Teaching Strategic Security Using A Case Study Of Environmentally Sustainable Design

I present a case of a practitioner network that invented a secure environmentally sustainable textile product and production system. Once the practitioners created such a network, they struggled with how it would be possible to ensure that others external to the network, such as customers, were not able to dilute the very specific and documented accomplishments of their environmental analysis through their unintended introduction of less environmentally sound chemicals and processes. In this instance, the network practitioners struggled to protect an ethic of sustainable design from attempts at confusing its articulation and implementation. The practitioners also struggled with constructing a security system to ensure that undesired chemicals would not accidentally enter the manufacturing and logistical supply chain. The paper raises the question of how a sociotechnical network can be strategic in constructing what it deems as necessary security measures and why such issues should be taught to engineering students.