Twitter sees 2 more top executives depart report jane messe

THE ETHICS CHALLENGE IN PUBLIC SERVICE

A Problem-Solving Guide

SECOND EDITION

Carol W. Lewis Stuart C. Gilman

Y

01_967564 ffirs.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page i

C1.jpg
01_967564 ffirs.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page i

THE ETHICS CHALLENGE IN PUBLIC SERVICE

A Problem-Solving Guide

SECOND EDITION

Carol W. Lewis Stuart C. Gilman

Y

01_967564 ffirs.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page i

Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permis- sion of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permis- sions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201- 748-6008, e-mail: permcoordinator@wiley.com.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986 or fax 317- 572-4002.

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewis, Carol W. (Carol Weiss), 1946-

The ethics challenge in public service : a problem-solving guide / by Carol W. Lewis, Stuart C. Gilman.— 2nd ed.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7879-6756-4 (alk. paper)

1. Civil service ethics—United States. I. Gilman, Stuart. II. Title. JK468.E7L49 2005 172’.2’0973—dc22

2004028269

Printed in the United States of America SECOND EDITION

HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

01_967564 ffirs.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page ii

www.josseybass.com
CONTENTS

Exhibits, Tables, and Figures v

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

The Authors xvii

Introduction: Ethics in Public Service 1

PART ONE: ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF PUBLIC MANAGERS 19

1 What Is Important in Public Service? 21

2 Obeying and Implementing the Law 52

3 Serving the Public Interest 73

4 Taking Individual Responsibility 98

iii

02_967564 ftoc.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page iii

PART TWO: TOOLS FOR PERSONAL DECISION MAKING 119

5 Finding Solid Ground: Ethical Standards and Reasoning 121

6 Resolving Ethical Dilemmas: Strategies and Tactics for Managers 141

7 Understanding Who and What Matters: Stakeholder Analysis 161

PART THREE: ETHICS AND THE ORGANIZATION 183

8 Designing and Implementing Codes 185

9 Broadening the Horizon 220

10 Building an Ethical Agency 235

Afterword: The Job Ahead 269

Resource A: Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service (Work in Process) 272

Resource B: Selected Internet Resources 301

Resource C: Tools for Making Ethical Decisions 313

References 322

Name Index 343

Subject Index 349

iv Contents

02_967564 ftoc.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page iv

EXHIBITS, TABLES, AND FIGURES

Exhibits

I.1. Cutbacks and Priorities 4 I.2. Would I? Should I? 7 1.1. Average Is Not Good Enough 28 1.2. D+P+E=Iii 38 1.3. Values and Standards in Public Service 39 1.4. Waiving the Right to Sue 44 1.5. Earnings Figure into Calculation 48 2.1. Pledge of the Athenian City-State 54 2.2. Federal Appointment Affidavits 55 2.3. To Obey or Not to Obey! 60 2.4. Using the Go/No-Go Decision Model 66 3.1. Pursue the Public Interest 75 3.2. From Bounty to Booty 78 3.3. Read All About It 82 3.4. NYC Conflict-of-Interest Board’s Ethics Guide for Public Servants 84 3.5. From Montgomery County’s Ethics Code 85 3.6. Appearance of Impropriety 86 3.7. Public Works 90 3.8. Audit Decisions Against Four Standards 93

v

02_967564 ftoc.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page v

3.9. Snapshot of the Red Cross 94 4.1. The Tragedy of Mission STS-107 101 4.2. Should the Agency Head Resign? 107 4.3. Improvising a Homeland Defense 108 4.4. Getting the Facts 109 5.1. How Do I Make Ethical Choices? 123 5.2. Tough Call 124 5.3. Everyday Use of Philosophical Perspectives 125 5.4. Ethical Perspectives in Action 127 5.5. Ethical Traditions 128 5.6. Presidential Explanation 133 6.1. Decision-Making Checklist 146 6.2. Doing Public Service 148 6.3. Rank Responsibilities 150 6.4. Use Threshold Test 151 6.5. Ethics Responsibility Statement 156 6.6. Test Ethical Decisions 157 7.1. Stakeholder Diagnostic 165 7.2. Creatively Lead 170 7.3. Drawing the Line 172 7.4. Before You Blow 178 8.1. Code for U.S. Postal Workers, 1829 186 8.2. Workable and Effective Standards of Conduct 194 8.3. State Ethics Standards, 2003 200 8.4. Ethics, Duty, and Freedom of Speech 203 8.5. Excerpt from a Model Municipal Code 207 9.1. Great Britain’s Seven Principles of Public Life, 2001 223 9.2. Article III of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption 225 9.3. OECD’s Ethics Checklist 226 9.4. OECD on Conflict of Interest, 2004 228 9.5. South Africa’s Public Service Commission 230 10.1. Arrogance in the Public Interest 237 10.2. Just Say No 242 10.3. Hardly Neutral 249 10.4. Intervention Techniques for Integrating Ethics into Agency Operations 250 10.5. Rules of Thumb 256 A.1. Values and Vision for the Twenty-First Century 271

vi Exhibits, Tables, and Figures

02_967564 ftoc.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page vi

Tables

5.1. Touching Six Bases 132 5.2. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development 135

Figures

I.1. The Public-Private Continuum 10 1.1. Trust in Government Index, 1958–2002 24 1.2. Confidence and Trust in Government to Handle Problems 26 1.3. Rating on Honesty and Ethical Standards 27 1.4. Role Diagnosis 32 1.5. Ethical Values Are the Core of Personal Integrity 35 1.6. Diagnostic: What Shape Are We In? 41 2.1. Spirit and Challenge of Public Service 57 2.2. Go/No-Go Decision Model 65 5.1. Self-Centered Rationalization Is a Sorry Substitute for Ethical Reasoning 127 6.1. Abbreviated Decision-Making Model 146 6.2. Decision Makers Use a Framework to Sort and Accept Ethical Claims 149 7.1. Expansive Reach of Public Service 163 7.2. Connect the Dots 169 8.1. Different Approaches to Standards of Conduct 187 10.1. Ethics Impact Statement and Process 258

Exhibits, Tables, and Figures vii

02_967564 ftoc.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page vii

To our colleagues and students

03_967564 fbetw.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page viii

PREFACE

Why write a second edition of The Ethics Challenge in Public Service? In his Meta-morphoses, Ovid tells us that “omnia mutantu” (everything changes). Much has changed since this book’s initial publication. Then why not just write a completely new book? Our historical perspective also reminds us that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same). So we opted for writ- ing an update and taking a broader look across time and around the profession and the globe. The breadth of the undertaking, the pace and volume of change, and the value we place on intellectual exchange explain why we decided to collaborate in this effort.

This book’s subject is managing in—not moralizing about—today’s public ser- vice. It is written for professional managers in public agencies, where unprecedented demands for ethical judgment and decisive action resound at increasingly higher deci- bel levels.

Yet there is something about ethics that triggers nostalgia. It seems that people are not what they were. Except for classical music (the golden oldies of rock), ethics is the only subject we know of that sets off a yearning for the old days in young and old, public servants and private citizens alike.

Some argue that World War II was a watershed; after that war, moral decay set in. Others single out the political activists and hippies of the 1960s—beaded and bearded youths who pointed disrespectfully at their parents and political leaders and today symbolize intergenerational conflict, lack of self-discipline, and rejection

ix

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page ix

of community standards. Still others cite the baby boomers—grown into yuppies by the 1980s—who drove Ivan Boesky’s ethic “Greed is good” to its limits and faxed us new national symbols of greed and corruption. Then the century turns, and we dis- cover low ethics in high places: scandals rock boardrooms, bedrooms, Wall Street, and Sunbelt freeways. Along Washington’s Beltway, defense procurement attracts pro- curers, and federal programs fall to the fixers.

