TAKING THE ‘HIGH ROAD’: DOES PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION ALTER ETHICAL DECISION MAKING PROCESSES?

Although public administration scholars have long been interested in promoting administrative ethics, recent lapses in judgment by government employees make the study of ethics even more pressing. Yet, we know relatively little about how public values and publicly oriented motives influence the ethical obligations employees reference when confronting organizational problems. We employ Perry's (2000) process model of public service motivation to connect public values, public service motivation, and employees' understanding of their ethical obligations. Using data collected from over 1,400 managers in United States municipal governments, we present findings that suggest that public service motivation appears to be positively correlated with ethical obligations rooted in virtue and integrity, or high road ethics, for less professionalized employees. Further, broader constellations of public values encourage increased application of high road ethics for the same employees, but only to the extent that they foster public service motivation.     

Labor law as an impediment to labor relations reform: Leveling the playing field

The primary professional society of American public administration has developed a code of ethics that appears to be largely irrelevant to the realities of bureaucratic experience. An explanation of this paradox can be found in the sociological literature on the professions and code-writing. Professional codes are designed to reyulate the behavior of a profession's members, but this is generally seen as a secondary aspect of a more fundamental objective: the need to assure the public at large that the profession's power is being exercised responsibly. From this perspective, the public administration code can be interpreted first as part of an attempt to legitimate the profession in the face of hostile challenges to its authority, and second as an effort to engender ethical behavior. Such an interpretation helps to explain the profession's failure to confront the organizational and political barriers that impede effective implementation of the code. The paper concludes with an observation on the implications of the argument for the further development of ethics in public administration.     

Effectiveness of Ethics Codes in the Public Sphere: Are They Useful in Controlling Corruption?

This study aims at determining the real effect of the implementation of a code of ethics on the solution of ethical problems in the public sphere, considering corruption as the most important non-ethical behavior. With that aim, 154 national administrations whose information on ethical codes is available on the UN's website are analyzed.

Our findings stress the absence of any influence of codes on corruption problems in the public context, both in developed and developing countries. The level of education is the most important determining factor in the control of corruption, especially in developing countries.     

Professional leadership in local government

Local public service professionals are experts who temper their use of expertise with public service ethics. Public service ethics differ from the ethical codes of most professions in that they stress external accountability. Ethical codes of private sector professions create a sense of responsibility to the profession and help undergird professional autonomy. Public service ethics emphasize public responsibility and help create public accountability. City and county managers show how public service ethics can help make experts accountable to the public.     

Ethics, values and behaviours: comparison of three case studies examining the paucity of leadership in government

Three societies with similar initiatives for public service re-configuration and reform – the UK, Canada and Australia – are examined to highlight the many-faceted issues of public service ethics and the different approaches these governments have taken to re-building public trust and enhancing public service ethics in times of rapid change. These efforts for re-building an ethical public service are scrutinized according to four criteria for effectively leading change. Changes of public service values are also analysed as well as their implications for public servants.
Effectively, applied leadership is identified as the pillar of ethical practice – emphasizing the need for quality leadership development through on-the-job experience. Although legislation and codification are seen as necessary for building an ethical infrastructure that can help employees out of encountered dilemmas, the way forward is seen as nurturing an environment of trust and vigilance in which ethics are promoted through exemplary behaviour of leaders and employees alike.     

The professional as public servant: the decision-making dilemma

Administrative decision-making is increasingly complicated today by conflicting responsibilities that pressure decision-makers in different directions. Public servants are responsible to the law, Congress, administrative superiors, the agencies in which they serve, and the public. Those public servants who are members of a profession, attempting to apply special expertise and knowledge to the solution of public problems, face a set of even more complex responsibilities, governed as they are by their own professional codes of conduct whose tenets must be melded with the other obligations of governmental decision-makers.

Conscientious governmental officials are likely to base their decisions on their responsibilities to the public, in light of moral and ethical criteria as well as professional standards (where applicable), while recognizing their accountability to their organizational superiors. Civil servants who are members of a profession frequently find themselves making extremely complex decisions for which they must accept the responsibility for the application of their professional ethics in the context of their many other obligations.

The decision-making task of professionals who are also civil servants is often, therefore, an especially difficult and painful one. Cases of deep moral conflict will occur as they try to resolve their conflicting responsibilities.     

Ethics in leadership: The case of local politicians

The mainstream literature on leadership has little to say about the role of ethics. Equally, much of this literature is concerned with the private sector and with managerial leadership. This paper addresses both these gaps, by reporting on the development of a scale for measuring ethical values in local political leadership, the public service values scale. This is one section of a larger instrument for assessing the skills of local political leaders: the Warwick Political Leadership Questionnaire. The paper reports on the use of this instrument in a 360 degree format, following piloting of a self assessment version. The responses of 19 elected members and 241 feedback givers are analysed. These data offer support for the validity and reliability of the public service values scale. The paper concludes with a research agenda, offering suggestions for how this scale can be applied to researching ethics in leadership.     

