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.     

The New Mode of Public Governance and Public Accountability in Developing Countries: An Analysis with Particular Reference to Bangladesh

Public accountability is a fundamental element of good governance. All countries all over the world strive to ensure the accountability of public officials by adopting different kinds of mechanisms. Following the liberal democratic tradition, most countries in the world have relied on the legislative instruments, executive means, judicial and quasi-judicial processes, official rules, codes of conducts, official hierarchies, public hearings, interest groups, media scrutiny and so forth for ensuring public accountability. However, in recent years, the new mode of public governance has brought new dimensions to the discourse on public accountability. This new mode focuses largely on the market- and society-centered mechanisms. This article is an attempt to assess the effectiveness of these market- and society-centered mechanisms in ensuring public accountability in Bangladesh. The article has the following objectives:

(a) to explore contemporary debates on the market- and society-centered mechanisms of public accountability;

(b) to sketch the state of public accountability in Bangladesh; and

(c) to analyze the effectiveness of the market- and society-centered mechanisms in view of the contemporary socio-economic and political dynamics of Bangladesh.     

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.     

An exploration of citizens' professionalism in coproducing social care services

Citizens' involvement in public service delivery challenges the principles of professionalism as such citizens are amateurs. However, there is little evidence of the (non)integration of these principles by citizen coproducers and how this affects professionalism in public service delivery. This article focuses on two principles of professionalism: expertise and accountability. The theoretical framework further reviews the coproduction literature on what can be expected of citizens with regard to these principles and elaborates on the concept of amateurism. The concepts of professionalism and amateurism form the framework for the analysis of citizen coproducers' identity. Empirically, this paper presents two case studies of social services in the European context. The results show that these citizen coproducers to a certain extent create a professional identity, tend to stay away from integrating accountability, and introduce elements of amateurism. The presence and guidance of public servants in coproduction can ensure accountability and streamline amateurism.     

Localism and Accountability in a Post-Collaborative Era: Where Does It Leave the Community Right to Challenge?

Since the establishment of subsidiarity in the early 1990s, the European-wide move to devolve governance has been interpreted by previous and present UK governments adopting differing ideological positions within a ‘localism agenda’. Interpretations have changed the dynamics of the community right to challenge, as well as the structure and mechanisms for community accountability. This article adopts the typology of forms of local governance developed by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008, How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for neighbourhood governance. Public Administration, 86 (1), 1–22) to explore the hypothesis that the localism agenda realigns the synergy between neighbourhood rationales; citizen engagement in service delivery and the opportunity for public scrutiny and accountability. It concludes that opportunities for communities to challenge service delivery and ensure increased accountability to the local level will be tempered by increased complexity and demands on local authorities to develop new relationships with both service users and providers.     

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.     

Public Accountability in Malaysia: Challenges and Critical Concerns

Despite its laudable roles in steering the process of socioeconomic development, government bureaucracy in Malaysia has not escaped public criticisms for its inefficiency, corruption, and failure to guard public interests. The media, civil society groups, intelligentsia, and the political opposition have successfully utilized the major scandals to highlight the growing public concern over the poor performance of the bureaucracy and its lack of accountability and responsiveness. This has provided impetus for the “clean and efficient government” movement initiated in the early 1980s and a series of subsequent efforts aimed at promoting appropriate values and ethics among public officials. Numerous rules and regulations have been framed, major reforms have been introduced in various spheres of administration, and an extensive program of training and bureaucratic reorientation has been undertaken. Despite all this, recent evidence suggests that the public service continues to suffer from problems of corruption and other irregularities. Obviously, the performance of numerous reforms in public service and the institutional mechanisms put in place for tackling ethical problems, though positive in general, has fallen short of expectations. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the present approach to combating corruption and promoting accountability in the Malaysian public service. In particular, it focuses on institutional mechanisms currently available and identifies and analyzes their constraints and limitations in keeping the public bureaucracy under surveillance and control.     

