THE ETHICS CHALLENGE
IN PUBLIC SERVICE
A Problem-Solving Guide
SECOND EDITION
Carol W. Lewis
Stuart C. Gilman
Y

THE ETHICS CHALLENGE
IN PUBLIC SERVICE
A Problem-Solving Guide
SECOND EDITION
Carol W. Lewis
Stuart C. Gilman
Y

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

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

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

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

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

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

To our colleagues and students

PREFACE
Why write a second edition of The Ethics Challenge in Public Service? In his Metamorphoses, 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 writing 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 service. It is written for professional managers in public agencies, where unprecedented
demands for ethical judgment and decisive action resound at increasingly higher decibel 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

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 discover low ethics in high places: scandals rock boardrooms, bedrooms, Wall Street, and
Sunbelt freeways. Along Washington’s Beltway, defense procurement attracts procurers, 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 questions are not confronted with evidence and argument in this book) is that the answers 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 managers 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 majority 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 presents 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, taxpayers, 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 philosophical import.
x Preface

Our method is, first, to link good character with the special values and principles 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 biases. 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 dilemmas 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 transition 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, following 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 questions 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 managerial 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 crosspressures translate into a personally demanding, ambiguous, complex context for everyday decision making. One of public service’s special ethical claims on the manager is
Preface 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 sorting them ethically. In these chapters, we discuss individual managers who make ethical 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 advise 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 (stakeholders in Chapter Seven). Ethical managers are counted as well, and principled discrimination 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 management—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 colleagues in other administrative settings so that we may better understand and appreciate 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 supervisory function—a central managerial responsibility—turns the spotlight on organizational interaction. In a host of ways, including modeling, the manager shapes
ethical conduct and the ethical organization. Supervising employee time is an ongoing stress point and demands special care. Workforce diversity, alternate recruitment
channels, mixed administrative settings, and collaborative relationships, illustrated by
xii Preface

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 together the book’s major themes.
January 2005 Carol W. Lewis
Storrs, Connecticut
Stuart C. Gilman
Manassas, Virginia
Preface xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Now to the customary IOUs, which are heartfelt. A fitting start is to acknowledge
the many individual and institutional contributors to the first edition. Foremost
among these are the University of Connecticut, the American Society for Public Administration (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 University 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, willingly provided feedback on cases and exercises. Brian Baird, a doctoral student in engineering 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 volunteered assistance. Government offices on many continents, state and local ethics
xv

commissions, public interest groups, professional associations, private research groups,
consulting firms, and individual authors responded to requests for information or research 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, contributors, and talents to close with a disclaimer on behalf of others and to take the responsibility 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

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. National Academy of Public Administration, cross-national projects with the U.S. Department 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 include 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 Directors (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

Association’s Municipal Year Book and Public Management. Her popular publications on
ethics include articles in the Hartford Courant. Her numerous scholarly articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Municipal Finance Journal,
Publius, and other journals. She is coeditor of several books and handbooks for practitioners 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, professor, and former public official in elective office, Lewis confronts many issues addressed in this book firsthand.
Stuart C. Gilman is an independent consultant in Washington, D.C. He is a 1970 graduate 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 University 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 Government 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 Resource Center. He has been an ethics consultant for state governments and federal
agencies and for large corporations and nonprofit organizations, as well as multinational 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, Government, 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 variety of ethical dilemmas and problems, from line procurement officials to cabinet secretaries 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

The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1
Ethics and genuine professional success go together in the enterprise called public
service. How? Why? The answers stem from the links between ethics and professionalism 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 chronology 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 public service’s tradition, experience, and current agenda. Our approach blends two standard 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 public 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 structurally 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

• 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 understand that his irritability and unreliability are temporary, stemming from a messy divorce. 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 living quarters. Verifying a neighbor’s complaint on a site visit, you discover a somewhat unorthodox domestic setup by otherwise law-abiding adults. Their lifestyle
appears to offend the neighbor. After years in the health department, you know ordinances 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 resolution 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 absorb 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 government employees work in elementary, secondary, and higher education. The economic 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

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 stamina 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. Policy analysts connect the dots between legislation and implementation. However, public 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 calling 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. Department 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 resigned 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

4 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT I.1. CUTBACKS AND PRIORITIES.
Cutback . . . retrenchment . . . downsizing . . . this technical jargon actually translates 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) politically 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 several programs and recommend cuts.
Priorities. (Priorities are adapted from a letter of December 4, 1990, from Connecticut 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 payments (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?

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 immediate steps to counter an impending budget shortfall, and targeting programs
to eliminate amounts to withdrawing or denying help. Although individuals opposing 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 customary 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, immediate 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 allocated 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 criterion, 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 involving urgent human harm, were routinely the majority choices in numerous programs 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 responsiveness 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 denying 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 suggests 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 responsibilities (Rohr, 1989, and Rosenbloom, 1992). Long-term bonded indebtedness 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 confidentiality. Considerations of privacy and confidentiality are especially productive
sources of ethical dilemmas (and prohibitions) today because of accelerating technological capacity, but also and more fundamentally because they stand as a first
line of defense against using people as objects, or instrumentally. For example,

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 expectations converge to challenge managers who voice and resolve both routine and emergency ethical problems. Ethical action is another part of the job.
Only a few definitions are needed so that we can begin a meaningful, practical dialogue. First, ethics involves thinking systematically about morals and conduct and making 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 responsibility, 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 attributes 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 professional success and ethical survival? Finer distinctions and elegant terminology are available 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 addresses 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 required by law, confidential information gained in the course of or by reason
of his position or employment. For purposes of this section, “confidential information” 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.

