PAD 6436 lecture 15
University of North Florida
Master of Public Administration program
PAD 6436 Ethics
Responsible administration
Public manager of the week
Photo credit
Manmohan Singh
Technocrat
Lecture goals: wrap up the course, through revisiting major themes.
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Nine questions!
1. The mission statement of the United States of America includes the following:
 establish justice,
 ensure domestic tranquility,
 provide for the common defense,
 promote the general welfare, and
 secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
 our posterity
Which of these have we most successfully achieved? Which have we most failed at, and why?
2. In lecture one, we looked at data (reproduced on the following page) that seems to show that
the US is one of the most successful, best governed, and most ethical societies in the history of
our species. At the same time, the Jacksonville Jaguars football team is one of the worst in the
country, according to a similarly reasonable, objective analysis of the numbers. Yet you can find
items emblazoned with Jacksonville Jaguars #1, that people presumably purchase, while many
Americans bemoan their government. Similarly, here in Jacksonville while people were
screaming about the possibility that taxes would not be cut (even though the numbers show that
ours is a low tax city in a low tax state in our low tax country), we were being exhorted as a civic
duty to buy Jaguar tickets. Is this an example of mass insanity, or is there a practical explanation
for this?
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PAD 6436 lecture 15
Ethics in America in comparative context
G7+
US
Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Sweden
UK
BRICs
Brazil
China
India
Russia
Sources:
Table 1 – Some comparative ethics data
Corruption
Civil
Economic
Income
Social
perceptions1 freedom2
freedom3
per capita4 expenditure5
Inequality6
7.1
8.7
8.9
6.8
7.9
3.9
7.8
9.2
7.6
1
1
1
1
1
1.5
1.5
1
1
7.966
7.90
7.95
7.32
7.46
6.90
7.46
7.28
7.81
47,020
38,510
37,280
34,440
38,170
31,090
34,790
39,600
36,580
16.2
16.0
16.9
28.4
25.2
24.9
18.7
27.3
20.5
40.8
35.2
32.6
32.7
28.3
36.0
24.9
25.0
36.0
3.7
3.5
3.3
2.1
2
6.5
2.5
5.5
6.18
6.65
6.51
6.62
10,920
7570
3560
19,160
-----
55.0
41.5
36.8
43.7
1 – Transparency International‟s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index. Higher scores indicate less perception of
corruption.
2 – Freedom House‟s 2011 Freedom in the World Report. Freedom House rates countries in terms of civil and
political freedom, on a 1 (free) to 7 (unfree) scale. The number presented here is the average of these two scores.
3 – Fraser Institute and Cato Institute‟s 2010 Economic Freedom of the World Report. The data is on a 1-10 scale,
with 10 equal to more economic freedom (i.e. less government „meddling‟). The data are for 2008.
4 – World Bank. The indicator used is gross national income per capita, at purchasing power parity. This seeks to
correct for price differences between countries. The data are for 2009 or 2010.
5 – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Statistics Portal. The figure is Public Social welfare
spending as a percentage of GDP, and includes spending on old age, survivors, disability, health, family,
unemployment, housing, and other social areas.
6 – United Nations Development Program‟s 2010 Human Development Report. The numbers are a Gini coefficient,
which measures inequality. Higher scores indicate more inequality. The data can be found on pages 152-5.
3. Cooper identifies a fundamental tension between citizen (presumably: loyalty to the public
interest) and public administrator (loyalty to the agency). Waldo goes beyond this with his
concept of competing ethical obligations. George Washington (1796) would seem to agree,
arguing that secondary loyalties were the source of lots of heat, and little light:
…the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the
interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to
distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the
community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part
against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.
Is it really that hard, on a day-to-day basis, for the administrator to reconcile these conflicting
obligations?
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PAD 6436 lecture 15
4. Cooper is big on the individual administrator, and the importance of personal growth. So
“administrators‟ ethical identities emerge incrementally from the pattern of decisions that they
make over the course of a career” (p. 283), and suggests that most of us just kind of let this
happen. This is not good. Instead, we need to “cultivate a working theory of ethical conduct, a
sense of intuitive judgment, and integrity of character… in short, an ethical identity” (ibid).
Is this a bit too abstract, though, for the average administrator with a day-to-day job to do, rather
than sit in an office in an ivory tower like Cooper?
5. Similarly, aren‟t there universal values that the administrator can rely on, instead: just buy the
app, and plug them in?
6. Cooper refers back to his Figure 7.1 (page 188), which includes four components of
responsible conduct:
 Individual attributes:
o Ethical decision-making skill
o Mental attitude
o Virtues
o Professional values
 Organizational culture:
o Exemplars
o Norms for conduct
o Symbols
 Organizational structure:
o Clear accountability
o Collaborative arrangements
o Dissent channels
o Participation procedures
 Societal expectations:
o Public participation
o Laws and policies
How malleable are each of these for the public manager?
7. Cooper identifies four means of supporting ethical autonomy:
(1) The conscious delimitation of commitment to an employing organization and the
cultivation of identities that transcend its boundaries,
(2) legal and institutional protection for individual rights and conscience,
(3) an ethic of awareness, and
(4) the cultivation of principled thinking
How implementable are each of these for the public manager seeking to enhance ethical
autonomy within the agency, and how important is each?
8. One of Kernaghan‟s emphases has been on the relative importance of internal versus external
controls, as well as various forms of external controls. How well do we do the following in the
US:
 Internal controls: rely on the ethical standards of public employees.
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PAD 6436 lecture 15

External responsibility:
o Political responsibility: focus on the requirement of the administrator to account to the
elected representatives of the people.
o Ethics legislation, applied to public agencies by legislatures.
o Codes of ethics, applied within public agencies.
o Organizational culture: creating an environmental of high integrity within public
organizations.
o Performance accounting: close oversight of the inputs and the outcomes of the work of
public agencies (the traditional subjects of accounting), as well as the ethical integrity of
them.
o Market ethics: rely on consumer choice to control unethical behavior.
9. Cooper closes by arguing that “responsible administration is not just the task of those who
practice public administration. It is the work of all who strive for a democratic society in an
administrative state” (p. 299). Bresser Pereira similarly writes about the obligations of
citizenship to keep government honest. Isn‟t this statement itself kind of unethical, as isn‟t this
what we pay public administrators to do? In other words, public servants exist to serve the
public. We (the public) are allowed to pursue our self interest; it is the obligation of government
to keep us in check, through preventing crime, corruption, and all that.
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References
Washington, George (1796). Farewell Address.
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