Common wisdom has it that a pervasive disillusionment and loss of confidence touch political, economic, and even religious leaders and institutions on America’s Main Street. Bill Moyers (1988, pp. 81–82) captured the perceived change by quoting two well-known sports ethics. The 1920s coached, “It is not that you won or lost but how you played the game.” By the 1960s, the coaching outlook had become “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

Is behavior today better or worse? Is there more corruption in government and society generally? Is moral character—that ingrained sense of right and wrong—a thing of the past? There really is no evidence either way, except through anecdotes, media images, and public opinion polls. More important (and the reason these ques- tions are not confronted with evidence and argument in this book) is that the an- swers are intellectually interesting but practically irrelevant to managers in public service. First, we have no choice but to depend on the moral character of public man- agers and employees. Our whole system is built on the premise that they have good character. Second, to work at all, public managers must work with what is here now. Nostalgia contributes nothing to daily operations; it solves no ethical problems on the job.

We would argue that public service attracts a special breed and that the major- ity of the many millions of practicing and aspiring public managers and employees are well intentioned and do bring good moral character to public service. It is the job itself—the ambiguous, complex, pressured world of public service—that pre- sents special problems for ethical people who want to do the right thing. The job is a site that reinforces moral character and engages adults in a dialogue about ethics where it counts. And count it does, for supervisors, subordinates, colleagues, citizens, tax- payers, people around the world, and generations to come.

Our Approach to the Challenge

Given our purpose of promoting ethical practice and assisting ethical managers in making ethical decisions, we opt for a managerial perspective. The Ethics Challenge in Public Service is designed for managers and is meant to be a shortcut through a mass of information and alternatives. We chose issues according to our assessment of their current and future managerial impact rather than academic coinage or strictly philo- sophical import.

x Preface

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page x

Our method is, first, to link good character with the special values and princi- ples that distinguish public from personal ethics. The spirit of informed individual judgment pervades our arguments, and the same rationalist approach obligates us to provide readers with some explanations of inclusions, omissions, emphases, and bi- ases. We assume the following:

• Public ethics is different from personal ethics. • The dominant values and guiding principles are different. • The burdens are heavier.

Second, we provide practical tools and techniques for resolving workaday dilem- mas at the individual and agency levels. Third, our purpose is to help ethical managers structure the work environment so that it fosters ethical behavior and eases the tran- sition of good intentions into meaningful action in the agency.

The cases included here illustrate problems or are test runs in applied problem solving. They allow readers to practice in private (and at no public cost) until, follow- ing Aristotle, ethics becomes a habit. The cases exercise the two-step by requiring: (1) informed, systematic reasoning and (2) followed by action. The open-ended ques- tions encourage analysis, and other questions force decision making. Some resolutions depend on empathy and imagination. Cases work best when readers alter decision premises and circumstances to double-check ethical judgments or reconcile different philosophical perspectives. The cases, like the book, are driven by democratic processes, for which accommodation is the vehicle and tolerance the grease.

Overview of the Contents

This book offers some tools and techniques that professional public managers can use to meet the demands for making ethical judgments and taking decisive action on the job. In sum, what counts? What is at stake? How can managers ensure ethical survival and professional success? Veterans and rookies alike may wonder now and then, Are both possible? The answer here is an emphatic yes. We argue that ethics and genuine success march together.

The Ethics Challenge in Public Service examines these questions in terms of manage- rial realities and their ethical dimensions, which together shape the book’s structure. The Introduction offers readers a look at ethical issues encountered on the job and in the profession. In Part One, public service ethics is rooted in moral character and anchored in ethical values and principle. Chapter One distinguishes public service ethics from personal morality and shows how contending values and many cross- pressures translate into a personally demanding, ambiguous, complex context for every- day decision making. One of public service’s special ethical claims on the manager is

Preface xi

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page xi

to implement and comply with the law; an elementary decision-making model given in Chapter Two helps decision makers act on legal obligations without devaluing other considerations. The obligation of serving the public interest entails empathy, as well as respect, for future generations and spawns the public service standards regarding conflict of interest, impartiality, and the appearance of impropriety under public scrutiny (Chapter Three). Combined with the idea of individual responsibility, these obligations are converted, in Chapter Four, into general guides to action for managers who work in an organizational context: individual responsibility for decisions and behavior, for what is done and how, and for professional competence. The obligations and action guides are the ethical underpinnings for doing public service.

The earlier chapters expose the problems, conflicts, and claims shouldered by the public manager. Now the task, in Part Two, is to provide tools for reconciling and sort- ing them ethically. In these chapters, we discuss individual managers who make ethi- cal decisions and live with the consequences. Ethical reasoning is grounded in commonsense and different philosophical perspectives that lead to varying outlooks on what is important in particular decisions; experience and political tradition ad- vise impartiality and open-mindedness over ethical extremism (Chapter Five). Using a decision-making model that allows for contending viewpoints and values, managers gear up for fact finding, accommodating, and making selective trade-offs that lead to the informed, principled choices managers must make (Chapter Six). The obligation to avoid doing harm is reconciled with collective action and selective action. Practical tools and techniques for resolving workaday dilemmas help answer questions about what counts (obligations and responsibilities in Chapter Six) and who counts (stake- holders in Chapter Seven). Ethical managers are counted as well, and principled dis- crimination in responding to ethical offenses equips managers to discount trivialities and survive professionally, with integrity intact (Chapter Seven).

Moving from the individual to the organization, Part Three looks at ethics in the agency. Ethics codes and ethics systems—their functions, development, and man- agement—in all their variety, are benchmarks for the current record and forecasts of things to come (Chapter Eight). What can professional public managers learn from the global movement in public service ethics? Chapter Nine offers a glance at col- leagues in other administrative settings so that we may better understand and appre- ciate our own. A look around at the global context is an efficient way to push back boundaries and a useful way to trigger the moral imagination. In Chapter Ten, the su- pervisory function—a central managerial responsibility—turns the spotlight on orga- nizational interaction. In a host of ways, including modeling, the manager shapes ethical conduct and the ethical organization. Supervising employee time is an ongo- ing stress point and demands special care. Workforce diversity, alternate recruitment channels, mixed administrative settings, and collaborative relationships, illustrated by

xii Preface

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page xii

the procurement function, are among the current challenges (Chapter Ten). Chapter Ten argues that routine agency operations set the organization’s ethical tone, and these operations can be structured to support and promote ethical action.

Throughout, The Ethics Challenge in Public Service pays special attention to what lies ahead on the manager’s agenda; with an eye on the future, the Afterword draws to- gether the book’s major themes.

January 2005 Carol W. Lewis Storrs, Connecticut

Stuart C. Gilman Manassas, Virginia

Preface xiii

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page xiii

04_967564 fpref.qxd 2/1/05 1:34 PM Page xiv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Now to the customary IOUs, which are heartfelt. A fitting start is to acknowledgethe many individual and institutional contributors to the first edition. Foremost among these are the University of Connecticut, the American Society for Public Ad- ministration (ASPA), Bayard L. Catron, professor emeritus at George Washington University, and the many practitioners, professors, and students who contributed in so many ways.

The University of Connecticut and the Ethics Resource Center (ERC) supported the second edition with words and resources, and we are grateful for both. The Uni- versity of Connecticut’s Roper Center and its staff provided guidance and survey data; many practitioners in numerous forums, as well as students in academic settings, will- ingly provided feedback on cases and exercises. Brian Baird, a doctoral student in en- gineering at the University of Connecticut and research assistant in the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis, deserves a special salute for his graphics work. As a graduate student in the master’s of public administration program at the University of Connecticut, Jason Guilietti enthusiastically assisted with research. The ERC staff ’s support is much appreciated.

An overview of practices and purposes cannot be written in glorious isolation, off in an ivory tower that is reputedly unaffected by deferred maintenance or other realities. Our deep appreciation is extended to individual managers and academics throughout the country and abroad who responded generously to requests or volun- teered assistance. Government offices on many continents, state and local ethics

xv

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xv

commissions, public interest groups, professional associations, private research groups, consulting firms, and individual authors responded to requests for information or re- search materials. By their very nature, citations note only those contributions ultimately incorporated, but broad assistance nourished the project.