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 meeting in another town, you pass within a block of a store holding a personal package 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 denied 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 development 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 professional 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 impersonality, 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, commitment, and courage.
2. Does the last column have more yes responses than the other columns?
Write
yes or no
for each
scenario

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 talking 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?” Usually, 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 fundamental 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 useful 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 deception. 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 values 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 result, the would-should choice turns on ethical, legal, and practical concerns, attributed 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 successful, 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 because (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

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 continuum 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 quasigovernmental 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 encompasses all organizations that the IRS classifies as 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). “This includes 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 trillion dollars in annual revenue. Institutionally dominant, health services represent almost 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 readily 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 fundamental to ethics, this is an ethically bankrupt argument.

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 obligations 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 ethical practice and support ethical practitioners in public service and, through that, in
the larger society. Many people (that includes us) unashamedly believe that this purpose underlies most public managers’ choice of profession. Rational managers certainly 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 pocketbook. 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 difference 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.

Disabling or Empowering
Although belief in progress is a public service attribute, it does not cast public managers 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 empower 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 gimmick, or a public relations scheme. Alternatively, the concern with ethics can empower
managers by promoting ethical practices, supporting ethical managers, and reinforcing 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-turnedacademic 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 either 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 development of public service ethics as an academic field, see Cooper, 2001.)
There are enough elements in management theory to support pragmatists’ caution 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 machine 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

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 dominates 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 original 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 business activity as efficiently as possible” (Rion, 1990, p. 46). The cardinal standard is getting 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 believe about bureaucracy, judged the distinction between public and private meaningless 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 Senate 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

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 programs, 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 president) firmly grounded professional public service in making government more “businesslike.” 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 government. 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 principles 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 Independence, or the Bill of Rights, or the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Old
Introduction 13

Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words “economy” or “efficiency.” 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 economic 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 senior 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 catastrophic irrationalities such as two world wars, genocide, and the atom bomb taught
us the power of organization; groundbreaking analyses of decision making in organizations 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, bureaucratic atrocities, misguided efficiencies, errors, and blind spots begged for explanation (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 Hollywood classic, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, offers some perspective.) The psychological search associated with names such as Skinner, Piaget, and Kohlberg took
behaviorism well beyond the human relations school to learning theory and influential 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, dehumanizing, even less productive work environment. Some would emphasize how we
14 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

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 practical 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 danger 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 regulations 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 purposes, 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 minimum standards and legal prohibitions. It is enforced by controls on the job that ordinarily 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 outlook. 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

of compliance is both explained and mirrored in the words of a U.S. deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice: “In the minds of many Americans, public 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 structured, 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 political 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 probably can relate to his dream.
Realistically, public managers are not about to purge compliance from government operations. Nor should managers want to. Represented by administrative controls 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 accountability implemented. For evidence, look on your desk. Controls are ingrained in budgeting 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 legislature approved payment “in full discharge of the written account.” But reimbursement was for less than the patriot requested. George Washington’s detailed account of
expenses incurred as commander-in-chief (Jotman, 1988) provides more disillusioning 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

value, not limited to public service by any means. Ethical behavior draws on appropriate values and principles, absorbed from upbringing, philosophy, or, in John Rohr’s
formulation, regime values as constitutionally derived ethical norms. Individual responsibility 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 decisions but only that most people meet minimum standards of conduct. Integrity’s high
road rejects administrative realities that stem from accountability. Both mistakenly reduce 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

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, reaching 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 concentrating 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 incorporating 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

PART ONE
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF
PUBLIC MANAGERS
Y

21
I
n 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 problems 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 biting 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 standards. 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 innovation 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 government corridors, public interest groups, and professional associations. Much of the action 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 standards to decisions and behavior.
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN PUBLIC SERVICE?
Y

Why Me?
Ethical concerns target public managers for two main reasons. One is that having public 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 pervasive shortfall.
Need for Public Confidence
“Public service is a public trust. If there is anything unique about public service, it derives 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 provision 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 prerequisite 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 activity. 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

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 erosion 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 academia 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 earlier, 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 variant 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 responded “maintaining economic growth” and 19 percent “both” [NBC News/Wall
Street Journal Poll, 2001]).
Seasoned political veterans habitually moderate their distress by allowing for
the political mileage gained by bemoaning moral deterioration. It is a favorite pastime.
(Every administration since Harry Truman has run, at least in part, on cleaning up the
ethics mess of its predecessor.) Yet even the most cynical among us must admit that
the nationwide, overall decline in trust in government is part and parcel of discussions
What Is Important in Public Service? 23

of contemporary ethics. Low evaluations on ethical dimensions such as honesty
and integrity sounded the alarm as the end of the last century neared (Lipset and
Schneider, 1987). The alarms continue to ring into the twenty-first century.
There simply are not enough hard data to separate the ratings of those in public service from elected officials and those in state and local service from federal and
24 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 1.1. TRUST IN GOVERNMENT INDEX, 1958–2002.
Source: The National Election Studies, Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan. The NES Guide
to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior, Table 5A.5. Internet [http://www.umich.edu/~nes/nesguide/
nesguide.htm] (accessed June 10, 2004).
high
Trust Index is constructed using data from four questions.
Q1: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what
is right — just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?”
Q2: “Would you say the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for
themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all people?”
Q3: “Do you think that people in the government waste a lot of money we pay in taxes, waste
some of it, or don’t waste very much of it?”
Q4: “Do you think that quite a few of the people running the government are (1958-1972: a
little) crooked, not many are, or do you think hardly any of them are crooked (1958-1972
at all)?”
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
52
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
61 45 39 38 29 30 29 27 31 38 47 34 29 29 26 32 34 36 43
low

