Standards Of Professional Competence Research Articles

The Safety Officer: An Emerging Management Role?

The safety officer is a person who has been around in industry for a not inconsiderable period of time, but about whom relatively little is known. Some indication of the historical nature of the safety officer function can be obtained by an examination of the aims and membership of the Institution of Industrial Safety Officers (now called the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health). This institution, which was formed in 1953, had a membership of some 2,000 at the time of the Robens Committee Report (1970–72) and aimed to raise safety officers' standards of professional competence, to exchange information and to develop accident prevention methods and techniques. Some further historical evidence is provided by a Factory Inspectorate Survey in 1968 which revealed that less than 25 per cent of plants with more than 50 employees had safety officers, with considerable inter‐industry variation being apparent—from less than ten per cent of plants in some industries to over 70 per cent in gas, electricity and water. The vast majority of these safety officers were part time.

The Ethics of Maintaining Continued Professional Competence

The engineer's active role in today's society demands that he be held to the profession's standards of professional competence. Professional competence involves not only professional adequacy but professional development. The engineer owes the public continued development through the trust placed in him to carry out his duties in a responsible manner. Continued development raises the competency level of the individual and profession as a whole. Many methods are available to maintain professional competence but not all engineers utilize them. To insure continued professional competence to the public, the profession should make it mandatory within engineering.

Ethical Considerations in the Professional Stature of Analysts

FOR A NUMBER of years, recurrent exhortations have been heard within The Financial Analysts Federation to the effect that greater attention should be directed toward examining and perhaps improving ethical standards within the province of the Financial Analyst. For example, on page 1 of Volume 1, number 1, of the Analysts Journal (as it was then called), January of 1945, the Editorial Board set forth its views on the proposed scope of the fledgling publication. Among other things it was stated that material published in the Journal should include consideration of ethics and standards in the profession of security analysis.' In addition, several references to the need for investigating ethical standards and developing a detailed code of ethics are contained in various Annual Reports to the membership of the Federation. And it might also be noted that a standing committee on Professional Ethics and Standards has been in existence for many years. Through the years the major attention of above mentioned committee has been focused on improving the standards of professional competence for the Financial Analyst. And their achievements in this connection have been considerable. Both in reports to the Federation and in Journal articles, the need for definitive professional standards has been stressed, and recently these activities culminated in The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts.