Ethics in Public Administration

ETHICS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The roll of ethics in public administration is based on the fact that administrators should be value free when they implement public policy. Most people do not understand what an administration deals with everyday on an individual basis. They might think that an administration is supposed to make the best ethical choices, but that is not the case. People who are outside the administration might think that administrators are supposed to use everyday values when implementing policy, but that is also not the case.

The roll that ethics plays in public administration is based on each individual administration. An administration is a business after all and it has to make money to survive in the business world. If all the businesses in public administration based ethics on each individual worker, than his/her administration would not survive. Imagine if you were an individual working for the state dealing with welfare for a citizen. You know that the citizen needs more money than the federal government is giving, but you can only give out the amount of money that is allowed by the government. Well, if one employee gives out extra money to one citizen and other employee does the same thing, than the state will be losing income, people who pay taxes will want to know where their money is going and the questions about having the welfare system will come up again. Probably, almost every administrator who sees a case like the example I just showed wants to do the right thing, but he/she can not do that because administrators do not get paid to make the right ethical choices. Administrators get paid to do what the administration tells them to do and if that means not making the correct ethical choice, than that employee should get out of the business that he/she is in.

To sum up, the administrators were set up to give out the amount of money that the government sees fit. They were not set up to make the ethical choices that an employee of the administration feels is the right thing to do. It does sound bad that an administration will not give out extra money to a person in need, but if that did happen, the administration would not exist and no one would get any benefits from it.

Administrators should be value free when they are implementing public policy for their administration. They should be value free, because if they let their own personal values in to play they would be hurting the administration. An example of this is dealing with student loans, an administrator may feel that giving a bigger loan to someone who is in need of it is the right thing to do, but they know if they give the extra loan instead of the standard amount for the situation than the administration would suffer. This does not mean that every administrator has values like a used car salesman would, but that they have to do what their job specifies. Administrators just can not change the rules for an individual. It basically goes back to the paragraph on ethics; the values are also based on the administration and not the administrators running the administration. Most administrators do have good values, they follow the laws, go to church, give money to charity, but they can not implement those ideas in their workplace.

In the reading on Goodsell, it says that the administrators who have been at their work the longest are the ones who are able to handle a case about a loan or welfare money better. They are better able to handle that kind of case because they know that their job is to do what the administration says. An administrator who has not been working that long is not better equipped to handle cases like that because they put their own values in the way when they do not need to do that. Those administrators come home wondering if they can do something extra, but once they have been in the administration long enough they will realize that they should not feel bad about a situation, but to treat each situation like any other situation that they will deal with while being employed.

Weber’s stance on values is that when the bureaucracy was first formed it was a good idea. Values were a norm to the bureaucracy. Than overtime as the bureaucracy got bigger and bigger values were becoming less the norm. Weber’s nightmare was that the bureaucracy would become out of control. He may have been correct on that and some people agree with his nightmare. When bureaucracy decided to get involved with the government and political leaders, values were thrown out the window.

MacIntyre’s stance is that character is not enough to go by in the administration field. He says that in the administration each person must value his or her self, and not to just agree with what the administration says for them to carry out. I believe that MacIntyre does not like the way that the administration system has turned out. He would want