nonprofit service. (Most available data describe opinions about elected officials but
rarely refer specifically to career professionals.) There is evidence that public confidence is associated with the public’s overall feeling about the state of the nation (Pew
Center for the People and the Press, 1998). In a national survey conducted in 1998,
“Three in four said the country’s values and morals are in serious decline.” Nearly two
in three said they were dissatisfied with the “honesty and standards of behavior of the
people in this country.” The survey also found, “Large majorities of men and women,
Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites, young people and old, the wealthy and the poor sense something has gone terribly wrong with
the country’s moral compass” (Morin and Broder, 1998, p. A1).
Public confidence in and experience with government’s ability to perform and
handle problems are different from its confidence in government when ethics is the
issue. Performance ratings outstrip ratings on ethics (Goodsell, 2004; Pew Center for
the People and the Public, 1998). As a result, the data shown in Figure 1.2 speak to efficiency and competence and are the basis for the following conclusion:
Today, more people trust their state and local governments than trust the government in Washington. But, it was not always that way. Twenty-five years ago people
were more confident in the federal government than in those closer to home. Since
then confidence in Washington has eroded, while faith in state and local government
has actually grown (Pew Center for the People and the Press, 1998).
Because public confidence is believed to be related to public perceptions of ethical practice, energies shift to improving the ethical posture and reputation of public
service in order to increase public trust. Fundamentally, public service is and must be
an ethical enterprise. There is and must be an ethical core to public service. Given the
resources, power, and uneven sharing of benefit and harm in the governmental enterprise, we cannot afford to lose sight of what is right.
Need for Higher Standards
Despite the ballyhoo, public opinion usually judges public service on the whole as no
worse than other segments of society. Of course, there are differences, depending on
the field or function (Pew Center for the People and the Press, 1998; Figure 1.3). Sparse
data indicate that people in public service are usually seen as about average, meaning no worse but also no better than others. The problem is that average is just not
good enough. (See Exhibit 1.1.)
In reality, average is not the public’s, the profession’s, or the public employee’s expectation. Falling short of a higher expectation arouses a sense of ineptitude, even betrayal. Whatever the actual or perceived incidence of either corruption or fairness, the
What Is Important in Public Service? 25

simple fact is that public service is expected to operate on a higher ethical plane than
other, more garden-variety activities. Decades ago, an eminent practitioner-academic
testified at Senate hearings (Appleby, 1951, p. 166):
It is significant, too, that the American people generally seek and expect from the
[g]overnment of the United States higher standards than they expect elsewhere.
And on the whole they do receive from elected and appointed officials generally a
return of extraordinary devotion, even though the weighing of value questions is so
complicated and difficult as to make the judgments reached highly controversial.
Appleby’s words ring true for all of public service.
The Latin word virtu means excellence and summarizes the demands made on those
in public service by public opinion, philosophical tradition, historical experience, and
professional identity. In actuality, as a special endeavor, public service operates on distinctive standards that reflect particular values.
The proposition is this: public officials and employees truly are expected to conform
meticulously to standards higher than those aligned with strictly personal morality
26 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 1.2. CONFIDENCE AND TRUST IN GOVERNMENT
TO HANDLE PROBLEMS.
Source: Pew Center for the People and the Press, “How Americans View Government: Deconstructing Distrust.” 1998. Internet [http://people-press.org]. Percent Responding Great Deal/Fair Amount
7070 63 63 60 81 78 60 63 81 63 78
Federal State Local
1972
1977

or standards associated with the private sector (see Figure 1.3). Both the nobility and
the burden of public service are that it strikes a different chord.
The American political tradition resounds with this refrain. It is sounded in the
well-known words of Thomas Jefferson: “Where a man assumes a public trust, he
should consider himself a public property.” Henry Clay echoed it: “Government is a
trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees
are created for the benefit of the people.”
The interaction of trust, confidence, and governmental integrity is evident in law
and regulation. It is conspicuous in governmental codes across the nation. For example, in Austin, Texas, the human resources Web site [http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/hr/
policy.htm] announces, “Citizens must have complete confidence in the integrity of their public
servants. The aim . . . is to provide guidance to employees on upholding the public trust
through ethical standards and expectations.” The ASPA’s code forges the same link:
“Demonstrate the highest standards in all activities to inspire public confidence and
trust in public service.”
What Is Important in Public Service? 27
FIGURE 1.3. RATING ON HONESTY AND ETHICAL STANDARDS.
Source: Gallup, Nov. 1996, 2002. Data provided courtesy of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research,
University of Connecticut. Internet [http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu/] (accessed Oct. 17, 2003).
1996
Question: “How would you rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these
different fields?” Percent Responding High/Very High
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Congressmen
Policemen
Business Executives

Values in Public Service
Ethical values are beliefs about right and wrong. These yardsticks for ethical behavior
draw on feeling and thinking. Sentiment and reason combine into predispositions or
inclinations to act (Cooper, 1987). But not all values are the same; neither are they necessarily associated with ethical behavior. Some are virtues—the habits of ethical action
embedded in moral character that underlie ethical behavior and translate abstract,
ethical values into customary, observable behavior. Many ancient traditions stress
personal virtue, and Plato wrote of four: courage, wisdom, justice, and moderation.
28 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 1.1. AVERAGE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Data provided courtesy of The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of
Connecticut. Internet [http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu] (accessed June 11, 2004).
2002
“For each of the following, please tell me how you would rate their moral and ethical standards—
as excellent, good, fair, or poor . . . members of the Bush Administration.”
8% Excellent
38 Good
34 Fair
17 Poor
3 Not sure
Source: Time/CNN/Harris, 2002
1992
“How would you rate the moral and ethical standards of most . . . members of the Bush
administration . . . excellent, good, fair, or poor?”
2% Excellent
27 Good
48 Fair
22 Poor
1 Not sure
Source: Harris, 1992
1988
“Do you think the moral and ethical standards of the Reagan Administration are higher than
those of other recent administrations, lower, or about the same?”
17% Higher
23 Lower
56 About the same
4 Not sure
Source: NBC News/Wall Street Journal, 1988

