Public sector innovation in the Asia-pacific trends,challenges, and opportunities

Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processes, policies, programs, and products. Indeed, in recent years, innovation has become a core topic of study in public administration. However, the vast majority of the public sector innovation literature stems from the United States and Western Europe. The lack of Asia-Pacific studies is particularly striking given that countries like Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan consistently rank high on public sector innovation. This special issue brings together state of the art empirical research on public sector innovation in the Asia-Pacific region that examines a range of drivers and outcomes of innovation, including studies comparing Asia-Pacific countries and countries in the East and the West. The findings show that public sector employees in the studied countries all seek opportunities to innovate, whereas cultural norms and values either constrain or enable innovative behaviour and affect the extent to which employees experience leadership support for displaying such behaviour.     

Friendship and care: gendered practices within personal communities in Portugal

What is the role of friends in practices of care within intimate relationships, either towards each other, or in supporting caring practices towards other persons (children, parents or other kin)? And to what extent are these caring practices gendered? I explore how friendship either disrupts, or reproduces, the ethics of care that cross-cuts gender relations throughout society. I focus on the experience of Portuguese men and women and take as reference their personal community, understood as the active and meaningful personal ties they consider to be central in their lives. Drawing on qualitative data from 30 in-depth interviews, I explore their experiences of care in three dimensions: caring for others; caring for oneself; and being cared for. Results show that, while it is not possible to assert a complete centring of personal lives on friendship, friends stand out as important sources of care in these three different situations, providing both emotional and practical support.     

Media corruption and issues of journalistic and institutional integrity in post-communist countries: The case of Bulgaria

From a normative standpoint the media are usually seen as one of the pillars of a national integrity system, entrusted with the tasks of exposing and preventing acts of corruption and educating the public of the harm caused by corruption. Nevertheless, corruption continues to be one of the most significant challenges that Europe faces, undermining citizens' trust in democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of political leadership. Evidence suggests that in fragile EU democracies such as Bulgaria, despite more than eight years of full membership and numerous preventive measures, corruption is rife and the press is hardly capable of exposing abuses of power or authority. On the contrary - drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 Bulgarian journalists - this paper argues that since communism collapsed in the late 1980s the media in post-communist societies such as Bulgaria has gradually become an instrument to promote and defend private vested interests, and is plagued by corruption. Senior journalists and editors cast serious doubt over the ability of the post-communist free press and journalism to act as a watchdog for society.     

Moral Values and Responsible Administration: Live Organs Transplant Systems in the United States and Germany

This article explores the unexpected ways in which recently introduced accountability mechanisms shape hospital administrators’ and physicians’ actions in Germany and in the United States. Though the reforms were designed to provide governments with more control over hospitals by increasing doctors’ and managers’ direct answerability to clients, this research finds that they fail to achieve these objectives by overlooking and clashing with existing behavioral settings within the medical sector. This analysis employs a newly synthesized theoretical framework at the nexus of ethics and accountability, as well as a comparative empirical exploration of the organ transplant systems in Germany and the U.S.     

新公共管理理论与我国警察行政伦理建设

新公共管理理论是将官僚的、权威式的作风和消极性民主政体转换成有效率的、回应性的、顾客导向的新型政府管理模式。新公共管理理论模式下的政府公共行政与公共管理体系,必然要求公安机关建立与之相适应的警察行政伦理。新公共管理理论对新的历史时期我国警察行政伦理建设及发展有着极其重要的影响。     

关于中国主体缺失的思考：以西方文化为镜

与西方相比,中国文化缺乏主体性背景。这种缺失导致了近现代中国在吸收西方理性、自由、平等等文化理念方面的困难,滞缓了中国的现代化进程。相反,西方文化内涵了理性（逻各斯）和自由（努斯）的因子,为其主体性的确立奠定了基础。中国要确立现代的主体性,将主体从诗意直觉、伦理及自然中复活,需要借鉴和吸收西方文化的精神内蕴。     

How Honest Do Politicians Need to Be?

This article reports findings from a recent survey of citizens' attitudes towards standards in British public life. It provides further evidence that people hold their political leaders to high standards, yet are often disappointed by the reality, and suggests that many citizens tend to blame the practice and institutions of politics for making politicians less honest and trustworthy than they would ideally like. The article argues that reforms to the political system are needed to regain the confidence of the population, but that the manner in which the most recent round of ethics reforms in the House of Commons were introduced may lower the prospects of their achieving this goal.     

The ethics of resigning

Resigning from office is a critical ethical decision for individuals. Resignation also remains one of the basic moral resources for individuals of integrity. The option to resign reinforces integrity, buttresses responsibility, supports accountability, and can provide leverage and boundary drawing. I argue that the moral reasons to resign flow from three related moral dimensions of integrity. Individuals in office promise to live up to the obligation of the office. This promise presumes that individuals have the capacity to make and keep promises, the competence to do the tasks of office, and the ability to be effective. This article examines how failure in each of these areas generates strong moral reasons to resign. ©1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

《人民警察职业道德》课程教学改革的若干思考

《人民警察职业道德》课程作为公安院校独具特色的思想政治理论课,是公安院校思想政治工作的重要环节。在公安警务改革和执法思想变革的时代背景下,公安院校必须不断更新德育观念,坚持以课堂教学为主阵地,充实、完善教学内容,优化教学方法与考核方式,才能真正取得实效。