Conflicting loyalties: ethical pluralism in administrative life

Modem civil servants experience and often profess multiple loyalties, both internally and externally. Some of these loyalties can be detrimental to organisational objectives, and many of them will cause conflicts between employees and managers. This paper is about the forms of administrative disobedience that can result from these conflicts of loyalties. Central to it is the classic, Weberian question: To whom should an official be loyal in the case of an order which appears wrong to him? The orthodox notion of strict, hierarchical loyalty and its limits are first discussed. Next, four alternatives for redefining administraive loyalty are presented and evaluated; personal responsibility, social responsibility, professional responsibility and public responsibility. In the conclusion, I examine how we can use these alternative redefinitions to retain the objectives behind the orthodox notion even though the orthodox notion itself is no longer acceptable or applicable.