In Buddhist teachings, “Good men and bad men differ from each other in their
natures. . . . Wise men are sensitive to right and wrong” (Bukkyo Dendo, Kyokai, 1987,
p. 264). In Exodus 18:21, when Moses sets about forming his administrative hierarchy
for the tribes of Israel newly liberated from slavery, his father-in-law, Jethro, advises
him to “provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers.”
Because not all values are ethical values, contemporary observers of the managerial scene draw up their own lists of requisite values and virtues. Some relate to
modern business management, others more directly to democratic ideals. Among those
drawn upon in this book, Laura Nash (1981, 1990) and Michael Rion (1990) figure
among the former; John Rohr (1989), Michael Josephson (1989), Josephson Institute
(1990), and Terry Cooper (1987) are among the latter. Also in the democratic mode,
Stephen Bailey—an influential figure in public administration—selected optimism,
courage, and “fairness tempered by charity” (1964, p. 236).
The point is that in public service, particular values are of special concern. They
are part of the answer to the question, “Why me?” These values support principles of
action that distinguish public service from other endeavors.
Why not select a single roster of ethical values? A list—plain-dealing and direct—
would be more compelling and maybe even more appealing. The answer lies in what
ethics itself is all about:
• Ethical action is reflective; it is based on thought and reason.
• Ethical action is principled; it draws on sound values.
• Ethical action means making normative judgments, and that means choice.
For Adults Only
The hallmark of adulthood is the capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity. Not necessarily liking it, mind you. Just tolerating it. This is the decisionmaking context of public service, and it demands ethics, maturity, a solid sense of self,
and a receptive frame of mind.
Competing Ethical Claims
Rival claims devour a public manager’s time, attention, and loyalties. Competing obligations in modern life pull everyone in different directions, while physical mobility
disrupts ties that, once upon a time, lasted a lifetime. Ask the city manager or field
agent whose career requires periodic relocation. Ask a ranger for the National Park
Service who gets transferred from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty. The Internet, fax machines, cellular phones, and other technological comforts let competing
What Is Important in Public Service? 29

calls invade every arena, every moment. These demands fragment thinking and can
even shatter an undisciplined manager who exercises no selectivity.
Discriminating discipline is imposed by the manager’s priorities; they specify what
is important to attend to, and when. Choices among priorities and responsibilities are
made with an eye to roles—the sources of operative ethical responsibilities—that define one’s own behavior and that of others in different circumstances. The demand to
play multiple roles causes many of the pressures associated with contemporary public service. By contrast, the acknowledged driver in business is the “bottom line.” A
business either makes a profit or it doesn’t. The public sector’s multiple “bottom lines”
are far harder to measure than profit. The reality is that “the end of the governmentcentered public service and the rise of a multisectored service to replace it” has made
the public sector’s new reality even more complicated (Light, 1999, p. 1).
Different perspectives stress different concepts and responsibilities, but all envelop
numerous and varied roles and responsibilities. For example, Dwight Waldo (1981, pp.
104–106) encompasses just about all of them in his unranked catalogue of twelve
spheres of ethical claims on the public servant: the constitution; the law; nation; country, or people; democracy; organization-bureaucratic norms; profession and professionalism; family and friends; self; middle-range collectivities such as class, party, race,
union, interest group, and church; public interest or general welfare; humanity, world,
or future; and religion or God.
This is a lot to absorb all at once, and an analytic handle may be useful. Michael
Harmon’s “theory of countervailing responsibility” organizes opposing aspects of administrative responsibility into three types: the political, professional, and personal.
“Action that is deemed correct from the standpoint of one meaning might very well
be incorrect or irresponsible from the standpoint of another” (1990, p. 154); therefore,
tension is built into administrative life. Harmon (p. 157) defines each type:
Political Responsibility: “Action that is accountable to or consistent with objectives
or standards of conduct mandated by political or hierarchical authority.”
Professional Responsibility: “Action that is informed by professional expertise,
standards of ethical conduct, and by experience rooted in agency history and
traditions.”
Personal Responsibility: “Action that is informed by self-reflexive understanding;
and emerges from a context of authentic relationships wherein personal commitments are regarded as valid bases for moral action.”
Competing claims and interests are inevitable once the public service role is defined as distinct and different from other roles. The distinction—the separation itself—
is what induces conflict. As the National Municipal League points out, “Having a
conflict is not, in and of itself, evil, wrong or even unusual. Conflicts may be ethnic,
30 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

