In developing its new engineering accreditation criteria, ABET reaffirmed a set of “hard” engineering skills while introducing a second, equally important, set of six “professional” skills. These latter skills include communication, teamwork, and understanding ethics and professionalism, which we label process skills, and engineering within a global and societal context, lifelong learning, and a knowledge of contemporary issues, which we designate as awareness skills. We review these skills with an emphasis on how they can be taught, or more correctly learned, citing a number of examples of successful and/or promising implementations. We then examine the difficult issue of assessing these skills. We are very positive about a number of creative ways that these skills are being learned, particularly at institutions that are turning to global and/or service learning in combination with engineering design projects to teach and reinforce outcome combinations. We are also encouraged by work directed at assessing these skills, but recognize that there is considerable research that remains to be done.

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The ABET “Professional Skills” — Can They Be Taught? Can They Be Assessed?

We specify and test a rational choice model of corporate crime. This model includes measures of the perceived costs and benefits of corporate crime (for both the firm and the individual), perceptions of shame, persons' assessment of the opprobrium of the act, and contextual characteristics of the organization. Consistent with this model, we find that intentions to commit four types of corporate crime are affected by sanction threats (formal and informal), moral evaluations, and organizational factors. Net of the various incentives and disincentives for corporate crime, persons' personal moral code was found to be a very important source of inhibition. In fact, when moral inhibitions were high, considerations of the cost and benefit of corporate crime were virtually superfluous. When moral inhibitions were weak, however, persons were deterred by threats of formal and informal sanctions and by organizational context. We contend that theoretical models of corporate crime and public policy efforts must contain both instrumental (threats of punishment) and deontological (appeals to morality) factors

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3054128.pdf

Sanction threats and appeals to morality : Testing a rational choice model of corporate crime

Recent dramatic increases of criminal punishment in the United States and very different trends in the Federal Republic of Germany suggest a critique of basic sociological theory traditions The article confronts structural-functionalist, Marxist, and legalistic approaches with these trends and suggests an alternative and more complex theory Utilizing and ideal-typical comparison between the two countries, this article develops a set of interrelated hypotheses on the impact of the institutionalization of (a) knowledge production in the public, political, and academic sectors and (b) political and legal decision making on (c) macro outcomes of political and legal decision making Using the case of criminal punishment, the article suggests new themes for theory development and empirical macro-sociological research It also contributes to the understanding of current instabilities in the political process in the United States

Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment

Autonomy, Interdependence, and Social Control: NASA and the Space Shuttle "Challenger.".

Chances of realizing a legal rationality that does not fit society are limited. Referring to weber's "Sociology of Law," to related themes in the sociology of polity, organizations, and occupations, and to recent debates on technocratization, juridification, delegalization, and responsive law, this article presents a theoretical discussion of this thesis. An empirical case, using the neoclassical concept of sentencing guidelines, exemplified by the federal and Minnesota cases, supports the argument. The neoclassical movement, aiming to reverse the substantivation of law and to correct lack of due process, functional failures, disparities, and discrimination, faces considerable impediments and may result in counterproductive effects. The article demostrates that (1) societal conditions that caused substantivation hamper reformalization in the political process; organizational and occupational consequences of substantivation also impede (2) political and (3) implementation chances of neoclassical instruments; and (4) impediments to reformalization derive from the method of central guidance used to reestablish sociologically formal rationality.

Law That Does Not Fit Society: Sentencing Guidelines as a Neo-Classical Reaction to the Dilemmas of Substantivized Law

Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Ford Pinto Case and Beyond

Based on a national survey and interviews, this article describes the attitudes and practices of local prosecutors regarding corporate crime. Although most local prosecutors did not regard corporate crime as a serious problem, their willingness to prosecute increases if an offense causes substantial harm and other agencies fail to act. Despite repeated calls for coordinated responses to corporate crime, relatively few local prosecutors participate in interagency control networks. Those in control networks, however, conducted more prosecutions and expressed greater concern over corporate crime. The commitment of organizational resources and resulting career opportunities thereby created may explain differences between network and nonnetwork districts.

Local Prosecutors and Corporate Crime

In exploring the criminalization of corporations, this book uses the landmark "Ford Pinto case" as a centerpiece for exploring corporate violence and the long effort to bring such harm within the reach of the criminal law. Corporations that illegally endanger human life now must negotiate the surveillance of government regulators and risk civil suits from injured parties seeking financial compensation. They also may be charged with criminal offenses and their officials sent to prison.

Corporate Crime Under Attack : The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence

A mail survey of California district attorneys regarding corporate crime focused on the recent experiences of the prosecutors with such crimes and on factors that limit the likelihood of their prosecuting corporate offenders. A significant majority of the district attorneys had prosecuted a variety of corporate crimes, and a sizable minority anticipated devoting more resources to corporate crime prosecutions in the future. There was a strong consensus among the district attorneys that the primary obstacle to corporate crime prosecutions is not political but practical and inheres in the level of resources available to them. Prosecutors in small districts were more constrained by the potential impact that a corporate prosecution might have on the local economy than their counterparts in large districts. This finding suggests that community context may influence social control responses to corporate lawbreakers.

William J. Maakestad

Papers

Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Ford Pinto Case and Beyond

Local Prosecutors and Corporate Crime

Corporate Crime Under Attack : The Fight to Criminalize Business Violence

District attorneys and corporate crime: surveying the prosecutorial gatekeepers

Corporate Crime Under Attack: The Ford Pinto Case and Beyond.