Pursuing Private or Public Accountability in the Public Sector? Applying IPSASs to Define the Reporting Entity in Municipal Consolidation

Private-sector accounting systems have often been heralded as superior to public-sector ones and suggested as solutions to the shortcomings of the latter. Our article aims at contributing to this debate by looking at the adoption of business-like practices where the public and private sectors intersect. Our analysis shows that the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs), strongly inspired by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), might not ensure the expected disclosure. Municipalities adopting IPSASs for preparing consolidated financial statement do not necessarily increase accountability because some relevant public service providers are not included in the reporting entities.     

A STRATEGY FOR FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CODES OF ETHICS IN PUBLIC SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

Codes of ethics in public service organizations are designed to serve three purposes: provide enduring solutions to existing ethical problems, educate the public about the mission of the organization, and foster an ethical climate in the organization. There is no agreement in the literature as to how useful and effective codes are. This paper argues that codes of ethics can be effective with respect to these three goals, only if careful attention is given to the process of internalization of the code's provisions. Internalization is most likely to occur under two interrelated conditions: when members of an organization clarify, articulate, and establish integrated values systems; and when the ethical code is formulated and adopted as a consequence of a participatory democratic process. When members of the organization are able to relate the code's provisions to their personal integrated values systems, a greater compliance and commitment will prevail.     

Public Administration Reform and Its Implications for Foreign Petroleum Companies in Kazakhstan

Since 2000, Kazakhstan has followed the New Public Management reform trajectory in modernizing its public sector and public service delivery. This article employs an actor-centered perspective to examine the effects of the public administration reform and its implications for foreign petroleum companies in Kazakhstan. The study builds on primary sources in the form of 81 semi-structured interviews with public servants, representatives of foreign petroleum companies and experts. The main conclusion is that the reform effects are ambiguous. Despite some success in greater efficiency of public services, many weaknesses remain, with highly varying implications for foreign petroleum companies.     

Ministerial responsibility and the Scottish Qualifications Agency

The Scottish Qualifications Agency (SQA) is charged with the task of overseeing school–based qualifications in Scotland. However, for the 2000 exam diet the SQA failed to produce either timely or accurate exam results. The events surrounding this failure, accompanied by the responsible minister's explanation of his own actions and inactions, brought to the fore issues of responsibility and accountability. The unresolved nature of accountability and responsibility within government, particularly in relation to non–departmental public bodies (NDPBs), became apparent as the inquiries into the SQA took evidence. Utilizing the SQA as a powerful example, this article explores the problematic structures of accountability and responsibility that exist between NDPBs and ministers.     

Reforms to enhance accountability and citizen involvement: a case study of the hong kong hospital authority

The article begins by examining current issues in thinking about accountability, citizen involvement and empowerment. The discussion then moves to the particular context of Hong Kong. Recent reforms to public hospital services are reviewed in the light of the territory's traditional values of paternalistic bureaucracy and minimal citizen involvement. It is shown that despite good intentions to enhance public accountability and cgitizen involvement, in practice there has been little substantive change in the distribution of power between the ruling elite, health care professionals, and the actual service users. Whilst more information about service performance may now be available, opportunities for citizen involvement and representation continue to be carefully managed by the administration. The net result is that only a very few members of the lay public have been appointed to the new bodies that are now responsible for the governance of the public hospitals. Nearly all of those appointed to such bodies are unrepresentative of the normal service users being drawn, instead, from members of the mostly non-public hospital users - namely Hong Kong's very wealthy professional and business elites. For most of the general public, therefore, the reforms have been less about empowerment and involvement and more about informing them of the changes that have been introduced or of educating them so that abuses of the system can be reduced, or their help enlisted in locally organized fund-raising functions. The article concludes that however well-meaning the reformers might have been in terms of endeavouring to enhance accountability and citizen involvement, the impact of such efforts are likely to be seriously limited whenever underlying administrative or social values conflict with those that ostensibly guide the reforms.     

Political Responsibility For Bureaucratic Incompetence: Tragedy At Cave Creek

In April 1995 a viewing platform built by the Department of Conservation collapsed at a New Zealand wilderness location, Cave Creek, plummeting 14 people to their deaths. The tragedy was unprecedented in New Zealand public administration. This article examines the concepts of political accountability and responsibility in the light of the disaster and the findings of the commission of inquiry into it. It does so with reference to the New Zealand state sector reforms, and theoretical and conceptual contributions to the understanding of (public) policy fiascos and disasters. Although public accountability requirements were fulfilled in the case of Cave Creek there was an unsatisfactory resolution of political responsibility. A fuller appreciation of vindicative political responsibility is needed in tragic cases of this kind where the humanity and justice of impersonal governmental systems need to be at least symbolically affirmed. However, the prospects for such a wider sense of proportion may not be enhanced in a managerialist era.     

