American society for public administration code of ethics

James H. Svara is visiting professor

in the School of Government at the

University of North Carolina and former

professor in the School of Public Affairs at

Arizona State University (ASU). He served

as co-chair (with James Nordin) of the

Working Group to Revise the ASPA Code

of Ethics (2011–13) and chair of the Ad

Hoc Committee on Implementation of the

ASPA Code (2013–14). Support for these

activities was provided by the Lincoln

Center for Applied Ethics at ASU.

E-mail: james.svara@sog.unc.edu

Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration 561

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp. 561–569. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12230.

James H. Svara Arizona State University

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of administration, but the broad fi eld of public administra- tion has had diffi culty articulating clear and meaning- ful standards of behavior and developing a means of upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of special- ized professional associations in public service adopted codes, starting with the International City/County Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960, the full range of public administrators did not have an association to represent them until the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939. Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the fi rst code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994, but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other pro- fessional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical responsibilities to society of all public administrators.

It has long been recognized that ethics is inte-gral to public administration. Although ethical behavior is not always achieved at the individual or organizational level, it is obvious that an essential element of administration is missing when unethical behavior occurs. Still, establishing clear and mean- ingful standards to guide behavior has been diffi cult for the practitioners and scholars who make up the fi eld. Although specialized groups of administrators that organized themselves as professional associa- tions developed codes of ethics, starting with the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) 90 years ago, the profession more gener- ally, as represented by a diverse membership asso- ciation such as the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), was slow in adopting a code of eth- ics. Th is article examines the shifting attitudes about codes of ethics in public administration and the progression of ASPA’s code of ethics as a study of the challenges of developing a set

of enforceable standards for a large and heterogeneous group of practitioners. Understanding the issues and challenges that have infl uenced the development of ethical standards for administrators can contribute to advancing our understanding of ethics and improve the prospects for eff ectively implementing a code of ethics that applies broadly to public service positions.

After calls for establishing a code for the profession of public administration starting in the late 1930s, ASPA—the association created in 1939 with the intention of organizing the fi eld—did not act and was often criticized for its failure to approve a code of eth- ics until its forty-fi fth year. Th e ICMA code of ethics was off ered as an example of what might be created for public administration generally (Mosher 1938), but for decades, scholars and practitioners in public administration generally viewed codes negatively and gave little attention to the study or promotion of ethics (Cooper 1994). ASPA did not take formal actions to advance ethical codes within the fi eld until the 1970s. Th e questions of whether to have a code of ethics and what it should contain have been central to the debate about whether public administration is a profession as opposed to a collection of professions with vague, shared values (Mosher 1968; Pugh 1988).