Upholding justice in an unjust world: a practitioner's view of public administration ethics

This article presents the author's approach to profes sional ethics as a practitioner of public adrninistra tion. Public administrators are held to be personally responsible for their actions. Therefore, professional ethical standards are both possible and necessary, not only to prevent: wrongdoing but also to guide and promote right behavior. An ideally just regime is first hypothesized, based on the principles of justice developed in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. A normative ethical standard of neutral competence is then postulated for agents of such a hypothetical regime- The author then addresses the implications of real-world injustice, and discusses the exceptions to neutral competence which are justifiable when confronted by injustice. The suggested approach establishes a high ethical st-andard, providing justification for not only avoiding wrongdoing, but also for doing right. This approach also provides practical and realistic guidance for et.hica1 decision-making. Both justifiability and applicability are held to be necessary if such an ethical. system is to be followed by public administrators.     

An agency ethics audit ∗

An agency's ethics posture can encompass both compliance with controls and legal prohibitions and individual ethical reasoning and its role in the organization. This article presents a model ethics audit designed to profile the agency's strengths and deficiencies and produce an action agenda in a format appropriate for periodic review.     

Ethics in organizations: a perspective on reciprocation

Some scholars have assigned the responsibility for ethical conduct in the public sector to individual administrators. Supporters of this perspective contend that individuals are able to introduce ethics into the administrative process by assuming personal responsibility for ethical action. The inference is that organizations cannot be expected to assume responsibility for ethical conduct.

Conversely the contention that individual ethics are inadequate in organizations is posed as a counter argument. Supporters of this contention argue that individual integrity does not mean that organizations will act ethically. They argue that organizational ethics are independent of individual ethics. Hence, they are treated as separate entities that do not compliment each other.

An argument that organizations and individuals engage in complimentary actions which lead to ethical conduct is largely absent in the literature. I argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between individuals and organizations. Thus, individual and organizational ethics are not separate but interactive entities     

The newly promulgated ethical codes of China's civil service

Since China's post-Mao leadership introduced material incentives to promote productivity in its bid to catch up with industrialized countries, the nation's fledgling civil service has been infected by widespread unethical behavior among bureaucrats. One of the measures taken to combat corruption has been the enactment of ethical codes for government officials. This article discusses the problems and prospects of ethical codes, which may refashion China's public administration in the years to come.     

Ethics and public administration: critique and reconstruction

In the post-Watergate era, many observers saw the renewed interest in administrative ethics as a passing fad. Now, over a decade later, the continued interest in this area belies this judgment. Indeed, this increased concern with administrative ethics is rooted in the realization that administration is as much an ethica, as technical pursuit. One cannot read John Rohr's "Ethics in Public Administration: A State of the Discipline Report," delivered at the 1986 ASPA Conference, without receiving the distinct impression that administrative ethics is an area of practice and study that is experiencing a profound upheaval. Views are diverse and often inchoate. Assumptions behind ethical prescr- ptions are still frequently unstated and unexamined. In addition, we still continue to seek techniques that will ensure administrative ethicality without understanding the nature of the ethical problems confronted in public administration and the reasons they are confronted. In short, there exists a need for theoretical clarification and classification in the area of ethics and public administration.     

Florida's open meetings law and its effect on the policy making process in dade county: The administrative perspective

Open meetings laws are designed to make the process of governmental decision making more accessible to the general public. The objective of this study is to explore the views of key governmental officials on the operation and effects of Florida's open meetings (sunshine) law. The interviews uncovered considerable dissatisfaction with many of its provisions. Florida's sunshine law is one of the most comprehensive in the country and can provide insight on the potential effects of other state or local sunshine laws. The analysis is based upon the administrative perspective of city managers, city clerks and city attorneys in Dade County, Florida. This convenience sample of Dade County administrators perceives that significant costs are imposed by the operation of the sunshine law. There is a clear consensus that the presence of the media alters the process of policy making, increases the amount and degree of political posturing, increases the time to reach consensus, and inhibits the candor and openness of the deliberations. The respondents report that the open meeting provisions are so burdensome that council and board members routinely violate its provisions in order to discuss sensitive issues in private.     

Creating Public Sector Pedestals and Examining Falls from Grace: Examining ICMA Ethical Sanctions

The International City and County Management Association, (ICMA), ensures that members who engage in misconduct are identified and sanctioned. Dozens of public sanctions have been issued over the past 20 years, and this paper considers the substance of these penalties. The article identifies the processes used to ensure compliance with its code of ethics. We report the types of ethical violations ICMA has discovered through these processes. A more systematic way of recording what is occurring is necessary if strategies are to be devised to help current and upcoming public administrators avoid similar violations. Finally, we ask public administrators who have been sanctioned by ICMA to explain how and why the ethics violations occurred and the impact of the public censure on their personal lives and careers.     

