on morality. First, there is often a lack of extensive knowledge of facts for making the cost/benefit and risk/benefit analysis for utilitarian decisions. Sometimes utilitarians are reduced to using a “best guess” approach, and this is obviously not very satisfactory. The second problem with utilitarianism is that it can lead to injustice for certain individuals. An unsafe mining operation which leads to black lung disease for some of the miners may produce more utility than harm, from an overall standpoint, but is obviously to the miners themselves. Maximizing utility at the expense of individuals produces serious ethical problems which utilitarian theory is not well-equipped to handle.

2. 2 Deontology

As mentioned in the previous section, a criticism of consequentialist theory is that it is so concerned with ends that it may overlook the moral importance of the means, which is the way to achieve the ends or goals. Deontological is the moral theory which focuses on means. It uses rules rather than consequences to justify an action or policy.

Deontology or duty based theory, is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves. This can be contrasted with the consequences of those actions as the foundation for rightness, for example, in the utilitarianism of consequentialism.

The rigorous version of deontology was developed by Kant (1785/1898) . It focuses on duty or moral obligation. The term “deon” comes from Greek and means duty, so in the...