By combining kindness with criticism, the colleagues, friends, and family who read parts of the draft manuscript confirm what we have long suspected: public service is part diplomacy. Bayard L. Catron, Morton J. Tenzer, James R. Heichelbech, George H. Frederickson, Richard Vengroff, Robert Bifulco, Elizabeth Keller, Charles Fox, Alexis Halley, and others offered perceptive comments and valuable suggestions.

It is standard practice among authors who draw on so many resources, contrib- utors, and talents to close with a disclaimer on behalf of others and to take the re- sponsibility for errors, omissions, and choices solely on themselves. Doing so is easy here, simply because it is not a formality but a statement of fact. And with a subject such as ethics, which is open to nuance, bias, opinion, and contention, there are not so many facts that such an important one should be discounted.

xvi Acknowledgments

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xvi

THE AUTHORS

Carol W. Lewis is professor of political science at the University of Connecticut,where she teaches ethics, public budgeting, and public administration. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Cornell, she received her B.A. (1967) degree in government. Her M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees in politics are from Princeton University. Lewis’s teaching and research interests include public budgeting and financial management and ethics in public service.

Lewis has taught in colleges and universities in four states, lectured to scholars and practitioners nationally and internationally, and conducted training programs for public managers in many locales. As consultant or project member, she has worked with the World Bank, International Institute of Administrative Sciences, the U.S. Na- tional Academy of Public Administration, cross-national projects with the U.S. De- partment of Housing and Urban Development, and government agencies at all levels.

Lewis has designed and delivered ethics programs for numerous government agencies, public interest organizations, and professional associations. Examples in- clude the Brookings Institution, Council of State Governments, Connecticut General Assembly, International Personnel Management Association, Government Finance Officers Association, National Association of State Training and Development Di- rectors (regional and state), and other associations in her home and other states.

Writing for professional managers, Lewis has published in Public Manager, the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws’ Guardian, the Government Finance Officers Association’s Government Finance Review, and the International City Management

xvii

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xvii

Association’s Municipal Year Book and Public Management. Her popular publications on ethics include articles in the Hartford Courant. Her numerous scholarly articles have ap- peared in Public Administration Review, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Municipal Finance Journal, Publius, and other journals. She is coeditor of several books and handbooks for prac- titioners and the author of Scruples & Scandals: A Handbook on Public Service Ethics for State and Local Government Officials and Employees in Connecticut (1986).

As a state employee, elected union representative, consultant, trainer, writer, pro- fessor, and former public official in elective office, Lewis confronts many issues ad- dressed in this book firsthand.

Stuart C. Gilman is an independent consultant in Washington, D.C. He is a 1970 gradu- ate of the University of New Orleans and received his M.A. in 1971 and Ph.D. in 1974 in political science from Miami University. He completed postdoctoral work at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Uni- versity of Virginia, and the Senior Managers in Government Program at Harvard University. Gilman taught at Eastern Kentucky University, the University of Richmond, and Saint Louis University. Subsequently, he served as Professor of Ethics and Public Policy at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia. He also held adjunct professorships at Georgetown University and George Washington University.

Appointed the first associate director for education at the U.S. Office of Govern- ment Ethics in 1988, Gilman subsequently served as director of strategic development for the U.S. Treasury’s inspector general for tax and as president of the Ethics Re- source Center. He has been an ethics consultant for state governments and federal agencies and for large corporations and nonprofit organizations, as well as multina- tional organizations such as the World Bank. Gilman has been an ethics consultant for governments as diverse as Egypt, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, and Romania, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Gilman is a recipient of many awards, including the OGE Director’s Award for exemplary work in international anticorruption efforts, and awards for excellence and individual accomplishment from the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.

Gilman has coauthored several books and monographs and contributed to many journals, including Public Integrity, The ANNALS, Public Administration Review, Govern- ment, Law and Public Policy, The Public Manager, the Journal of Public Inquiry, Ethikos, and Practising Manager (Australia).

As an ethics practitioner, Gilman has worked with individuals confronting a va- riety of ethical dilemmas and problems, from line procurement officials to cabinet sec- retaries and from prime ministers to local judges and prosecutors. Experienced as he is in the trenches, he understands how important ethics is to public administrators.

xviii The Authors

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xviii

The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xix

05_967564 flast.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page xx

1

Ethics and genuine professional success go together in the enterprise called publicservice. How? Why? The answers stem from the links between ethics and profes- sionalism in a democracy. So, we begin here by examining the meaning of ethics and professionalism—a few definitions mean we talk the same language. Then we take a hard look at public service’s track record on these matters. (See Resource A for a chronol- ogy of major developments in ethics; Resource B offers readers Internet resources.)

Next, we lay out our own approach to the future by drawing on professional pub- lic service’s tradition, experience, and current agenda. Our approach blends two stan- dard ones: (1) using compliance measures and (2) depending on individual integrity in decision making. We recommend combining the two into a fusion approach (see the compilation of our decision-making tools in Resource C), based on the idea that pub- lic service and public employees will both be better served when management chooses the best of both approaches and uses them to move forward with all deliberate speed.

Now, we set the stage for action with some hard questions from real workaday experience:

• Scuttlebutt has it that the new facility in the state-sponsored industrial park is struc- turally unsound. Maria, the town’s building inspector, mulls over doing and saying nothing because it’s not her job and the town’s tax base certainly could use a boost; besides, she could be wrong.

INTRODUCTION

Ethics in Public Service

Y

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 1

• Learning that an HIV-positive client refuses to tell or protect the partner and being torn in different directions by law, confidentiality, public safety, and compassion, Bill considers quitting or just settling for a serious case of burnout.

• Your coworker’s personal troubles are affecting his work performance. You under- stand that his irritability and unreliability are temporary, stemming from a messy di- vorce. Staying late to help finish his monthly reports, you feel your resentment build, and you wonder whether covering for him is good for the agency and fair to you.

• A town ordinance forbids more than four unrelated people to share common liv- ing quarters. Verifying a neighbor’s complaint on a site visit, you discover a some- what unorthodox domestic setup by otherwise law-abiding adults. Their lifestyle appears to offend the neighbor. After years in the health department, you know or- dinances like these have not stood up in court. Do you start eviction proceedings?

What is the right thing to do? What makes a problem your responsibility, a resolu- tion your obligation? What does the difference between helping someone and not hurting someone mean on the job? What is the right thing to do when the rules push one way and reason or compassion another?

And here is another dilemma:

• The legislature is giving your agency its “fair share”: an across-the-board budget cut. Because you have seen to it that your agency is very efficient, it is hard to ab- sorb a cut like this. As the current fiscal year draws to a close, you confirm that there are unexpended funds in an appropriation account. You remember how your first boss ran up the postage meter to buy some slack at the end of the fiscal year.

Where do loyalties lie? When good management is penalized, should a responsible manager circumvent shortsighted economies to protect the agency, its mission, its employees, and service recipients? If an action is legal, does that make it ethical?

About 15 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force works for the government. Of these 21.5 million workers, 23 percent are employed by state and 64 percent by local governments. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 56 percent (7.7 million) of all local government employees and 46 percent (2.3 million) of all state gov- ernment employees work in elementary, secondary, and higher education. The eco- nomic downturns in the late 1980s and early 2000s hurt government budgets and public programs, including education, across the country.

An earlier fiscal crisis offers a partial glimpse of the impact of budget cutting. A senior human resource manager in New York City’s education headquarters describes her most painful memory. In the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, her division ranked teachers by seniority in their licensed subject, prepared layoff letters, and listened to

2 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 2

pleas and objections. Among the sixteen thousand laid off, there had to be personal tragedies and disrupted lives. The manager said, “I would not have the emotional sta- mina to live through that again” (Berger, 1990, p. B2).

