| Identifying three important ethical issues relative to 1) the complexity of industrial reality, 2) the plurality of legitimate perspectives and 3) emotional reflections in decision-making, this thesis-by-article aims at promoting an ethical approach of risk management in engineering. Using a mixed methodology, two main research questions are addressed: 1) to what extent current engineering education and practice empower engineers into an ethical approach of risk management, and 2) how ethical pluralism applied to risk management could enhance this empowerment? Three articles are presented in this thesis to try and answer these questions.;Article 1, using a systematic literature review in engineering education, reveals that this nexus between ethics and risk management is still underdeveloped in the literature. It is then argued that the link between risk management and ethics should be further developed in engineering education in order to promote the progressive change toward more responsible engineering practices. Several research trends and issues are also identified and discussed in order to support the engineering education community in this project.;Article 2, using the results of a survey answered by 200 engineering students, analyses a) the influence of the current academic engineering education on perspectives regarding ethical aspects of risk management and b) its capacity of empowerment into an ethical approach of risk management. This analysis challenges the existing literature and illustrates the necessity to change the stereotypical portrait of the engineer. However, it also highlights the need to improve engineering education. Indeed, assessing empowerment through the concept of self-efficacy, it is suggested that the present engineering education fails to improve ethical risk management efficacy. Therefore, a pluralistic active-learning method, carried out in the form of workshops with 34 last-year students, is proposed to help in this matter. Using questionnaires and group interviews, it is suggested that such an approach is efficient, at least in the short run, to motivate students to engage in ethical risk management.;Finally, article 3, using the results of a survey answered by 178 professional engineers, specifically analyzes how a) experience of the practice of risk management, b) professional ethnocentrism and c) emotional awareness influence ethical risk management efficacy. The results suggest that even though risk management experience has a positive influence, professional ethnocentrism is significantly and negatively related to ethical risk management self-efficacy. Furthermore, emotional awareness presents a fully mediating effect on this relation. Therefore, while multidisciplinary education is often suggested as a way to limit professional ethnocentrism biases, it is argued in this article that such an approach should extend its rationality by actively involving emotional reflections, as their development could support engineers transcending their technical perspective on risk. Being more sensitive to complex and ethical dimensions of safety, engineers would be more prone to engage in an interdisciplinary and deliberative approach of risk management.;This thesis, by the combined contribution based on empirical evidences of these three articles, offers new practical insights on how ethics, and specifically ethical pluralism, through an appropriate educational approach and frame of analysis, may favourably contribute to potentially more responsible and safer engineering practices. |
