Ethics, leadership and decision making in project management

Abstract

The subject of ethics is a broad knowledge, dating from many years of development of thought in humanity. Organizations that are dedicated worldwide to promoting standards of good practices in project management, recognize ethics as a transversal axis and ethical thinking as a soft skill, essential for balanced decision making and building the leadership of the project manager. This article aims to answer the questions: how to talk about ethics to engineers? And what are the ethical aspects that are of relevance and frequent use of these people, when formulating, designing or directing projects?  Through the bibliographic review of the applications that several authors have made in the field of ethics in engineering, added to the author’s experience in project management areas, a mental map of relationships of concepts, principles and tools of ethical thinking was built, and its practical link with the moments of decision-making in the exercise of engineering. It the article, the impact that the type of leadership and decision-making style of the project manager, is discussed. The project manager´s role as a resource manager and a decision maker is reviewed in this context. The mental map has been successfully used in the teaching of ethics in Civil Engineering, given its usefulness in engineering ethics case studies.  It constitutes a panoramic, summarized and associative view of key ethical aspects, of interest and frequently used in the career.