If pain is not a good-bad meter, how do you know that what you are doing is right? “What am I doing, keeping my job and firing operational employees? What is the agency’s purpose, after all?” What is the difference between what is right and what is easy? How do you cope when the job requires dirty work? How do you survive budget-crunch pressures?

The exercise in Exhibit I.1 speaks to the moral content and moral challenge in these types of decisions, and illustrates the power that professional public managers exercise over people’s lives.

Public service, which is crucial to society’s smooth functioning, sometimes calls for watchful if not downright adversarial relations. Government regulators keep an eye on public land, airwaves, health, safety, and more. Contract compliance officers in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) oversee hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Pol- icy analysts connect the dots between legislation and implementation. However, pub- lic service often comes up short on rewards when whistle-blowers sound alarms about waste, fraud, and abuse in government agencies. They may even find their complaints in limbo, as relatively small staffs are swamped by rising workloads. At the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, disclosures increased by almost 50 percent after October 1991, to 555 filings in fiscal 2002. But disclosures don’t necessarily result in action. “It’s like call- ing 911 and being put on hold.” “Hundreds of federal employees risk their careers to blow the whistle, only to find that no one is home to hear it” (Branigan, 2003, p. A4). Some face threats to their career or even their life (Egan, 1990, p. A20). The U.S. De- partment of Health and Human Services’ chief actuary for Medicare costs reported in 2004 that “administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told.” He said “he nearly re- signed in protest because he thought the top Medicare administrator, and perhaps White House officials, were acting against the public interest by withholding information about how much changes to the program would cost” (Goldstein, 2004, p. A1).

If threats and supervisors’ approval are no barometers, how do you know you are right? Who is the client and who are the stakeholders? Why buck the system? How do you decide whether to blow the whistle or keep quiet? How do you know what is in the public interest?

Relentless pressures and the need for quick decisions are routine in public service. Because the choices truly matter for everyone, including the public manager, this book examines dilemmas like these and offers some resolutions.

Introduction 3

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 3

4 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

EXHIBIT I.1. CUTBACKS AND PRIORITIES.

Cutback . . . retrenchment . . . downsizing . . . this technical jargon actually trans- lates into withholding help—someone or something is going to lose help or get less. The challenge is to choose in a way that is (1) ethically principled, (2) legal, (3) polit- ically accountable, (4) publicly and personally defensible, (5) professionally credible and conforming to best practices, and (6) fiscally and managerially prudent.

Problem. An unexpected drop in state revenue dictates taking immediate steps to avoid a deficit. In a strategy session, legislative leadership develops guidelines and asks you, a professional analyst in the nonpartisan office, to use them to rank sev- eral programs and recommend cuts.

Priorities. (Priorities are adapted from a letter of December 4, 1990, from Connecti- cut Office of Policy and Management’s Secretary-designate Wm. J. Cibes, Jr., to agency heads.) These are leadership’s priorities for evaluating programs.

A. Essential to preserve life in long or short term B. Provide for health and safety C. Avoid significant future harm D. Prevent more costly services in future E. Contribute to state’s fiscal health or revenues F. Maintain or enhance quality of life G. Obsolete, duplicative, ineffective (alternatives are available or better)

Step #1. Evaluate policies using priorities A to G. Step #2. Rank policies from critical (5) to worthy (3) to good target for cut (1).

A-G 1–5 (Letters and numbers may be used more than once.) _____ _____ 1. Disaster relief (food, water) for victims’ immediate use _____ _____ 2. Support for water quality inspection teams _____ _____ 3. Computer link to speed processing of vendor and third-party pay-

ments (and avoid charges for late payment) _____ _____ 4. Funding ambulance and rescue services at subsidized charge to

user _____ _____ 5. Scheduled pay increases for government employees _____ _____ 6. Computer security to protect confidentiality of personal records

(client, employee) _____ _____ 7. Serving general obligation bonds _____ _____ 8. Upkeep of parks and recreational areas

1. Assume funding is zero or 100 percent. Select two programs to be cut (from among the programs you ranked “1” or “2”).

# _____ # _____

Reason for choice: Reason for choice:

2. Are you willing to defend these choices publicly?

3. Is something important missing? What else should we think about?

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 4

Introduction 5

The Problem In one form or another, the problem described in the exercise is probably familiar to most public service practitioners. In this example, the task is to recommend im- mediate steps to counter an impending budget shortfall, and targeting programs to eliminate amounts to withdrawing or denying help. Although individuals oppos- ing certain steps mistakenly or cynically may confuse not helping with purposefully doing harm, it is in fact a very different matter. Avoiding doing harm is the custom- ary minimum ethical duty. But it is also true that someone or something is going to lose help or get less of it. The first option illustrates how moral responsibility often is seen as especially forceful and urgent in matters of life and death or acute, immedi- ate need. Disaster relief therefore may be assigned an “A” or “B” and ranked a “5,” meaning that many decision makers will not tolerate this option.

Budgetary measures and fiscal policies through which scarce resources are allo- cated and costs distributed carry significant moral content. They pronounce the moral judgments that are very much a part of the answer to the classic question posed by V. O. Key, Jr.: “On what basis shall it be decided to allocate X dollars to Activity A instead of activity B?” (Key, 1940). While Key opted for an efficiency crite- rion, decision makers working through this exercise may find themselves thinking about the people who would be affected, and how. Can they survive the cut? Are we breaking a law or a promise?

Ethical Analysis of Options The options laid out here speak to ethical issues and claims. The third option of the computer link illustrates how economy so often crowds out efficiency when moral imperatives come into play. Similar reasoning may affect the eighth item, which also carries a substantial future price tag. The third and eighth options, neither in- volving urgent human harm, were routinely the majority choices in numerous pro- grams conducted by the authors with several thousand practitioners in federal, state, and local government and nonprofit organizations.

The eighth and second options raise questions of stewardship—for whom is the professional administrator a fiduciary? Should anyone speak for the voiceless, future stakeholders? Yet, doesn’t this stance dilute immediate democratic respon- siveness and accountability? If someone should act as steward, then who? The eighth option also stands for the familiar choice of deferred maintenance, perhaps made relatively palatable by the arguable proposition that current damage can be undone and the harm is temporary at worst.

The fifth option illustrates two main lines of ethical thought—one based on duty and principles, the other grounded in results or consequences. Because deny- ing the salary increase is not itself life-threatening, it may be preferred by decision makers who value consequences; others, more influenced by principles, may reject the fifth option because of the implied broken promise. (The promise-breaking sug- gests why like choices may trigger a sense of betrayal and moral outrage.)

The seventh choice evokes another promise—implicitly or explicitly sworn—to comply with the law when acting in one’s official capacity. Legal compliance, with constitutional obligations at its core, affects both procedural and substantive re- sponsibilities (Rohr, 1989, and Rosenbloom, 1992). Long-term bonded indebted- ness represents a legally binding commitment but also prompts consideration of intergenerational equity and higher future costs.

The sixth option points to the concern with information integrity and confi- dentiality. Considerations of privacy and confidentiality are especially productive sources of ethical dilemmas (and prohibitions) today because of accelerating tech- nological capacity, but also and more fundamentally because they stand as a first line of defense against using people as objects, or instrumentally. For example,

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 5

Working Definitions

Public sector managers routinely do their jobs, solve problems, and even work some miracles. And they practice ethics besides. Personal, professional, and public expec- tations converge to challenge managers who voice and resolve both routine and emer- gency ethical problems. Ethical action is another part of the job.

Only a few definitions are needed so that we can begin a meaningful, practical di- alogue. First, ethics involves thinking systematically about morals and conduct and mak- ing moral choices about right and wrong (making moral judgments) when faced with ethical dilemmas. Moral choice and moral judgment are explored in Exhibit I.2.