cultural, emotional, nostalgic, regional, financial or philosophical” (Weimer, 1990,
p. 16). This realistic perspective suggests that we also take just as realistic a look at multifaceted public managers who inhabit a rich, complex environment and enjoy job,
family, friends, community, and other attachments.
The Ethical Claims of Five Different Roles
Figure 1.4 shows the five primary clusters of roles with which managers cope. A role
defines the capacity in which the public manager is acting and the behavior suitable
to it. Each role signals different bundles of concerns, values, and standards of behavior; each is marked by a mix of ethical claims, or duties. Some duties are responsibilities, meaning self-imposed, voluntary, and informal; others are obligations: formal,
externally imposed, and legally or otherwise sanctioned. The fact that both types of
claims confront managers invokes the distinction between legality and ethicality, which
is explored in the next chapter. (By contrast, Cooper [1990, p. 60] distinguishes obligation as responsibility for a task or goal from accountability as responsibility to someone.) Responsibilities tend to be broad, even diffuse; obligations, if only for enforcement
purposes, tend to be narrow and clearly defined.
The personal role involves self, family, personal beliefs, and community affinity
and is the stuff of daily life and emotional bonds. Although its ethical claims are selfimposed, they are still typically compelling. Sometimes this personal role is conceived
as an arena protected from intrusion, regulation, or scrutiny and thereby is confused
with “the private” and privacy. This confusion breeds misunderstandings about role
boundaries (which we examine in Chapter Three). To illustrate, President Chester A.
Arthur is quoted as saying, “I may be president, but my private life is nobody’s damned
business” (Hochschild, 1998, p. 76). Although many Americans value privacy and stress
the informal responsibilities associated with the personal role, the equation of personal
and private simply does not hold up either historically or contemporarily. Individual,
familial, and community obligations have long been written into law and backed by
serious sanctions, from the ancient Code of Hammurabi and the Book of Leviticus
through today’s inheritance, divorce, child abuse, right-to-die, and other laws.
By comparison, the bundle of claims evoked by one’s part in humanity is more
abstract, by definition more inclusive, usually self-generated, and often less forceful.
Figure 1.4 shows the reach or scope of duties as inversely related to their priority
and depicts the typical pattern of behavior: the more immediate and personal claims
are more compelling (or salient to behavior).
This line of reasoning emphasizes the distinction between the formal obligations
imposed by virtue of working in public service and the responsibilities customarily
associated with roles outside the profession, agency, or jurisdiction. This emphasis is
important because of the cross-pressures induced by the many and often complex roles
public managers play in their daily and professional lives. Figure 1.4 depicts public
What Is Important in Public Service? 31

service as potentially including all but the personal domain—a core distinction discussed in Chapter Three.
A public service role often invokes legal obligations, in the sense that minimum
claims are explicitly specified in written rules and enforced through legal provisions
and penalties. Commonly formalized through accountability mechanisms, serving the
public interest and legal compliance are central, recurring, but by no means the only
ethical claims in public service. Some professional associations, such as the ICMA and
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, self-police members’ adherence
to formal obligations; other associations, such as ASPA and the GFOA, reject
32 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 1.4. ROLE DIAGNOSIS.
Graphic courtesy of Brian Baird, doctoral student in engineering at the University of Connecticut and
research assistant in the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
Personal, Family,
Community
Public
Service
• Begin by assessing the roles you play and the seriousness of competing ethical claims.
A role defines the capacity in which one is acting and the behavior befitting it.
• No simplistic trump, please; while there may be strong reasons for opting for one role
over another, they need not be ethical reasons.
Professional,
Work ID
Agency, Job
Jurisdiction,
Citizen
Humanity,
Sustainability,
Legacy
(11 pt)
Duties
Roles
Priority
Reach
Responsibility
Self-imposed, informal,
voluntary
Obligation
Externally imposed,
formal, sanctioned

enforcement while articulating relatively broad obligations. The current trend in public service, as discussed in the Introduction, is toward transforming responsibilities into
obligations and obligations into legal requirements through the adoption of enforceable standards of conduct.
Given the differences between public service and other roles, as well as among
ethical claims, conflicts are bound to provoke pressure at times. Each of the five primary role clusters has numerous facets, and all five are interrelated, sometimes directly;
other times they are filtered or mediated through intervening claims. For example, accountability as a formal obligation imposed by the jurisdiction is related to the “appearance” standard of professional public service; asking whether a manager would
be comfortable explaining a decision to family members (see the end of Chapter Three)
calls on family claims as a support.
Following the trail to its primary source is an instructive exercise for understanding and meeting different claims. For this reason, Figure 1.4 can serve as a tool for role
diagnosis. The many different parts we play in our daily lives create many responsibilities and obligations; cases in point include parent, spouse, friend, neighbor, patriot,
and professional and public servant. These sometimes conflict. For example, did you
ever have to be in two places at the same time?
A public servant is a fiduciary or temporary steward of public power, resources, and
trust. Although public leaders cannot reasonably be required to abandon other relationships and affiliations, they nonetheless are obliged not to use public positions to
serve their personal role. This is what conflict of interest is all about. For example,
being a parent does not make nepotism right; owning a business does not wipe out
obligations to the town. The separation of public from personal life in modern organizations reinforces a central ethical duty to avoid conflict of interest that injures or
appears to undercut independent, impartial, objective judgment. (The positive version
of this is serve the public interest, which is discussed in Chapter Three.)
Role diagnosis stands guard against conflict of interest. This tool asks, “What hat
am I wearing” and “What are my obligations?” It is a good first cut into a dilemma.
But beware! Role diagnosis is too crude to be used alone. Ethical problems are not
solved by a simple-minded winner-takes-all approach. One role may not automatically
and thoughtlessly cancel all others without seriously damaging them. (See by way of
illustration the case, “The Contract,” in Chapter Four.)
Getting It Together
Evidence of the strains caused by vying and often incongruent claims is all around us,
especially when it comes to family. Sura IV of the Koran (iv. 1–14) opens with an
appeal to the unity of mankind and respect for mutual rights; it goes on to speak of
sacred family relationships and their implications for rights, property, and inheritance.
What Is Important in Public Service? 33

