A code of ethics may appear in disciplines such as engineering, science, and technology under several other names: professional principles, rules of conduct, ethical guidelines, and so on. However denominated, a code of ethics can be placed in one of three categories: (1) professional, such as the Chemist's Code of Conduct of the American Chemical Society, applying to all the members of a certain profession (chemists) and only to them;
(2) organizational, such as the Code of Ethics of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, applying to members of the technical or scientific society that has enacted it and only to them or, in the case of the code of ethics of a university or industrial laboratory, only to a certain class of the enacting organization's employees; (3) institutional, such as the Computer Ethics Institute's Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics, applying to anyone involved in a...