2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The primary objective of this paper is to examine how “public good” is characterized in the ethical codes and websites of engineers’ professional associations. While engineers are expected to hold the public paramount over client and employer needs, historic accounts of engineers’ professional formation suggest that scientific authority and the economic bottom line have been powerful drivers of engineers’ work since the turn of the 20th century [1, 2]. How do these three occupational authorities—science, business, and public service—shape the contemporary messaging systems of engineers’ professional organizations and to what extent do these messages differ across industrial and national contexts? My critical analysis of eight engineering organization websites suggests an amplification of scientific and managerial discourses woven into the public service promises of organized professional engineers in both Canada and the United States, with slight disciplinary differences. Civil engineers prioritized safety, and sustainability, mining engineers prioritized industrial development and technical stewardship, and biomedical engineers prioritized health and wellness. While all eight professional organizations wove social good into their messaging systems, they did so in ways that characterised public impact as a product of industrial innovation. This passive acceptance of capitalist forces as an inherent aspect of Canadian and American engineers’ collective professional identity formation provides one possible explanation for persistent gap between the rhetoric of public service and the reality of economic paramountcy.