chapter2-7ethicsandvaluesinthePublicSector1.pdf

Chapter2-7
Ethics and values in the public sector

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Becoming Ethically Competent

• What knowledge, skills, and abilities does one need to be ethically competent?

• This is not an easy question to answer as there is considerable debate about the matter.

• Aspects of ethical competency are:

1-Understanding of legitimacy in governance (lawfulness and effectiveness in governing)

2- An awareness of one’s commitments in relation to one’s own interests and the interests
of others

3- Most importantly an attitude of respect for the collective effort within an organization
including participation in and promotion of a culture of justification.

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Defining Ethical competency

It is difficult to imagine that a government manager would be regarded
as “ethically competent” if he had no knowledge of the profession’s
code of ethics, relevant ethics ordinances, or ethics laws.

It is not imaginable that one could become ethically competent
without having the skills and ability to recognize an ethical issue and
act appropriately to resolve it.

Ethical competency can be defined in terms of integrity: personal,
professional, and organizational

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Areas of integrity

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Personal
integrity

Professional
integrity

Organizational
integrity

Personal, Professional & Organizational integrity

• Integrity: Demonstrating fairness, honesty, and ethical and legal awareness in personal and professional
relationships and activities

• Integrity requires knowledge of business/administrative and personal ethics in addition to the ability to
understand issues of ethics and integrity in specific situations

• Practices that contribute to core content of integrity are:

1-Personal integrity. Demonstrating accountability for personal actions; conducting personal relationships
and activities fairly and honestly.

2-Professional integrity: Conducting professional relationships and activities fairly, honestly, legally, and in
conformance with the Code of Ethics.

• Professional integrity requires knowledge of administrative ethics and specifically the Code of Ethics.

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Integrity cont. … organizational Integrity

3-Organizational integrity means fostering ethical behavior throughout the
organization through:

A-personal example

B-management practices, and training in administrative ethics

C- ability to instill accountability into operations

D-ability to communicate ethical standards and guidelines to others

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Abilities of ethically competent administrators:

• James S. Bowman and others contend that ethically competent administrators
must understand and practice moral reasoning, be able to sort through
competing values, and engage in prudent decision making.

• More specifically, they note that four abilities are needed by ethically competent
administrators:

(1) moral reasoning based on principles

(2) recognition of ethics-related conflicts

(3) refusal to do something unethical

(4) application of ethical theory

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An ethically competent manager

• Becoming ethically competent is not a simple or straightforward task. Yet, it is
doable.

• It is imperative that men and women entering the profession of government
management become ethically competent public servants.

• An ethically competent manager must have:

1- An awareness of and sensitivity to ethical concerns in his/her organizational
environment

2- Be able to differentiate between ethical and management issues when
circumstances warrant a distinction.

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ELEMENTS OF ETHICALLY COMPETENT
MANAGERS:

For purposes of this
course, an ethically

competent government
manager is

(1) committed to high
standards of personal

and professional
behavior

(2) has knowledge of
relevant ethics codes

and laws

(3) has the ability to
engage in ethical
reasoning when
confronted with

challenging situations,

(4) is able to identify
and act on public
service ethics and

values

(5) promotes ethical
practices and behavior
in public agencies and

organizations. see
exhibit 2.1

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EXHIBIT 2.2 Ethical Competencies*

Be knowledgeable of ethical principles

Be aware and informed of relevant professional codes of ethics .

Recognize and promote constitutional principles of equality, fairness, representativeness.

Recognize and support the public’s right to know the public’s business .

Respect the law .

Serve the public interest .

Engage in ethical reasoning .

Recognize and differentiate between ethical and management issues .

Respect and protect privileged information .

Embrace and promote ethical behavior and practices in the workplace.

Refuse to do something unethical .

Maintain truthfulness and honesty .

Guard against conflict of interest or its appearance .

Be responsible for one’s behavior .

*not prioritized

Ethical Competencies

• The competencies in Exhibit 2.2 are drawn from the public service
literature and key principles in the Code of Ethics of the American Society
for Public Administration.

• They also reflect the central elements in the definition of ethical
competency offered above.

• Ethical competencies can be divided into three groups :

A.Knowledge: understanding of an organized body of ethics information

B.Skills: the verbal, manual, or mental use of people, data, or things ethically

C.Abilities: the power to perform a given ethical act

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Serving the public interest

• High on the list of competencies is “serve the public interest.”

• Serving the public interest requires a government manager to place the public interest
above his self-interests or the organization’s self-interests.