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of
the United Nations on December 10, 1948, as “a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations” identifies rights and responsibilities on many levels, including the individual, family, community, society, state, and humanity. According to
Article 16(3), “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is
entitled to protection by society and the State.” Clashes are predictable with Article
29(l), which declares, “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free
and full development of his personality is possible.”
Almost forty years ago, Kenneth Boulding (quoted in Boling and Dempsey, 1981,
p. 13) charged that our ethical thinking lags behind social realities. “We are still . . .
thinking in terms of a society in which organizations are rather small and weak, and
in which the family is the dominant institution.” Although the family remains a forceful institution in the United States, extended families, tribes, and even nuclear families
are no longer the sole or even dominant relationship in which one lives one’s full life.
The market economy, physical mobility, geriatric medicine, and many other developments have seen to that. Other institutions, relationships, and roles exert a strong pull
on the modern manager, who must either find a way through the maze of competing
claims and loyalties or be immobilized.
Override
Fixing exclusively on a single value or role-generated ethical claim is a simple way out
but may do serious damage to excluded contenders. “It is unusual that one value or
duty obviously ‘trumps’ another” (Kernaghan and Langford, 1990, p. 30). The tragic
tale of Pavlik Morozov, one-time hero of Soviet communism, illustrates the friction
between family and public service obligations and between abstract justice and personal compassion. As a youth, Pavlik denounced his father for aiding kulaks when the
Stalinist regime of the early 1930s considered it treason to help these rich peasants.
They were blamed for Pavlik’s murder after he informed on his father and testified
against him in court. Pavlik’s example became a fable by which to teach children an
overriding devotion to law and society.
However, over time the moral changed, and the assault on family allegiance
lessened. Although Pavlik’s story now is more a cautionary model of ordinary virtues
that are unobjectionable even to a Boy Scout, the original version had betrayal distorting relationships and loyalties. Sacrificing individuals to overriding abstract concepts and all values to the public good contributed to developments like the infamous
gulags (labor camps) and, according to a Soviet historian, to “deep psychological
and moral deformation” (Barringer, 1988, p. Al).
This story warns of the danger of justifying an action in the name of a greater good
or higher authority rather than taking action for the sake of that purpose. The first invokes
34 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

authority in order to empower the doer and fails to distinguish the deed done from the
good being sought. The second pursues the good by exercising its spirit. Doing your
duty with public power behind you is heady enough.
Personal Integrity
The tensions aroused by competing ethical claims jeopardize personal integrity, that
is, keeping oneself integrated and whole, in balance, and ethically sincere. The cartoon shown in Figure 1.5 makes the point that the core of personal integrity is ethical
values, not self-indulgence.
Supporting authentic, unbiased convictions—holding the high ground—is a measure of a manager’s administrative skill (Appleby, in Bailey, 1964, p. 237). In President
Kennedy’s pointed formulation, people of integrity “never ran out on either the
principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them . . . whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of
our sacred trust” (quoted in Richter, Burke, and Doig, 1990, p. 291). A manual for
local administrators-magistrates in seventeenth-century China advises, “An official’s
first consideration is maintaining his integrity” (Huang Lie-Hung, 1984, p. 141).
J. Patrick Dobel (1990, p. 355) offers an inclusive view of ethical integrity that suits
managerial realities in public service. “The ideal of personal integrity describes a condition where individuals can hold multiple realms of judgment in tension while keeping some coherence in their actions and lives.” Integrity is more like a web than a
hierarchical structure, which is “too static and rigid to account for the way individuals live their lives and keep moral coherence” (Dobel, 1990, p. 355).
What Is Important in Public Service? 35
FIGURE 1.5. ETHICAL VALUES ARE THE CORE OF PERSONAL INTEGRITY.
© 1985, Washington Post Writer’s Group. Reprinted with permission.

In a national poll, 57 percent of the respondents disagreed strongly or somewhat
with the statement, “The world is always changing and we should adjust our morals
and values to those changes.” Fully 70 percent agreed strongly or somewhat that, “We
should be more tolerant of people who choose to live according to their own moral
standards even if we think they are wrong” (Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation/Harvard University, 1998). These responses reflect the widespread recognition that integrity requires neither uniform nor static perspectives.
Finally, we are left with ambiguity and choice, which is precisely the point of ethics.
Normative rules of ethics help us make choices that demand the exercise of judgment.
Mapping Ethical Obligations
Professional public administration in the United States is more than a century old, and
over that time it has adapted to new demands, adjusted to new truths (social, economic,
organizational, and technological), and absorbed new values. By way of example, turn
to the U.S. Constitution and compare the dissonant definitions of what is fair in the
Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection clause) and the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax). In the former, fair means treating everyone identically, but in the latter, it
had come to mean treating people in different circumstances differently.
Today public service is an amalgam of often-discordant values and the action
principles they underwrite. All operate at the same time and in tension with one another. Because managers—and services and policies—cannot and should not swing
like a pendulum from one to the other, managers daily find themselves reconciling the
values and balancing the claims.
Ethics, Democracy, and Professionalism
A public position itself is ethically neutral—used for good or bad, right or wrong—
until people use it or, rather, abuse it for something other than solving “people problems” and meeting the mission. To the question, What is important to an ethical public
manager? we propose three core answers: (1) ethics, (2) democracy, and (3) professionalism. These combine to protect and promote individual and institutional integrity.
Exhibit 1.3 lists the many values and virtues associated with each.
Of course, let us not use the formula to misdirect us into rigidity. The point here
is to reflect on the many demands made on public managers, not to fix them in place
once and for all time for all of public service. In fact, the many alternatives invite
you to add your own preferences, delete ours, or shift choices to other categories.
Among the alternatives is the OECD’s roster of values. “All OECD countries publish a set of core values for guiding their public servants in daily operations, and they
36 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