Citizen’s Charter for Improved Public Service Delivery and Accountability: The Experience of Land Administration at the Local Government in Bangladesh

Improved public service delivery and accountability have increasingly turned out to be important issues in public sector management. In Bangladesh, there has been noteworthy progress, including the introduction of citizen’s charter since 2008. This article explores the contribution of citizen’s charter in improving public service delivery and accountability at the local government land administration, adopting a qualitative longitudinal study. Analysis of the findings reveals that most of the service recipients are ignorant about the charter even after 8 years of its introduction. The charters are mainly producer dominated and their grand rhetorics are far away to achieve in reality.     

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.     

RECENT TRANSITION IN GOVERNANCE IN SOUTH ASIA: CONTEXTS,DIMENSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS

There has been a paradigmatic shift in the mode of governance in capitalist nations, developing countries, and postcommunist states. Under the newly emerging neoliberal state, which has largely replaced other state formations, public governance has undergone significant transformation. In comparison with the earlier mode, the new mode of governance has the objective of narrow economic growth rather than overall development, the role to support rather than lead service delivery, the structure of managerial autonomy rather than accountability, and the standards based on business norms rather than public ethics. This mode of governance, which emerged in advanced industrial nations, has been extended to most developing countries, including those in South Asia. This paper explores the origins and trends of recent changes in governance in South Asian countries, and evaluates the critical implications of such changes for various dimensions of society in these countries.     

Unpacking value destruction at the intersection between public and private value

Public services do not always create value. Rather, when poorly organized and/or delivered, they can destroy value and make service users' lives worse. However, such “value destruction” is presently weakly conceptualized in public management theory. Consequently, this paper is devoted to the empirical examination of value destruction and hence its conceptualization. At the heart of the paper, we recognize the multiplicity of public value and private value objectives in complex public service environments and the dyadic tension between these two value constellations. Drawing upon qualitative data derived from public carbon reduction projects, we establish a conceptual framework. This framework accounts both for the types of value destruction and for the tension between public and private value. Subsequently, the framework disentangles the value destruction concept into four categories: value ignorance, value disproportion, value backlash, and value exploitation. Finally, the implications of this new conceptual framework for public management theory and practice are explored.     

Accountability and hybridity in welfare governance

Hybridity has become a central characteristic of accountability in public governance. Contemporary service delivery is increasingly defined by the mixing and layering of public, market and social accountability regimes operating as overlapping ‘hybrid’ accountability arrangements. Although hybrid accountability is not a new phenomenon, recent trends have accelerated the process of hybridization, particularly in welfare state governance. In this symposium, we seek to advance our understanding of the under-theorized concept of hybrid accountability and empirically examine what is actually going on. In this introductory article, we put forward a definition of what hybridity means in public welfare governance and explore its origins and dynamics. We then present the articles of this symposium, showing how they go beyond fixed and static typologies to grasp the dynamics of interactions between actors, values and mechanisms under hybrid accountability. We conclude by reflecting on a future research agenda for studying hybrid accountability arrangements.     

Public servant stereotypes: It is not (at) all about being lazy,greedy and corrupt

As stereotypes strongly influence social interactions, this study explores the stereotypical associations regarding public servants, and about various professions in the public sector as well as the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. This leads to a better understanding of the theoretical and practical challenges, such as citizen behaviour towards public servants, attractiveness of and political decisions about public service jobs. With a mixed-method analysis of cognitive associations (7,470 associations by 415 respondents for 12 professions), the defining epithets of public servants are clarified, along with their positive or negative connotation. Despite the strongest associations for public servants being positive (caring, helpful and dedicated), as an overall category, it has a less positive connotation compared to some specific professions typical in the public sector (nurse, firefighter and police). However, cognitive associations are substantially more positive for public servants compared to politicians, lawyers and salesmen.