• This is not an easy thing to do because “Working inside organizations, you will feel
pressures to carry out s you feel uneasy about, and, to get ahead, there will be
temptations to compromise yourself and your principles or instincts.” This is not serving
the public interest, is it?

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The ethically competent manager

• Defining the public interest from the vantage point of government management is not
always a straightforward matter.

• Still, it is incumbent on (required that) ethically competent managers to make every
effort to carry out their duties in a manner that is consistent with the public interest.

• The ethically competent manager must draw on her/her knowledge of the public interest
and possess the necessary skills and abilities to ensure that the public interest prevails.

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Respect for the law

• Intertwined with serving the public interest is “respect for the law.”

• The rule of law is critical to public governance, and it is expected that those sworn to
uphold the law will do just that, although there can be a place for legitimate, principled
dissent (disagreement).

• Public managers may not be elected officials who are charged with the responsibility to
enact laws that govern the country. However, they are vital actors in implementing the
law.

• The ethically competent public manager understands his/her role and must act in a
manner that is lawful and respectful of his elected or appointed bosses.

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Differentiate between ethical and management
issues

Several competencies are related to skills and abilities.

• A key skill and ability is to recognize and differentiate between ethical and management
issues.

• This is no trivial matter as it is often difficult to discern (distinguish) which is which and
sometimes the two are undistinguishable.

• However, to mistake a management issue as an ethical issue or vice versa can result in
mismanagement or improper intervention.

• Consider the matter of solicitations in the workplace (Case 2.1)“Workplace Solicitations”.
This case can be considered an ethical or management issue.

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How employees are solicited
can make the difference in

determining whether it is an
ethical issue or a

management issue.

If employees feel pressured
to “go along to get along”
there would most likely be
considerable anxiety and

ethical distress.

Embrace ethical practices and behavior in the workplace

• Another key competency, “embrace ethical practices and behavior in
the workplace,” also relate to skills and abilities.

• While most managers would find this skill has merit, few managers
actually do it. Why? Because often supervisors and top management
fail to recognize the value in emphasizing ethical behavior until there
is a serious issue or problem.

• Managers tend to be reactive rather than proactive. Also, higher
level managers may be unaware of misconduct at work.

• If employees do not report ethical problems, organizational
managers may not recognize problems until a crisis is at hand.

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Ethical reasoning

• Becoming an ethically competent
manager also means having the
ability to engage in “ethical
reasoning”, an approach to resolve
issues and dilemmas that can be
both taught and learned.

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Ethical reasoning: Becoming aware

• Public managers typically approach “doing the right thing” from a
utilitarian perspective.

• That is, they try to make decisions that benefit the greatest number
of citizens (or employees when decisions apply only to the
government workforce) while minimizing the potential harm.

• This “do no harm” approach is attractive because it is straightforward
and, on many occasions, easy to understand.

• What do practitioners do when faced with especially difficult ethics
moments? Some apply a blend of normative philosophies—
utilitarianism, principles (rights and justice), and virtues—the “ethics
triangle.”

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Four Methods of Ethical Reasoning

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• Others apply ethical reasoning, which incorporates some aspects of
the classic normative approaches but also emphasizes a decision-
making logic and process.

• Dennis Witmer has studied ethical decision making and contends
that:

“Ethical judgment and behavior are conditioned by individual
influences, such as age, experience, and employment tenure, and
external influences, such as the prevailing reward/punishment
structure, ethical work climates, organizational policies, and codes of
conduct”.

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• Central to Witmer’s behavioral model of ethical reasoning are:

1.The individual’s sensitivity to an ethical situation

2.The ability to exercise judgment in selecting a choice that results in
ethical behavior.

• Thus “ethical decisions are a product (in part) of sensitivity and
perception of the ethical issues and the reasoning used to arrive at
some conclusion about what to do in the situation.”

Terry L. Cooper’s Model of Ethical
reasoning:

• Terry L. Cooper places ethical reasoning at the center of choice intended to
resolve an ethical problem.

• Cooper’s model “does not assume that ethical decisions are, can, or should be
purely rational and principled.” Rather, human feelings are an inseparable part of
our ethical life.

• Values and judgments are critical to the decision-making process to resolve an
ethical problem.

• The individual must learn how to draw upon one’s moral imagination to project
probable consequences of the ethical choices one makes in a given situation.

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How then should we go about learning how to reason
ethically and acquire other ethical competencies?

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Ethical reasoning emphasizes the
dynamics and interplay between
alternatives, values that might be
derived from principles or virtues,

and commonsense judgment to
resolve a challenging ethics

moment.

