Abstract: Ethical considerations play an important role in the area of public administration and policy. (This chapter uses the terms “ethical” and “moral” interchangeably.) One of the consequences that ethical considerations have in public administration and policy is the creation of additional costs. This chapter explores both monetary and nonmonetary costs that ethical considerations impose in the area of public administration and policy. To best conceptualize the various ways that ethical considerations impose these costs, this chapter identifies dominant Western ethical views such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, animal ethics, and environmental ethics. Next it explores ways in which ethical issues arise in public administration and policy. There are a number of methods utilized by organizations to mandate or encourage ethical behavior such as ethical codes, ethical constitutions, standards of conduct, mission statements, and general regulatory policies. Some approaches are procedural, wherein the tendency is to focus on primarily prescribing behavior. Informal ethics might also be used in isolation or in tandem with formal codes. Such ethics tend to pertain to work culture and office dynamics and what is taken to be acceptable and unacceptable. In some circumstances, cues that moral standards have failed to be brought to fruition come from the public. The public often indicates what constitutes the common morality when it responds critically to failures of organizations to achieve this standard. Ethical considerations arise at both the individual and collective level. Encouraging personal individual ethical integrity is one method for bringing to fruition ethical behavior in institutional contexts. Ethics also comes into play in the administration of organizations. Differing models for administration such as the traditional public administration model, the new public management model, and the new public service model each bring their own attendant set of ethical background assumptions and practices. Some organizations engage in ethical endeavors by going beyond existing laws and codes of behavior and engaging in voluntary social responsibility. Attending to the dynamics of employees and their representation also has an ethical valence; consider, for example, the need to reflect diversity, to prohibit sexual harassment, to generate a nonhostile work environment, to avoid conflicts
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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