Organizational loyalty and personal ethics: The moral priorities of Chinese cadres

The ethical norms of senior cadres in the Peoples Republic of China are examined with respect to personal ethics, organizational loyalty and social responsibility. The extent to which one of these sets of norms may take priority over the other is investigated using survey research. The personal ethical values of the 46-50 age group are found to be unusually acute for a group of middle-aged administrators, much closer to those of the younger cadres. Also, they demonstrate exceptional homogeneity in their responses as compared to other age groups. However, they appear to have little independence of conscience when confronted with concrete decision making situations. Loyalty to the organization is found to be particularly dominant over personal ethics and responsibility to the larger society among these 46-50 year-old cadres. Lacking a moral anchor in any foundational philosophy or ideology, these cadres are highly vulnerable to control by the bureaucracies in which they are employed. Further research is suggested to explore the possibility that the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 may have impacted this particular generation of cadres in ways that severed their ties to Marxism and traditional Chinese values rooted in Confucianism.     

Character ethics and public administration

Character ethics addresses the conditions, values, and ideas that give shape to our ways of life - to our character as a people. It has formed an integral part of political life and thought throughout history. It has, however, fallen to neglect during much of this century. We ignore it at our peril. A growing communitarian movement has renewed attention to character or “virtue” ethics in recent years, much of it focused on local, grassroots initiatives. This essay introduces the reader to some basic aspects of character ethics, and then presents an argument for its relevance to public administration. The argument focuses on the application of character ethics to organizational-economic arrangements and conditions which form a great part of the public administration's responsibilities. The organizational economy constitutes a vital foundation for shaping civic character. Since public administration influences the organizational economy, our ethical responsibilities should include continually examining practices in this arena for their general effects on our habits and dispositions as a people.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.

James Madison⁽¹⁾     

Reconciling public administration and democracy: the role of the responsible administrator

This article considers whether the individual responsibilities of bureaucratic officials provide a useful means for reconciling the tension between democracy and bureaucracy. Three questions central to the proper definition of bureaucratic responsibility are examined: (1) What is the relation of bureaucratic responsibility to the view that proper bureaucratic conduct is essentially a matter of ethics and morality? (2) If the appeal to moral values does not ordinarily offer an acceptable guide to proper bureaucratic conduct, upon what principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? (3) What issues arise in putting responsibility into practice within a complex organizational setting? The article concludes that a democratic, process-based conception offers the most useful way of thinking about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials.

The tension between democracy and bureaucracy has bedeviled public administration. However one defines democracy, its core demand for responsiveness (to higher political authorities, the public, client groups, or whatever the presumed agent of democratic rule) does not neatly square with notions of effective organization of the policy process and efficient delivery of goods and services, which are central to the definition of bureaucracy. Responsiveness need not guarantee efficiency, while bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency often belie democratic control.

This tension between democracy and bureaucracy persists, but that it is the individual administrator who directly experiences the tension is especially important as a guide toward a resolution of this conflict. Since divergence is central to this tension between democracy and bureaucracy, speculation about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials—their individual places within the bureaucracy, particularly the administrator's thoughts, choices, and actions—provides fruitful terrain for resolving the question of bureaucracy's place within a democratic system of rule.

Three questions need to be addressed if one accepts the premise that individual responsibility is central to locating the place of bureaucracy in a democratic order. First, what is unique about bureaucratic responsibility, especially in contrast to the view that these are largely ethical problems that can be resolved by appeal to moral values? Second, if dilemmas of bureaucratic conduct are by and large not resolvable through appeal to moral values, upon what other principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? Third, what issues arise in putting responsibility into practice, especially within a complex organizational setting? This list of questions is not meant to be exhaustive but only a starting point for discussion.     

ETHICAL CLIMATE AND RULE BENDING: HOW ORGANIZATIONAL NORMS CONTRIBUTE TO UNINTENDED RULE CONSEQUENCES

Rules help ensure consistent employee behaviour, yet rule bending occurs in public organizations every day. Previous research indicates that rule bending is influenced by organizational structure and personal characteristics (DeHart‐Davis 2007). This present study considers the influence of organizational norms on rule bending by exploring the impact of ethical climate, which signals to employees the best course of action when faced with situations that are ethical in nature (Victor and Cullen 1987, 1988). To investigate this relationship, survey data from employees of a large American local government are analysed. Results from a structural equation model show that three ethical climates – ‘organization interest’, ‘team interest’, and ‘rules/SOP’ – significantly influence rule bending. Findings suggest that organizational norms play a critical role for employee behaviour and public managers can consider rule bending and ethical climate as impetuses for organizational change.