One answer to the above
question is to examine real-world
cases and controversies—or what
can be described as case learning.

Case Learning

• How do cases help us learn about ethics and reason through a dilemma? How do
we make sense of cases? What do cases offer that other learning approaches do
not?

• First, cases are excellent for bringing abstract concepts down to earth. Trust,
integrity, ethics, and the public interest, for example, are abstract concepts that
must be grounded in reality; cases approximate reality.

• Second, cases put situations in context which is crucial to an in-depth
understanding of a difficult ethical situation.

• Most dilemmas are complex and challenging because they are surrounded
continuously changing events and circumstances.

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Case learning cont.

• Third, and perhaps most importantly, cases encourage learning by
discovery, which is widely regarded as very effective in enabling the learner
to retain information, concepts, and knowledge.

• Unlike lectures, which put the emphasis on the presenter’s oral skills and
the learner’s listening skills, case learning emphasizes trial-and-error, self-
analysis and assessment, and, in instances in which the learner is a
member of a group, active learning.

• “The case method develops the readers’ ability to reason by requiring that
they perform analysis, engage in exploratory discussion, and find ‘best
possible’ rather than right/wrong solutions.”

• Readers often generate solutions to problems they may never have
experienced; it is thinking “outside the box.”

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Case learning cont.

• Learning with cases means engagement with ideas and other
learners.

• It emphasizes the ability to process contextual details and connect
the dots.

• It is a combination of problem solving and, like a 10,000-piece puzzle,
putting the pieces together to form a large picture of the situation.
Learners develop “a holistic understanding of the subject area.”

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Case learning cont.

• Cases lend themselves very well to learning how to engage in ethical
reasoning.

• Moreover, the cases can be effectively dealt with by learning how to
address five ethical reasoning questions—see Exhibit 2.3.

• These five questions, if asked skillfully and thoughtfully, will help you
reason through an ethics issue.

• Most importantly, with practice and experience, when that ethics
moment arrives—and it will—you will be much better prepared to
deal with it.

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EXHIBIT 2.3 Ethical Reasoning Questions

1. Is there an ethical issue? The answer to this question depends on one’s ethical sensitivity and
ability to evaluate a situation.

2. What is the ethical issue? An ethics issue can easily be mistaken for a management issue and
sometimes the two overlap a great deal.

3. What might be done to resolve the situation? Once the issue is defined, a set of alternatives
should be thought through in to decide which alternative is the best course of action.

4. Does the preferred course of action satisfy the needs/preferences of the primary stakeholders,
including yourself? This is where one’s values enter into the decision.

5. Is the action itself ethical? An unethical means to an ethical end is no more justified than an
ethical means to an unethical end.

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EXHIBIT 2.4 Guidelines: Steps in Preparing
for a Case Analysis

1. Go through the case as fast as possible, asking yourself, “What, broadly, is the case
about and what types and amounts of information am I being given to analyze?” Often
the problem or decision is laid out at the start and/or end of the case.

2. Read through the case very carefully, underlining key facts and making marginal
notes. Data presented in tables or figures should be analyzed, a key maneuver some
readers tend to avoid. For each exhibit ask yourself, “What is its point? What does it tell
me?” Then ask yourself, “What are the issues facing the decision makers? Do the issues
focus around a single point? Do they form a principal or main decision question?”

3. Go through the case again, elaborating the issues that are important to the principal
decision.

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EXHIBIT 2.4 (Continued

4. Develop a set of alternative solutions that will deal with the required decision and
describe these solutions so you appreciate what they will involve.

5. Analyze each alternative in terms of the disciplinary criteria or issues important to the
decision. Consider how it will deal with each of the issues you have identified.

6. Compare the alternatives to see which seems to best meet the criteria or deal with
the issues.

7. Make a recommendation based on the comparison of the alternatives.

8. Prepare a statement, if appropriate, of what needs to be done to implement the
recommendation.

• Source: Adapted from K. Harling and J. Akridge, “Using the Case Method of Teaching,”
Agribusiness 4: 1 (1998): 1–14.

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Key points in analyzing cases

The cases span a range of topics and situations about which public managers need
knowledge such as understanding:

(1) the motivation that leads to (un)ethical behavior

(2) the context in which individuals choose the right or wrong course of action

(3) the manner in which a troubling situation is resolved for better or worse

(4) why ethical leadership among peers and subordinates is crucial

(5) why rules and laws, although plentiful, are not sufficient to produce ethical
behavior

(6) how professional associations contribute to building organizations of integrity

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• By wrestling intellectually and thoughtfully with the many
situations that cause problems, readers build up a
commitment to ethics and implementing them correctly.

