Empowering Public Administrators: Ethics and Public Service Values

Public administrators need to be empowered to make difficult decisions. Acting in the public interest often means doing what is ethical even when it is an unpopular choice. Yet, too often, public servants at the local, state, and federal levels internalize the notion that their hands are tied and that they are limited in their ability to effect change. Empowering Public Administrators: Ethics and Public Service Values provides a much-needed antidote to inaction, offering a new lens for viewing administrative decision-making and behavior. This book makes a case for bringing historically significant theories to the forefront of public service ethics by applying them to a series of current ethical challenges in practice. Exploring administrative discretion as modern bureaucrats govern public affairs in a political context, this collection builds on the normative foundations of public administration and provides readers with a scaffold for understanding and practicing public service values. Questions for discussion and applications to practice are included in each chapter making this collection of interest to public affairs master’s and doctoral students as well as public service practitioners.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Ontology and Epistemology 1. Ethics and Public Service Values: Ontological and Epistemic Frameworks for Study and Practice 2. Autonomy as Public Service 3. Call the Budget Police! How the Public Service Values of Ontology and Epistemology can Support Public Administrators in a Gray Budgeting Environment 4. The ethical voids of the principal agency and stewardship approach Part II: The Public Interest 5. How Public Administrators Empower Themselves 6. Political Polarization, Transcendent Values, and the Urgency of Moral Leadership Among Campus Leaders as Public Administrators 7. The Ethics of Public Employee Disparaging Private Social Media Use, Erosion of Trust and the Advancement of the Public Interest Part III: Bureaucracy in a Democracy 8. Principle Organizational Dissent and Public Service 9. The Influence of Public Service Values on Implementation and Performance: Evidence from the Housing Policy 10. The Institutionalization of Ethics policies and the management of a growing ethics bureaucracy Part IV: Balancing Politics and Administration 11. Balancing Politics and Administration: Dangers of Administrative Discretion 12. Ethical Codes, the Politics-Administration Dichotomy, and Public Financial Managers 13. Discretionary ethics and governing public affairs in jails and prisons: Upholding constitutional rights to health and safety. Part V: The Hollowing of Government 14. Mending the Fragile Credibility of a Hollow State with Storytelling 15. Gaming the System: Ethical Constraints in Implementing Co-production 16. Sports as Mirrors: Athletes and Agenda Setting in a Hollowed-Out State Part VI: Transparency in Reporting 17. Public Service Values and Financial Reporting in U.S. Local Governments: Reconciling Transparency in External Financial Reporting with Political Expectations 18. Transparency in Preserving and Administering Sites of Collective Memory 19. New Public Management Reforms, Ethics Training Programs and Ethical Conduct of Public Servants in Tanzania Conclusion