draw these values from the same substantial sources, namely social norms, democratic principles and professional ethos” (Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development, 2000). The eight most frequently cited core values for public service
in the OECD countries were, in numbers of countries: impartiality (24), legality
(22), integrity (18), transparency (14), efficiency (14), equality (11), responsibility (11),
and justice (10). Another option is the list of values approved by the INDEPENDENT
SECTOR in January 2004. These include the following:
• Commitment to the public good
• Accountability to the public
• Commitment beyond the law
• Respect for the worth and dignity of individuals
• Inclusiveness and social justice
• Respect for pluralism and diversity
• Transparency, integrity, and honesty
• Responsible stewardship of resources
• Commitment to excellence and to maintaining the public trust
Why do we incorporate democracy in this formulation of public service ethics?
Because democracy is the operational framework for public service in the United
States. Democracy calls on the values of impartiality, justice, the rule of law, liberty,
equality, and human dignity. It also points to the importance of accountability and
transparency. ASPA’s code urges, “Recognize and support the public’s right to know
the public’s business” and “Promote constitutional principles of equality, fairness, representativeness, responsiveness and due process in protecting citizens’ rights.”
Professionalism is also part of the answer because credentials and expert knowledge are so important in modern life and to our image of who we are. How many of
us think of ourselves as a professional in one walk of life or another? Does anyone
we know admit to setting the personal goal of acting unprofessionally? Professionalism
calls on the values of excellence, quality, competence, and merit.
What is ethics that it checks self-serving or arbitrary behavior and substitutes
instead so many obligations? Ethics is about having an independent place to stand.
It is the capacity for making systematic, reasoned judgments about right and wrong
and to take responsibility for these judgments. Ethics is about decisive action; it is no
armchair activity. But it is a special kind of action, rooted in moral values and principles expressing what is right and important—values and virtues like justice, compassion, honesty, loyalty, and even old-fashioned ones such as humility, temperance,
and prudence. Ethics is action that you can defend publicly and comfortably, and
the action should be something you and the community can live with.
Because (as the Introduction’s cutback exercise illustrates and Chapter Two
argues), public service is about power. It is also about survival. The key to the ethical
What Is Important in Public Service? 37

professional’s survival is personal integrity, that is, taking a sincere and principled ethical stand. Integrity is important for its own sake, yes! But it is important also because it is necessary as a building block of public confidence and trust in a democracy.
And a public servant’s own integrity is one of the few things he or she can take away
from the halls of public service and into “civilian” life.
So now we have the formula shown in Exhibit 1.2: D+P+E=Iii (institutional and
individual).
Here are so many values and principles, and they surely lead responsible leaders
to different conclusions and contradictory actions. That is what a dilemma is all about.
The burden and beauty of ethics is that there is no user-friendly computer program
to substitute for personal judgment and responsibility.
So the bottom line is clear. For public managers, the formula means exercising public power as a temporary trust, without privilege, and with an eye on personal and organizational integrity. This power is cut off from personal benefits and perks so that
public interest dominates. (The next two chapters develop this line of reasoning further.)
A Diagnostic
A roadmap, or diagnostic, is helpful in laying out the numerous, often competing
values, standards, and obligations cluttering modern public service and tugging at its
members. Exhibit 1.3 and Figure 1.6 impart a sense of what is right and important to
us and how that fits into public service generally.
38 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 1.2. D+P+E=Iii
DEMOCRACY
Justice, impartiality, truth (accountability, disclosure), liberty, equity, citizenship (informed
participation), responsiveness, transparency, accessibility
PROFESSIONALISM
Merit, impartiality, competence, quality, self-awareness, self-understanding, esteem (honor,
reputation), responsibility (self-policing)
ETHICS
Values and virtues, principles and duties, judgment and responsibility
INTEGRITY (individual and institutional)
Authentic, sincere, genuine, sense of being whole and intact
+
+

These values and obligations are classified in Exhibit 1.3 into four multidimensional arenas. Each is illustrated by a single dimension depicted as a continuum with
the extremes identified. Overlaid on an ambiguous and untidy world, this map is not
a universal taxonomy. (We want to be the first to observe that the categories are neither discrete nor comprehensive; classification in particular applications may be problematic.) We oversimplify here for the sake of clarification.
The arenas include (1) types of values and standards, capturing the manager’s
and government’s goals and illustrated by a democracy-productivity continuum; (2)
the manager’s worldview or units of analysis, with an illustrative continuum running
from the general to the individual; (3) a justice-compassion continuum that illustrates the arena focusing on how people are treated and the manager’s preferred means,
and (4) the manager’s own conduct, as shown on a public service–personal continuum
that identifies the primary role that generates dominant obligations.
What Is Important in Public Service? 39
EXHIBIT 1.3. VALUES AND STANDARDS IN PUBLIC SERVICE.
Each of the four arenas listed below is multidimensional and illustrated by a single selected dimension
depicted as a continuum with extremes identified.
What counts? Types of Values and Standards
PRODUCTIVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DEMOCRACY
“Hard,” economy, “Soft,” accountability,
efficiency, competence, representativeness,
expertise, merit, citizen access, policy advocacy,
Hamiltonian bureaucracy, Jeffersonian bureaucracy,
technical implementation volunteerism, public demand
Counting others? How Individuals Are Treated
JUSTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . COMPASSION
Uniformity, standardization, rules, Responsiveness, equity,
neutrality, stability, precedent, circumstances, flexibility,
14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution 16th Amendment
Units of Analysis for Identifying
Who counts? and Ranking Interests/Stakes
GENERAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . INDIVIDUAL
Rights, overarching public good, Liberty, client claims,
cost-benefit analysis, majority interest,
allocational issues, distributional issues,
future generations, global ecology private property, privacy
Counting source? Primary Role Generating Obligations
PUBLIC SERVICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . INDIVIDUAL
Law, public interest, Self-interest,
regulations, chain of command career, family