• Knowledge and commitment go hand-in-hand with
developing reasoning skills to assess alternative choices and
values that produce ethical behavior. All cases are decision
driven.

• That is, the reader is faced with deciding what to do about an
ethically difficult situation. Some cases place an emphasis on
the need to take action when an ethics breach is observed
among peers or top management.

• Moral muteness or turning one’s head are choices but are not
always the best thing to do.

• Confronting a coworker or an organizational superior who is
engaging in questionable ethical behavior is very difficult and
can have serious repercussions (Case 5.4 “What’s a Whistle-
Blower to Do?”).

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Summary of Ethical Competency

• Finally, becoming ethically competent means that one must promote
public service values and appropriate behavior in public
organizations.

• The cases in this course illustrate how this is done through exemplary
leadership, codes of ethics, benchmarking an organization’s culture,
and the development of ethics standards for inclusion in hiring
decisions, promotions, and annual evaluations.

• To repeat, the key ingredients in ethical competency are:
Commitment → Knowledge → Reasoning → Action → Promotion.

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• At times, total immersion in ethics cases and controversies may feel like
“messy” learning. But messy learning is part of making sense out of the many
complex dimensions of ethical and not so ethical behavior.

• However, if you probe, explore, and analyze the cases and controversies with
diligence and serious intent, you will surely have taken a significant step
toward becoming an ethically competent government manager.

Preview of cases

• Several cases deal with the stress and strain that occur when one’s
duty and sense of morality clash or when obeying the law collides
with one’s conscience. (See Case 3.8 “When Duty and Morality Clash”
and Case 3.9 “Follow the Law or Your Conscience?”)

• Other cases are about “Encouraging Ethical Behavior” involving
successful and unsuccessful efforts by government managers to foster
ethical behavior.

• Laws, rules, and regulation are often used to combat unethical
behavior but frequently fall short of producing ethical behavior.
Ethical leadership and management are necessary additions to laws
and rules to produce ethical governance.

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• Other cases explore “Building Organizations of Integrity.” Integrity in
governance is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Government employees
are the front-line providers of vital public services which, if compromised by
unethical acts, undermine democratic governance.

• Some cases require the reader to distinguish between ethical problems and
management problems (see 5.1 “What Would You Do if You Were the
Sheriff?” and 5.9 “City of Progress I”).

• Other cases present situations in which one must decide how to do the
“right” thing when organizational pressures encourage one to do the “wrong”
thing (see 5.4 “What’s a Whistle-Blower to Do?” and 5.5 “When the Chief
Asks You to Lie”).

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• Another case involves a city manager who must rebuild an organization
that has experienced ethical failure (see 5.8 “Escape from an Ethics
Swamp”).

• The last case in each of each section is accompanied by the five ethical
reasoning questions presented earlier in this chapter. The reader is
challenged to apply these questions to other cases as well.

3-Professionalism and ethics

• Medicine, clergy, and law are the classic professions. Contemporary practitioners—doctors,
ministers, lawyers—must complete lengthy education and training programs to acquire the
knowledge and expertise to enter into a life-long practice.

• With knowledge not possessed by an ordinary person, the professional also has the ability to
inflict harm on others, although that is certainly not the intention. This is where ethics becomes
an inseparable part of being a professional.

• The admonishment (a firm warning) “do no harm” requires one to be competent (knowledgeable
and skillful) and aware of his ethical responsibilities to his client.

• Stated differently, it is not sufficient to claim to be a professional based entirely on possessing
expertise. One must also possess ethical principles to guide the application of expertise.

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• Public administrators as well claim to have expertise and ethics in carrying
out their duties.

• Public administrators possess expertise in many specialized fields, such as
budgeting and finance, personnel and human resources, information
technology, computer engineering, management systems, public works,
police, and fire services.

• Each specialty has a professional education requirement and an association
that provides its members with ethical guidance.

Another preview of cases

• The cases and controversies in this section suggest just how
challenging it is to be an ethical public administrator even though a
code of ethics defines the practice. The concluding case (3.10
“Withholding Information: When Is it Ethical or Unethical?”), for
example, involves a candidate for a highly desirable city manager job
who decided to withhold information that might embarrass the city.

• As the case unfolds, the candidate is put through a difficult public
scrutiny that nearly costs him the job.

