Identifying Ethical Dilemmas Facing Engineers of Construction Industry in Iran

This research was performed with the goal of identifying the ethical dilemmas facing engineers working in the construction industry in Iran. Ethical dilemma refers to a decision making situation in which different ethical considerations render every alternative be ethically undesired and as a result، the decision making to be morally complicated. At first، a theoretical framework was developed based on the previous research and then the study carried out utilizing a qualitative research method with an exploratory approach. In depth individual interviews was employed for gathering the required data and thematic analysis was used for analyzing the gathered data. Interviewees were engineers participating in Iran’s construction industry either performing pure engineering tasks، or a combination of engineering and management tasks. The interviews were unstructured and conducted with contingency questions based on the research’s theoretical framework. Findings reveal that this issue، i. e. detecting ethical dilemmas in the workplace of engineers participating in the construction industry in Iran، is a valid one، worth further extensive research to complete the identification، rootting and proposing solutions for the ethical dilemmas. Numerous and various dilemmas have been detected and introduced. Some roots of these dilemmas have also been recognized and introduced briefly. One of the most important conclusions is that most of the ethical dilemmas occur for the engineers engaged in operational (against design) and management tasks.