What makes ethics so important to public service is that it goes beyond thought and talk to performance and action. As a guideline for action, ethics draws on what is right and important, or “abstract standards that persist over time and that identify what is right and proper” (Boling and Dempsey, 1981, p. 14). Rooted in the idea of re- sponsibility, ethics implies the willingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions. Ethics also refers to principles of action that implement or promote moral values.

Moral character means having appropriate ethical values and is associated with at- tributes such as honesty and fidelity. Character is a sort of internal gyroscope that helps a person distinguish right from wrong and inhibits wrongdoing. Bringing their moral character to the job, ethical managers do a two-step: (1) they use informed, systematic reasoning and (2) follow it by action.

In sum, the subject of ethics is action based on judgments of right and wrong. Three questions summarize the subject’s pragmatic underpinnings: (1) What counts in public service? (2) What is at stake? and (3) How can managers ensure profes- sional success and ethical survival? Finer distinctions and elegant terminology are avail- able for conceptual clarification, but they threaten to bury the subject in semantics, killing interest, along with utility, for practical managers who are more concerned with deeds than definitions.

6 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Chicago’s ethics ordinance (Chapter 2, 156–070 of municipal code) specifically ad- dresses the issue of confidential information.

No current or former official or employee shall use or disclose, other than in the performance of his official duties and responsibilities, or as may be re- quired by law, confidential information gained in the course of or by reason of his position or employment. For purposes of this section, “confidential in- formation” means any information that may not be obtained pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, as amended.

Reprinted by permission of Marcel Dekker. C. W. Lewis, “Ethics in Public Service.” In J. Rabin, R. Munzenrider, and S. M. Bartell (eds.), Principles and Practices of Public Administration. New York: Marcell Dekker, 2003b.

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 6

Introduction 7

EXHIBIT I.2. WOULD I? SHOULD I?

Begin by reading the four scenarios, and answer each with a yes or no on the chart below. Please be spontaneous, go with your gut feel, and be candid. Then answer the two questions below the table.

1. Driving a government vehicle on the most direct route to a late-morning meet- ing in another town, you pass within a block of a store holding a personal pack- age for you. For efficiency’s sake, do you stop by to pick it up?

2. An irresponsible and disagreeable employee is looking for a job in the private sector. To get rid of this person, do you agree to provide a positive reference?

3. Substantiated charges come to light that the likely appointee to the assistant commissioner position (who has public support and political backing) was de- nied visitation rights because of child abuse a few years ago. Do you advise your new chief to go ahead with the appointment?

4. Through personal business channels, you are privy to information that is not publicly known about a parcel of land your agency is considering for a develop- ment program. The information would save the state a material sum now and big headaches later. Because the public interest is at stake, along with your pro- fessional standing, do you privately tip off the commissioner?

Would I Should I Would others do this? do this? do this?*

1. Do personal errand

2. Write reference

3. Recommend appointment

4. Tip off

*If you think some would, then write in yes. If you don’t think this happens now and again, then write in no.

1. Are your responses the same across each row?

This enterprise demonstrates moral choice—the would-should divide, the heart of good moral character to which most of us are exposed as children. The mama test (what mama would have said) clarifies simple choices between right and wrong.

But adults must make moral judgments when they find themselves between the rock and the hard place of incongruent duties and conflicting claims—the stuff of ethical dilemmas. Unfamiliar situations, organizational and technological im- personality, and professional and public power intensify pressures.

This exercise illustrates that decision making turns on several factors:

• Ethical, legal, and pragmatic considerations • Others’ likely motive • One’s own concern (seriousness of the ethical issue or offense) • Price tag: considerations of career, cost, convenience, competence, com-

mitment, and courage.

2. Does the last column have more yes responses than the other columns?

Write yes or no for each scenario

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 7

8 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Discussion As you work through the cases, you may notice that the problems get tougher and more complicated, until the later cases propel you between that rock and a hard place of incongruent claims and competing ethical ideas.

The first case speaks to the experience that for many government employees, using a government vehicle (because of rules on gifts and travel reimbursements) triggers impatience, annoyance, or even outrage over petty controls. But it is not an ethical dilemma. It is a relatively simple choice between right versus wrong, virtue versus vice. In fact, many statutes and ordinances restrict the use of public resources and expressly prohibit the use of government cars for personal use. Here we are talk- ing price tag that may surface as courage, or career, or cost considerations. Here it is personal convenience. Perhaps because it is relatively trivial—not earth-shattering, not arousing human urgency—it’s been known to happen—probably is happening somewhere at this moment. Apparently using a cost-to-benefit-to-risk ratio precisely the opposite of a scoundrel’s, even ethical people may slip into compromise over seemingly trivial matters.

The first question asks, “Are your responses the same across each row?” Usu- ally, the answer is no. The “Would I?–Should I?” divide captures the heart of good moral character to which most of us are exposed as children, when we learn funda- mental ethical perspectives. Because there’s probably very little anyone can tell you about these choices that you don’t already know, the mama test of disclosure is use- ful for simple moral choices.

How about writing a less-than-candid reference in the second case? Do you think it’s ever done? This case is about evasion, lack of candor, perhaps even decep- tion. It is different from the personal errand because it serves the organization rather than the individual. Some people may try to justify it for that very reason. Writing that reference may be useful, may be pragmatic, but it opposes ethical val- ues such as telling the truth and taking responsibility.

Life in public service is not always so clear-cut and raises the need for ethical judgment when facing ethical dilemmas that involve morally unacceptable options or trade-offs. Four factors sum up the difference between childhood moral lessons and the adult world: ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity, and responsibility. As a re- sult, the would-should choice turns on ethical, legal, and practical concerns, attrib- uted motivation, the weight of the ethical issues or offenses, and the price tag. (For Plato’s classic example, see “Moral Dilemma,” 2001).

The third and fourth cases shove you squarely into that sometimes perplexing adult world. The appointment case illustrates the special responsibilities associated with public service, and how the need for public confidence and trust quickly blurs the line between public and private lives as one becomes professionally more suc- cessful, more powerful, and more visible. In the appointment case, vulnerability takes on a human face and vies with moral repugnance. This is a tough call, and well-intentioned people of moral character may disagree.

The last case presents a painful dilemma in which the decision maker struggles with competing obligations: professionalism faces off against the public interest. What’s the right thing to do in this fourth case? Confusion? Complexity? Precisely. Wrong versus wrong, right versus right, nuance, and judgment are what dilemmas are all about. When it comes to dilemmas, information is especially productive be- cause (1) accountability is so important in a democracy and relies on the honored virtue of truth telling, and (2) because information is a pivotal resource in modern governance. The case suggests that the price tag for either silence or disclosure may

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 8

The Scope of Public Service

Public service is doing and for that reason is better defined by its public mission—what the manager is doing—than by legal statutes or other formal criteria. For our purposes, public service refers to agencies and activities tending toward the public side of the con- tinuum shown in Figure I.1. In actuality, there is no clear division between public and private.

Embracing more than government service alone, public service includes quasi- governmental agencies and the many nonprofit organizations devoted to community services and to the public interest (and often publicly funded, at least in part). The many mixed activities and joint operations, such as public-private partnerships and contractual relationships, turn on working with government and are also oriented toward public service. In the United States, the nonprofit or independent sector en- compasses all organizations that the IRS classifies as 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). “This in- cludes charitable nonprofit organizations; private, family, operating, community, and corporate foundations; and organizations whose primary purpose is advocacy. We call these the organizations of the independent sector” (INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 2004). Almost 6 percent of U.S. organizations are nonprofits. They account for more than 9 percent of paid employees in the United States and more than two-thirds of a tril- lion dollars in annual revenue. Institutionally dominant, health services represent al- most one-half of all U.S. nonprofits (INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 2002).

As a practical matter, there is no autonomous, isolated agency or activity that does not respond to, interact with, or affect those all along the continuum between the public and private sectors. Consider, for example, the following: taxation and corporate decisions; business location and land-use regulation; immigration, government hiring, and the labor pool; Social Security payments and consumer demand; and private producers and government procurement. Most activities, most institutions, and most resources fall between the polar extremes of purely governmental and purely private.