• Finding an ethical balance in a case is no easy task, and some would
say that there is no balance. Other cases raise issues of trust, loyalty,
conflict of interests, and serving the public interest.

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4- Encouraging ethical Behavior

• Why do “good” people who want to be ethical sometimes find themselves in an unethical
situation?

• Could it be that they don’t know what the bright(clear dividing) lines are that define (un)ethical
behavior? Perhaps there are no bright lines, or they are fuzzy at best.

• So, the important question becomes, what can be done to encourage ethical behavior and
discourage unethical behavior?

• These challenging questions are likely to be asked for many years to come. Does this mean that
there are no answers? No.

• It means that our understanding of (un)ethical behavior is incomplete at best and very
inadequate at worst. Still, there is no shortage of efforts to encourage behavior that is deemed
acceptable and ethical

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• One significant way for managers to encourage ethical behavior is to
serve as a role model. Kenneth Ashworth (2001, 166) advises that
while there is some risk in “attracting attention to yourself or
appearing stuffy, you should not be reluctant to see yourself as a
model of ethical behavior.”

• The cases and controversies in Chapter 4 illustrate in part why good
people can find themselves in an ethical quandary(dilemma) and why
many tools and practices (codes, standards, rules, performance
evaluations, and just common sense) intended to encourage ethical
behavior are not always successful in doing so.

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• The concluding case in this chapter is an excellent example of how public
officials in a progressive agency are all too often unaware of the ethical
dimensions of an issue until they are stuck in an ethics swamp.

• One could say that they suffered from ethical illiteracy.

• Another case presents a city manager with the challenge of advocating against
a statewide referendum that would cut taxes and necessitate a reduction in
city services. Does advocacy exceed the limit of acceptable professional
behavior?

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• Other cases deal with:

• Religious expression in the workplace.

• The behavior of a public employee who finds himself in a nasty quarrel
(argument) with a neighbor.

• Going along to get along with the boss who wants to put the best face on a
difficult situation.

• A decision by a city manager to accept or reject a pay raise that exceeds the
raise limit of city employees.

• Strengthening the ethics culture of the organization by adding an ethics
component to employees’ annual evaluations.

• Could the sheriff be accused of trying to manage the morality of employees?
Do police officers have a right to privacy in how they conduct their private
lives?

5-Building organizations of Integrity

• The task of strengthening ethics in governance remains a “work-in-progress.”

• Important steps forward have been made recently in public management ethics.
These steps include curbs on nepotism, financial disclosure, conflicts of interest,
post-employment relationships, secrecy, use and abuse of equipment and
property, and other measures.

• These “don’t do” admonishments (warning), along with the establishment of a
galaxy of government ethics laws and regulatory commissions, have done much
to improve governance.

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• Yet, lapses are not uncommon and, some would argue, are occurring with
increasing frequency. The 2007 survey of ethics in government by the Ethics
Resource Center (ERC) supports this view.

• The ERC report finds that six of every ten local government employees say
they witnessed misconduct at work over the past twelve months, with
abusive behavior and placing one’s own interests ahead of the organization
most common .

• Additionally, the survey found that one of every four local government
employees say they work in environments conducive to misconduct. Other
surveys report lower levels of misdeeds but still underscore the need to
strengthen the ethics culture of the government workforce (Menzel 2008).

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The Ethics Resources Center study points
to a glaring( very obvious) information

gap between top management and
employees regarding the extent of

misconduct (see Figure 5.1).

Organizational leaders just don’t know
how much misconduct is occurring. This

situation in combination with a
nonconducive work environment and

ineffective intervention contributes to a
high rate of misconduct that places the

public trust at risk.

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Practicing public
managers have become
increasingly drawn into
the world of policy
making.

1

Public managers are
expected to be leaders,
not just implementers of
policy handed down by
their elected or
appointed bosses.

2

Consequently, they face
the challenge of leading
“without fear or
favor”—an enormous
challenge

3

Another preview of cases

• The cases and controversies that follow are illustrative of the
contemporary nature of ethical challenges faced by governments—
human rights, justice, duty, fraud, abuse of power.

• For example, the competency “refuse to do something unethical” is
highlighted in two cases: 5.4 “What’s a Whistle-Blower to Do?” and
5.5 “When the Chief Asks You to Lie.”

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6 – Ethics in the Workplace

• Working in a government or nonprofit organization can be rewarding and exciting
and also filled with many ethics decisions.

• While public organizations, small and large, typically have a personnel manual
that details …