Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
embargoes had a very positive impact on the development of ICT and automation in
Poland, as it meant that everything had to be produced locally. Therefore qualified
staff needed to be trained and a local ICT and automation industry set up. This
resulted in the establishment in 1959 of Elwro, the first Polish computer manufac-
turer, where many Polish pioneers in ICT and automation were educated.
In addition to the problems resulting from the lack of access to hardware and
software manufactured in the West, leading designers in Poland had to deal with
various problems resulting from the WPR system. They usually behaved ethically
and their objective was to design, manufacture and implement good ICT solutions
which were required by prospective users, within the framework of the projects they
led. These projects generally involved large teams of people. The leading designers
needed to behave ethically to achieve technical success, since only ethical behav-
iour could motivate the whole team to participate fully in the project. The PoPs in
charge were generally interested only in the benefits, including money, promotion
and recognition, or even fame associated with developing a leading system and
therefore did not have any motivation to behave ethically. Although they claimed to
be working for prospective system users, they had a much greater interest in maxi-
mising their own advantage. Fortunately, the PoPs in many firms involved in solving
advanced technical problems realised that they would receive the greatest benefits
for successful projects and that competent leading designers were required for suc-
cessful project completion. They therefore observed the 'rule' that there are people
who like working and should not be disturbed at work. This 'rule' was observed in
Elwro, particularly during its early days.
However, this 'rule' was only observed during the development phase of an ICT
solution. After successful implementation of the solution, the PoPs behaved totally
unscrupulously and got rid of leading designers to avoid having to share the benefits
with them. This was, of course, highly unethical. It involved taking credit for other
people's work and profiting from this, preventing the people with the greatest
involvement in this work from receiving due recognition and removing people with
knowledge, skills and experience who were required to solve future problems.
Several case studies about the experiences of these leading designers will now be
presented.
2.2
General Discussion of Conditions in Poland
Leading designers of advanced technical systems in Poland generally had difficult
working conditions. In particular, the official and unofficial embargoes imposed by
the political, technical and scientific authorities of the Western countries meant
they had to develop their solutions almost from first principles and could use
knowledge available in the West to only a very limited extent. This meant that they
had to work much harder than they would have had to otherwise. From the perspec-
tive of deontological ethics (see Chap.
2
), applying embargoes or other forms of
pressure is ethical when the motivation is based on, for instance, human rights
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