Introduction 9

be quite high. Although ethical decision makers may disagree on what is the right thing to do, the tip-off tactic is offensive because it annuls personal responsibility and voids accountability.

Now take a look at the second question. Does your last column have more yes responses than other columns? The “Would Others?” column translates into the conventional view of ethics as the other person’s problem. People typically express a belief that their own ethical standards are higher than other people’s, so we read- ily anticipate unethical behavior by others. The danger is that, in a search for an excuse for our own unethical conduct, we may slip over the would-should divide and argue “everybody is doing it” or self-defense. Because responsibility is funda- mental to ethics, this is an ethically bankrupt argument.

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 9

FIGURE I.1. THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE CONTINUUM.

Because public service is broader than government service, it may be useful to take a moment to think over the status of your agency. Where is your agency on the continuum? Are you a public manager? Should public service standards and obliga- tions apply to you?

A Special Calling

Given their action orientation, savvy public managers logically ask what the point of all the noise about public service ethics really is. Ideally, the point is to promote ethi- cal practice and support ethical practitioners in public service and, through that, in the larger society. Many people (that includes us) unashamedly believe that this pur- pose underlies most public managers’ choice of profession. Rational managers cer- tainly are not in public service solely or even primarily for the money; other inducements also draw them to the office.

That most public managers work to make a positive difference is a central tenet of public service lore. Their goal is to have an impact on more than their own pock- etbook. This attitude toward their work recalls President Kennedy’s famous line in his 1961 inaugural address: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” For great and small matters, “May I help you?” could be the public service mantra. The motive of wanting to make a dif- ference means that optimism underlies action and progress is a premier purpose. The hard part about working for the best, however, is knowing what “the best” is and then doing it. This is what ethics is all about.

10 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Public Private

midpoint

Use four criteria to position an agency on the continuum: 1. Formal source and nature of authority and accountability 2. Source of funding, including taxes, subsidy, marketplace 3. Function, mission, goal, purpose 4. IRS tax status

The first three criteria are of theoretical significance; the fourth is of practical importance.

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 10

Disabling or Empowering

Although belief in progress is a public service attribute, it does not cast public man- agers in the role of Don Quixote, tilting at imaginary windmills. It does not demand that managers butt futilely against a brick wall. It pays, then, to begin by assessing the situation, that is, finding out what managers actually face.

The profession is animated by the dual potential of ethics to either disable or em- power managers. The concern with ethics has the potential for disabling managers if it is used as a coercive control device, an exploitative tool, a subtle motivational gim- mick, or a public relations scheme. Alternatively, the concern with ethics can empower managers by promoting ethical practices, supporting ethical managers, and reinforc- ing accountability.

For many managers (and for us), the first set of possibilities cries out “Stop!” The second signals a careful “Go!” Either way, ethics is “the new political symbol to change controls over the bureaucracy,” as Vera Vogelsang-Coombs, a state-manager-turned- academic in the mid-West, remarked in August of 1990. Ethics is more accurately seen as a renewal rather than a radical departure from traditional practice. In its early years, professional public administration in the United States had a strongly moralistic dimension that had developed partly in revulsion against the partisan spoils system’s blatant corruption.

Cynics may downgrade ethics, dismissing the whole business as a public relations scheme, an alibi, or a handy tool for attacking opponents. At the other extreme are the idealists who want to push too far, too fast. Their impassioned go-ahead usually fails in public service in the United States. But the pragmatists, who back off and go slowly, are aware that ethics proposals in public management can open the door to ei- ther misuse and abuse or to best practices.

Public Administration’s Track Record

The first step in figuring out how to get there from here is to pinpoint where we are now. A brief review of public service’s experience with ethics helps us understand where we stand now, how we arrived, and what that means. (For more on the devel- opment of public service ethics as an academic field, see Cooper, 2001.)

There are enough elements in management theory to support pragmatists’ cau- tion about administrative ethics. Going back to our theoretical roots, we see that both pre-World War I scientific management and the human relations school of the 1920s and 1930s treated ethical concerns as they did workers: instrumentally, that is, to elicit more productivity. Image, not ethics, was one big difference between the two; the ma- chine vied with the biological organism as the model of a social organization. Chester Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive, published in 1938 on the eve of World War II,

Introduction 11

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 11

provides a much-cited argument for the instrumental approach to ethics for executives, who should “deal effectively with the moral complexities of organizations without being broken by the imposed problems of choice” (Stillman, 1984, p. 478).

The amoral machine won out in the dogma of public administration that domi- nates even today. A presidential committee’s report issued in 1937 epitomized that view and recommended the establishment of the Executive Office of the President (itself to become a powerful institution and a source of ethical and legal problems). The report announced that “real efficiency . . . must be built into the structure of government just as it is built into a piece of machinery” (Brownlow Committee, [1937] 1987, p. 92). That same year, a core statement of classical public administrative theory enthroned a single overriding value by proclaiming efficiency “axiom number one” in administration (Gulick, 1937).

Having settled on the primary value, public administration could ignore issues of choice, values, and ethics. This was simple to do and comfortably in line with the orig- inal posture that neatly removed amoral, technical administration from value-laden politics. The developing social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, and political science also contributed to the temporary triumph of amoral public management. Social science nurtured a dichotomy between facts and values and rejected the latter as unsuitable for scientific study. As a result, the positivists ignored ethics.

Business Backdrop

When ethics was not banished entirely, the instrumental view held sway. This is hardly surprising, considering the fact that business management was the primary source of theories and empirical research. Much was lifted wholesale; efficiency dominated. With respect to business ethics, “A critical ethical obligation . . . is to fulfill this basic busi- ness activity as efficiently as possible” (Rion, 1990, p. 46). The cardinal standard is get- ting the job done; all else is secondary. Initially, business served as the outright model for public administration, and the mantle of the generic management expert was bestowed on business experts. (Max Weber, to whom we owe much of what we know or be- lieve about bureaucracy, judged the distinction between public and private meaning- less for understanding bureaucratic authority.)

A letter from Chester Barnard to Senator Paul Douglas hints at the consequences. Barnard declined for reasons of health and schedule to participate in the 1951 Sen- ate hearings on establishing a governmental ethics commission. He wrote, “I have no consistent and worked-out ideas on this subject although it is one to which I have given a good deal of thought from time to time in connection with my experience both in the Federal Government and in that of New Jersey.”

12 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 12

Measured by talk (codes, conferences, publications, media coverage), ethics is a hot topic in today’s corporate world. The Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco scandals in 2001 pushed it to the fore. Although many corporations already had active ethics pro- grams, government law and regulation are forcing major changes. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission regulations on ethics, and the Federal Sentencing Commission’s Guidelines on Organizational Sentencing have changed the corporate view of ethical responsibilities. Many CEOs now see the purely instrumental view of ethics so dominant throughout the twentieth century as both dangerous and irresponsible.

Business management is not to be faulted for its influence on public management. We—public service professionals and scholars—did it to ourselves. At the inception, Woodrow Wilson (practitioner-scholar par excellence, popularly credited with founding the field of public administration in the United States on his way to becoming presi- dent) firmly grounded professional public service in making government more “busi- nesslike.” Administration, as “government in action” (Wilson, [1887] 1987, p. 11), was formulated largely as a problem of science, technology, or businesslike management. Yet at about the same time, Wilson ([1885] 1956, p. 187) reflected on the value of ethics:

Power and strict accountability for its use are the essential constituents of good govern- ment. A sense of highest responsibility, a dignifying and elevating sense of being trusted, together with a consciousness of being in an official station so conspicuous that no faithful discharge of duty can go unacknowledged and unrewarded and no breach of trust undiscovered and unpunished—these are the influences, the only influences, which foster practical, energetic and trustworthy statesmanship.

