Ethics

• Ethics and genuine professional success go together in public service
• Public service ethics is different from ethics in private life
• Democracy is sustained by public trust, which is forged by stringent ethical standards
• Public managers' morale, identity, and capacity for decision making and innovation are entangled in ethics
• Public service is our society's instrument for managing complexity and interdependency
• Public expectations and formal standards today demand that managers undertake sophisticated ethical reasoning and apply rigorous ethical standards to decisions and behavior
• Public service is a public trust

  The public service's smooth functioning depends on trust
• Public trust in government has declined
• There are higher standards earmarked for public service and the public perception of pervasive shortfall
• Public confidence in government is grounded in ethics, carrying with it broad acceptance of public activity
• Public agencies rely on trust as the foundation for our ability to govern effectively through the voluntary compliance we in democracies prefer to compulsory obedience
• All mainstream segments of the political spectrum in the United States share the preference that ethics, trust, and government power are linked
• Public confidence started its downturn in the early 1960s and continued its plunge through the 1970s and the events of Watergate
• Attention to ethics is scandal-driven and short-lived
• The nationwide, overall decline in trust in government is part and parcel of discussions of contemporary ethics
• Low evaluations on ethical dimensions such as honesty and integrity sounded the alarm as the end of the last century neared
• Today, more people trust their state and local governments than trust the government in Washington
• Public service is and must be an ethical enterprise, with an ethical core
• Public service is expected to operate on a higher ethical plane than other, more garden-variety activities
• Public officials and employees are expected to conform meticulously to standards higher than those aligned with strictly personal morality or standards associated with the private sector
• The interaction of trust, confidence, and governmental integrity is evident in law and regulation, and is conspicuous in governmental codes across the nation
• The ASPA's code: '"Demonstrate the highest standards in all activities to inspire public confidence and trust in public service."'
• Ethical values


  Beliefs about right and wrong
• Ethical values


  • Draw on feeling and thinking
  • Combine into predispositions or inclinations to act
• Virtues


  Habits of ethical action embedded in moral character that underlie ethical behavior and translate abstract, ethical values into customary, observable behavior
• Four virtues (Plato)


  • Courage
  • Wisdom
  • Justice
  • Moderation
• In Buddhist teachings, "Good men and bad men differ from each other in their natures. . . . Wise men are sensitive to right and wrong"
• In Exodus 18:21, Jethro advises Moses to "provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers."
• Values and virtues drawn upon in this book

  • Laura Nash
  • Michael Rion
  • John Rohr
  • Michael Josephson
  • Josephson Institute
  • Terry Cooper
  • Stephen Bailey
• Ethical action


  • Reflective, based on thought and reason
  • Principled, draws on sound values
  • Involves making normative judgments and choice
• Adulthood


  Capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity
• Competing ethical claims


  Rival claims that devour a public manager's time, attention, and loyalties
• Discriminating discipline


  Imposed by the manager's priorities, specifying what is important to attend to, and when
• Roles


  Define one's own behavior and that of others in different circumstances
• Bottom line


  In business, either makes a profit or it doesn't. In the public sector, far harder to measure.
• Political responsibility


  Action that is accountable to or consistent with objectives or standards of conduct mandated by political or hierarchical authority
• Professional responsibility


  Action that is informed by professional expertise, standards of ethical conduct, and by experience rooted in agency history and traditions
• Personal responsibility


  Action that is informed by self-reflexive understanding; and emerges from a context of authentic relationships wherein personal commitments are regarded as valid bases for moral action
• Having a conflict is not, in and of itself, evil, wrong or even unusual. Conflicts may be ethnic, cultural, emotional, nostalgic, regional, financial or philosophical
• Personal role


  Involves self, family, personal beliefs, and community affinity and is the stuff of daily life and emotional bonds