Engaging a Project Consortium in Ethics-Aware Design and Research

Ethics is an important perspective in project work. For a research and development project, ethics plays a key role when creating a shared understanding of societal goals and the intended long-term impacts of the project. It is an essential part of designing novel solutions and an integral part of conducting research. However, ethics is typically an area dedicated to ethics experts only, even though it would be important to embed it in the work of all project participants. In a European project on smart manufacturing, we have pursued to involve the whole project consortium to discuss and consider ethics in design and research throughout the project. This paper describes our ethical approach and the results of the engagement activities. Finally, we discuss the practical means we applied to create awareness and commitment towards ethics.