Rediscovery of the Ethical Enterprise

The private sector has standards, but that they diverge from public sector standards somehow was overlooked. (The difference is not in underlying ethical values and prin- ciples but in the number of standards, their emphasis and priority, and the degree of fastidious adherence to them.) Whether standards and aspirations are higher or lower is not the issue here; it’s that they are different.

Perhaps this was forgotten in the rush to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit so prominent in American myth. Coming from a business background, public service would take decades to reorient and acknowledge that public and private management are alike “in all unimportant respects” (Allison, 1987). As President Jimmy Carter notes in Why Not the Best? (1976, p. 132),

Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States, or the Declaration of Indepen- dence, or the Bill of Rights, or the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Old

Introduction 13

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 13

Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words “economy” or “effi- ciency.” Not that these words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, patriotism, compassion, love—and many others which describe what human beings ought to be. These are the same words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.

The profession had lost sight of government’s fundamental purpose: making and enforcing normatively driven choices and pursuing selected social, political, and eco- nomic goals. Still a few practitioners and educators expressed ethical concerns. Years ago, Paul Appleby (1951, p. 171) observed that “the genius of democracy is in politics, not in sterilization of politics.”

Yet only now is the profession beginning to air the old philosophical proposition that, ideally, government is ethics institutionalized for pursuing the public good. (A se- nior federal manager quoted Rousseau’s Social Contract on this point, and we hereby pass along his recommendation for required reading.)

Public sector ethics began to emerge as a concern in its own right only after cat- astrophic irrationalities such as two world wars, genocide, and the atom bomb taught us the power of organization; groundbreaking analyses of decision making in orga- nizations by Nobel Prize-winner Herbert Simon (1947) and others taught us its limits. And administrative discretion prospered, thereby relegating the traditional dichotomy between politics and administration to the realm of delusion. At the same time, bu- reaucratic atrocities, misguided efficiencies, errors, and blind spots begged for expla- nation (Adams and Balfour, 1998).

The sociological search led to the “organizational man,” who is socialized and pressured by and for the organization and thus ethically benumbed. (The Holly- wood classic, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, offers some perspective.) The psycho- logical search associated with names such as Skinner, Piaget, and Kohlberg took behaviorism well beyond the human relations school to learning theory and influen- tial theories of cognitive development.

In public service, the search was not for explanations but for solutions, which led to more red tape instead of an ethical resurgence. Exploding responsibilities, growing staffs, and mounting budgets were transforming public agencies. Responses were keyed to classical public administration, with its emphasis on technical and organizational remedies, plus conventional institutional arrangements in the constitutional tradition. Many jurisdictions responded to new challenges by slapping on ever-more-numerous and sophisticated controls to ease the intensifying risk (and sometimes reality) of fraud, waste, and abuse. The accent on controls and oversight diverted attention from people to dollars and from personnel to more readily controllable financial management.

Some would summarize the result for many agencies as a strangulating, dehu- manizing, even less productive work environment. Some would emphasize how we

14 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 14

tied ourselves and our employees in knots and forced ourselves to look for ways around the rules. Although some might argue that more controls led to more integrity among public employees, this is a continuing debate in the public administration community.

Professional Legacy

Today’s ethics revival in public service grows out of these intellectual roots and practi- cal experiences. It also echoes concerns in the broader society. We acknowledge that legitimate government (meaning public management, too) is in fact an ethical enterprise.

What do managers do with this professional legacy in terms of the ethical side of management? Do we just turn our backs, echoing the sentiment of a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses, who remarks, “History . . . is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”? Total rejection sets us up for self-contempt and the urge to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sanctification is the polar extreme, but here we face the dan- ger of mindlessly repeating old mistakes. That leaves a point in between, calibrated by picking and choosing in a pragmatic, reflective way.

Public service’s track record counsels a go but go-slow attitude toward ethics in the workplace. Wariness, instead of paralyzing us, can short-circuit both excessive regula- tions and unbridled expectations. A cautious attitude now can prevent the later repudiation that is inevitable if we set ethics up as the single cure for all managerial ills.

Three Roads to the Future

Public management practice and theory offer two often-opposing routes to the goal of encouraging ethical practice and ethical practitioners in public agencies. These routes encourage different behavior, make use of different vehicles, promote different pur- poses, and lead in different directions. A third path merges the other two and moves public service at slow speed in the direction of moderation and innovation.

The “Low Road” of Compliance

The path of compliance, in the words of the poet, means “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one needs to be good.” A largely proscriptive, coercive, punitive, and even threatening route, this approach to ethics is designed to spur obedience to min- imum standards and legal prohibitions. It is enforced by controls on the job that or- dinarily aim at acceptable levels of risk, not flawless purity. John Rohr (1989, p. 60) calls this the “low road.” It features “adherence to formal rules” and a negative out- look. Along this road, Rohr (p. 63) argues, “Ethical behavior is reduced to staying out of trouble” and the result is “meticulous attention to trivial questions.” The allure

Introduction 15

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 15

of compliance is both explained and mirrored in the words of a U.S. deputy attor- ney general in the U.S. Department of Justice: “In the minds of many Americans, pub- lic service, government officials, politicians, crooks, and criminal activity are inextricably mixed” (Burns, 1987, p. 46).

A compliance perspective monopolizes thinking about ethical behavior in many quarters, including the federal government and many states and localities. Federal training materials for ethics officials and employees deals with behavior exclusively in terms of legally enforceable standards and as legalistic problems to be solved (by reference, for example, to the U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations) rather than ethical dilemmas to be resolved.

In managerial terms, compliance translates into oversight and controls. When it comes to ensuring accountability, these are facts of life in the complex, highly struc- tured, and very powerful organizations we label bureaucracy. Nikolai Gogol’s play “The Inspector General” is a suggestive description of a response to compliance in the field. This nineteenth-century Russian drama opens with a governor, analogous to a polit- ical appointee, announcing the imminent arrival of an inspector! Feeling threatened by impending doom, the governor relates his dream of giant, peculiar rats that sniff and sniff at everything and everyone. Any manager who has undergone an audit prob- ably can relate to his dream.

Realistically, public managers are not about to purge compliance from govern- ment operations. Nor should managers want to. Represented by administrative con- trols and legal sanctions, compliance is fundamental to the way the public’s business is conducted. As guardians of political relationships and political goals, controls are ac- countability implemented. For evidence, look on your desk. Controls are ingrained in bud- geting and personnel—traditional managerial functions.

The U.S. system has been preoccupied with accountability from its inception. Probably the single most important travel reimbursement in U.S. history shows that colonial controls were enforced even in revolution, when the founders were turning their backs on authority in “the first general crisis of authority in American history” (Lipset and Schneider, 1987, p. 2). Even so, Paul Revere duly submitted his bill for printing and “riding for the Committee of Safety” in 1775. The Massachusetts legis- lature approved payment “in full discharge of the written account.” But reimburse- ment was for less than the patriot requested. George Washington’s detailed account of expenses incurred as commander-in-chief (Jotman, 1988) provides more disillusion- ing historical evidence of using controls to implement accountability.

The “High Road” of Integrity

The path of integrity is ethics in the raw. Relying on moral character, this route counts on ethical managers individually to reflect, decide, and act. Integrity is a basic ethical

16 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 16

value, not limited to public service by any means. Ethical behavior draws on appro- priate values and principles, absorbed from upbringing, philosophy, or, in John Rohr’s formulation, regime values as constitutionally derived ethical norms. Individual re- sponsibility is both a starting and an end point on the integrity route in public service. Along the route lie the normative, voluntary, prescriptive, persuasive, and the positive— but no external inducements or penalties.

Because the integrity route is noninstitutional by definition, public agencies show few signs of it. Examples from the field include the credos (mislabeled as codes) adopted by the Government Finance Officers Association, the International Personnel Management Association, and the American Society for Public Administration (GFOA, IPMA, and ASPA, respectively). Relying on persuasion, they cajole members to measure up.

