Ethics for Public Administration

1. Ethics for Public Administration Chapters One and Two

2. WHY STUDY ETHICS?  Public Administrators: • Are not neutral • Exercise discretion • Participate in the public policy process • Make policy recommendations • Engage in policy implementation

3. Your Text • The Responsible Administrator: An approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role • Conceptual Focus: • The role of the public administrator in an organizational setting • Integrating Ethical Concept: • Responsibility • Central Ethical Process: • Comprehensive design approach

4. Definitions • “The attempt to state and evaluate principles by which ethical problems may be solved.” • “normative standards of conduct derived from the philosophical and religious traditions of society.” • “concerned with what is right, fair, just, or good; about what we ought to do.”

5. Our Focus Ethics “is one step removed from action. It involves the examination and analysis of the logic, values, beliefs, and principles that are used to justify morality in its various forms.” Terry L. Cooper, The Responsible Administrator. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Ethical Decision Making Ordering our values with respect to a particular decision. Milton Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1970.

6. Text: study of moral conduct and moral status • Morality assumes accepted norms of behavior • Ethics involves the examination of the logic, values, beliefs, and principles that are used to justify morality in its various forms. • Law “must always stand under the judgment of ethics” Cooper

7. Perspectives Descriptive • Reveal underlying assumptions about conduct Normative • Construct viable and defensible arguments for preferable courses of conduct Deontological • Means and duty Teleological • Ends and consequences

8. Responsibility and Role • Responsibility: • Objective accountability for conduct • Subjective congruence with one’s professional values • Ethical Responsibility • Able to give reasons for one’s conduct • Able to understand in a self-conscious way why one acted

9. A Design Approach • Addresses immediate situation but takes into account legal, organizational, and social context for longer term impact. • A problem-solving approach • Uncertainties abound • Solutions rely on facts, not just opinions • Reality of acting under pressure • Ethical problems are dynamic

10. Understanding Ethical Decision Making • Character traits: built from decisions made as we define boundaries/content of responsibility • This is often done without consistent, intentional, and systematic reflection • Reflective ethics: design the best course of action • for specific problems we face • given constraints of time and information

11. Aiken’s 4 Levels of Ethical Reflection • Expressive Level • what feels like the right thing? • Moral Rules Level • what rule should I follow? • Ethical Analysis Level • what are the principles involved? • Postethical level • why should I be principled?

12. Which is best? • Expressive • Emotion is only one aspect • Moral Rules • Merely reflects socialization • ETHICAL –proceed with reasoned justification • Easier for others to understand • Postethical • Personal consensus could be difficult

13. Descriptive Models: what is • Early on, feeling of futility • Blasi (1980)—impossible to close gap between moral judgment and moral behavior • Later research shows interaction of the two: • Cognitive process • Wittmer (2005) “awareness….judgment…behavior.” • Rest (1984, 1986) –interpretation of situation, judgment of the situation, selection of options, action • Environmental press • Trevino (1986)—person-situation interaction

14. Cooper’s Model

15. Prescriptive Models: what should be • Simply following someone else’s past history may not fit my environment • Simply prescribing is not enough • Problem-solving is required • Description and prescription are combined • Template needed for designing best solution • Contingency is important • May need to alter course (dynamic)

16. The Descriptive Task • Sift through judgmental reports of issue • Balance the “hierarchy of credibility”(Becker 1973) • Avoid good-guys/bad-guys language • Facts include key actors, viewpoints, issues, event sequence, risks, what we don’t know.

17. Cooper’s Model

18. Define the Ethical Issues • Issue = competing or conflicting • Many administrators can identify issues, but not principles underlying them.

19. Identifying Alternative Courses of Action • Be wary of either/or options. • Be willing to SCAMPER (McDonald’s) • S = Substitute (real estate for hamburgers) • C = Combine (meals with lodging for parents) • A = Adapt (Latte, yogurt) • M = Magnify (expand to other countries) • P = Put to Other Uses (raise $ for charity) • E = Eliminate (or Minify) (waiters) • R = Rearrange (or Reverse) (payment)

20. Finding a Fit • An alternative that balances principle with consequences • The test of publicity • Satisfaction with the alternative

21. Cooper’s Model

22. Project Probable Consequences • Instead of usual black-and-white simple melodrama, imagine epic alternatives with consequences. • The more alternatives (with consequences) the better, especially with complex issues. • Consequences may be outweighed by principles.

23. Anticipatory Self-Appraisal • Look into the future and anticipate how we will feel about ourselves • Does it match or violate our principles? • What will we feel • Guilt, remorse, and self-reproach • Pride and approval from others

24. All steps every time? • Systematically develop intuitive models that create “smooth, automatic performance of learned behavior sequences.” (Cleveland, 1972) • Requires discipline and practice • Creates autonomy and choice • REWARDS: Self-awareness, self-control, and flexibility of decision-making