An approach based solely on individual integrity, as upbeat as it sounds, brings its own difficulties. It bypasses unethical behavior entirely and preaches to the believers. When reduced to simplistic do-good exhortation, it overlooks the competing claims that perplex an ethical manager. By neglecting the decision-making environment and focusing exclusively on autonomous moral individuals, the integrity approach sweeps aside organizational and other influences that affect behavior. Given the fact that the organization is an important influence on an individual’s behavior, an exclusive focus on the individual operates at an inappropriate level of analysis. Perhaps more to the point, the integrity route does not seem to have worked all that well, and abuse and corruption persist.

The “Fusion” Road

The low road of compliance does not care that most people want to make good de- cisions but only that most people meet minimum standards of conduct. Integrity’s high road rejects administrative realities that stem from accountability. Both mistakenly re- duce the world to two distinct categories—ethical and unethical—whereas managers actually cope in the gray areas of legitimate-but-competing values, principles, and responsibilities. Neither approach alone accomplishes the purpose of spurring ethical practice and practitioners in public service.

This purpose calls for fusing the two standard approaches and moving on both fronts at once—a bipartisan conclusion reached long ago, often repeated but rarely implemented. So we know what we should do. Now all that’s left is to follow through. To the extent that public service has moved on both fronts, it results more from default than strategy and is more a hodgepodge than a blending.

Public service and public employees would both be well served by management’s merging the best from the compliance and integrity roads. Such a merger fuses forces together to meet energetically the public service purpose stipulated at the start of

Introduction 17

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 17

this introduction. We use a modernistic term on purpose here: fusion. But it implies no explosion. Its futuristic orientation has roots deep in Western (and other) culture, reach- ing back to Aristotle’s golden mean, which defines virtue as the mean of excess and shortfall. In the familiar context of a balanced budget (less familiar, of course, in the federal context than others), the good outcome falls between surplus and deficit; any other outcome signals trouble.

This is the path of moderation, adaptation, and compromise; it works through phased innovation on both compliance and integrity fronts and at a slow pace. William L. Richter (1989) imparts its tone and direction: “Positive ethics means concentrat- ing a little less on what we must prevent—and a little more on what we want to accomplish.” A two-pronged, systematic approach accomplishes that by incorporat- ing both compliance with formal standards and the promotion of individual ethical responsibility.

There is no parade and no intoxicating drumbeat along this road. When public management jumps on the latest management bandwagon, the ancient virtue of temperance is heavily devalued. Ethics demands informed reflection and individual judgment; ethical managers are counted on to make sober decisions. Public service is too important to be swept up in the carnival atmosphere of the hottest fad, where reaching for the golden ring sabotages the golden mean.

18 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

06_967564 intro.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 18

PART ONE

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF PUBLIC MANAGERS

Y

07_967564 pt01.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 19

07_967564 pt01.qxd 2/1/05 1:35 PM Page 20

21

In an examination of ethics and the profession, Part One asserts that ethics and genuine professional success go together in public service. It is the job itself—the ambiguous, complex, pressured world of public service—that presents special prob- lems for people who are committed to doing the public’s work and who want to do the right thing. Facing up to the ethical demands on public managers starts with bit- ing the bullet: public service ethics is different from ethics in private life. The reason is that democracy is sustained by public trust—a link forged by stringent ethical stan- dards. This chapter concludes with a diagnostic exercise and a case study; both serve to clarify the contending values and cross-pressures pressing on everyday judgment calls.

Public managers’ morale, identity, and capacity for decision making and inno- vation are entangled in ethics, and rightly so, because public service is our society’s instrument for managing complexity and interdependency. The concern with ethics and demands on managerial responsibility extend beyond academic halls to govern- ment corridors, public interest groups, and professional associations. Much of the ac- tion in the past thirty years—for example, the race to adopt or tighten ethics codes by many jurisdictions and professional associations—translates into new challenges for the public manager. Public expectations and formal standards today demand that managers undertake sophisticated ethical reasoning and apply rigorous ethical stan- dards to decisions and behavior.

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN PUBLIC SERVICE?

Y

08_967564 ch01.qxd 2/1/05 1:36 PM Page 21

Why Me?

Ethical concerns target public managers for two main reasons. One is that having pub- lic power, authority, and accountability in a democracy means that the public service’s smooth functioning depends on trust. That trust has declined. The second reason is the higher standards earmarked for public service and the public perception of per- vasive shortfall.

Need for Public Confidence

“Public service is a public trust. If there is anything unique about public service, it de- rives from this proposition” (Lewis and Catron, 1996, p. 699). This proposition can be traced back, in the United States at least, to Thomas Jefferson and is the very first pro- vision in the federal Principles of Ethical Conduct for Government Officers and Employees (first issued by executive order in 1989). It can be identified at other times and in other cultures. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2000), with its thirty member countries,

Public service is a public trust. Citizens expect public servants to serve the public interest with fairness and to manage public resources properly on a daily basis. Fair and reliable public services inspire public trust. Public service ethics are a prerequi- site to, and underpin, public trust, and are a keystone of good governance.

The relationship between ethics and trust is so widely presumed that it is written directly into professional codes, law, and regulations at all levels of government. (It is also a fruitful area of current policy research.) Our hunch is that public confidence in government is grounded in ethics, carrying with it broad acceptance of public ac- tivity. An instrumental approach cultivates ethics as politically useful because it makes collective action possible, desirable, and legitimate. According to the INDEPENDENT SECTOR (2004), for example,

As a matter of fundamental principle, the nonprofit and philanthropic community should adhere to the highest ethical standards because it is the right thing to do. As a matter of pragmatic self-interest, the community should do so because public trust in our performance is the bedrock of our legitimacy.

Public agencies rely on trust as the foundation for our ability to govern effectively through the voluntary compliance we in democracies prefer to compulsory obedience. All mainstream segments of the political spectrum in the United States share this

22 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

08_967564 ch01.qxd 2/1/05 1:36 PM Page 22

preference and assume that ethics, trust, and government power are linked. President Ronald Reagan affirmed his faith in this proposition in 1987 by declaring,

The power of the presidency is often thought to reside within this Oval Office, yet it doesn’t rest here. It rests in you, the American people, and in your trust. Your trust is what gives a president his powers of leadership and his personal strength.

Recognized years ago, the “confidence gap” came to symbolize a pervasive ero- sion of confidence in government and public trust of public institutions, paralleling attitudes toward all institutions (Lipset and Schneider, 1987). The public assessment is that perceived wrongdoing plagues society, from Wall Street to Main Street, from acad- emia to the media, and from evangelical tents and churches to popular charities. No segment is immune.

Public confidence started its downturn in the early 1960s. As shown in Figure 1.1, it continued its plunge through the 1970s and the events of Watergate that climaxed in August 1974, when for the first time an incumbent president resigned. The spirit was dubbed “moral malaise” in the Carter administration. The celebrated turnaround in the early years of the Reagan administration was modest compared with the ear- lier, precipitous decline, and ultimately many high-level officials left the Reagan and ensuing administrations under an ethics cloud.

This public attitude (coupled with scandal in places high and low) catapulted ethics into a national concern. National Gallup polls have long asked, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” From April 1990 through April 2004, usually less than 10 percent of respondents have answered with some vari- ant of “ethics/moral/religious/family decline, dishonesty, lack of integrity.” Given the circumstances surrounding presidential impeachment, it is not surprising that responses peaked in excess of 15 percent in 1998 and then returned to their usual level. These data suggest that when the noise of scandal subsides, our attention turns to business as usual, meaning concerns such as jobs, prices, and national security.

Attention to ethics, predictably, is scandal-driven and short-lived. In a national poll, 34 percent of respondents replied “restoring moral and family values” when asked, “Which do you think should be a greater priority for the Bush Administration— maintaining economic growth or restoring moral and family values?” (45 percent re- sponded “maintaining economic growth” and 19 percent “both” [NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, 2001]).