The map points to many different issues and values. That is its purpose. Efficiency
is an enduring core value in public administration; social equity was added later. After
suffering some depreciation, values associated with compassion were condoned rhetorically by President George H. W. Bush in his inaugural address on January 20, 1989,
when he identified the national purpose as “to make kinder the face of the Nation and
gentler the face of the world.”
Used to organize and make sense of the many different managerial and democratic values mentioned earlier in this chapter, Exhibit 1.3 and Figures 1.4 and 1.6 help
us translate abstractions into meaningful, realistic guidelines for public management.
(For example, Rion’s “avoid harm” principle emerges from humanity as a source of
ethical claims in the Role Diagnosis graphic by Brian Baird; Josephson’s “excellence”
relates to Exhibit 1.3’s first category (Productivity). Together, these can be used to probe
any proposed litany of public service values and standards.
In this way, we accept public administration’s messy inclusiveness and the sundry
values that push and pull on public managers. (See the case concluding this chapter
for an example of all this in play.) The end-point on each continuum represents legitimate, authoritative positions, but each derives its meaning in actual practice from
its position in tension with the other end-point on the continuum. Practical conflicts
such as between rights and liberties or freedom and justice are familiar examples built
directly into modern democratic political systems.
“The questions that now urgently confront us are as old as the Republic itself.
How can we maintain a government structure and administrative system that reconcile liberty with justice and institutional and personal freedom with the general welfare?” (Seidman and Gilmour, 1986, p. 29).
The many values are modified by contending values on the same continuum.
“Only from the clash of opposites, contraries, extremes, and poles can come from the
accommodations that are themselves American public service ethics” (Chandler, 1989a,
p. 613).
The four arenas in Exhibit 1.3 depict not an either-or choice but efforts to moderate the extremes and reconcile different value dimensions. This reconciliation is at
the heart of ethical decision making in public service because a complete rejection
of other values on the continuum distorts a democratic polity. Pavlik’s story warns
against a pathological goal displacement that exaggerates solitary values and excludes
all other points on the continuum.
Figure 1.6 uses the four continua for a quick diagram of strengths, weaknesses,
deficiencies, and excesses. (Dwight Waldo called for mapping public service values in
1981 in The Enterprise of Public Administration.) The method here begins with laying
out the four continua on a circle. The next step is to identify the approximate location
on each continuum that best describes the actual or preferred position, as we see it.
The third and last step is to connect the points and show the diamond pattern.
40 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

This is an exploratory device, and public service, not personal values, is the object
of exploration. Figure 1.6 shows four sets of values and standards of behavior:
What Is Important in Public Service? 41
FIGURE 1.6. DIAGNOSTIC: WHAT SHAPE ARE WE IN?
Initial Map
J
S
C
L
G DP I
Traditional Public Administration
J
S
C
L
G DP I
“New” Public Administration
J
S
C
L
G DP I
Your Agency’s Pattern
J
S
C
L
G DP I
Mapping Public Service Ethics
Step 1: Use four continua of values and standards in Figure 1.6.
Step 2: Locate approximate point on each continuum for best fit or description.
Step 3: Use straight lines to connect points and show pattern.
P — D (Productivity Democracy) G — I (General Individual)
J — C ( Justice Compassion) S — L (Public Service Personal)

1. Types: captures the leader’s and the government’s goals, illustrated by democracyproductivity
2. Public manager’s worldview or units of analysis, illustrated by continuum from
general to the individual
3. A justice-compassion continuum that puts the focus on how people are treated and
the leader’s preferred means and style
4. The manager’s own conduct, as shown on a public service-personal continuum
that identifies the primary role that generates dominant duties
The map points to many different issues and values; that is its purpose. It helps us
accept public service’s messy inclusiveness and ambiguity and see that we move along
a continuum. The mapping is designed for a quick diagnosis of strengths, weaknesses,
deficiencies, and excesses.
1. What shape are you in?
2. How does it match up against what you hope is in store for public service’s next
generation?
3. If there’s a mismatch, what should and can you do about it?
4. If there is a match, how can you preserve the current shape as a legacy? Should you?
A radical, ungainly shape is a warning signal that something is wrong, and an
exercise in ethical fitness—shaping up—may be in order. That is up to the manager.
Despite the kite shape and the fact that managers do not operate at a single discrete
point but move along the continuum, the intent of the exercise is to survey the present
and anticipate the future with both feet firmly on the ground.
Figure 1.6 prompts managers to describe their agency as it is, but it is also interesting—and challenging—to plot two other maps: (1) the manager’s preferred pattern
for public service generally and (2) the pattern predicted for the next generation in
public service (pushing us to think as stewards, taking care for future generations). A
mismatch between the two sounds an alarm. Over the years, public service paradigms
have shifted or absorbed new values, and public administration has been refounded
(Wamsley and others, 1990). Moreover, public outrage over recurring scandals and
countless ethics initiatives hint that another shift is in the wind. That is the reason for
displaying the “new public administration” and for encouraging the mapping of a “new
public service” (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2003).
Of course, the shape of public service is molded by the larger society, and career professionals in public service are not a group apart. They inevitably reflect the
moral tone of the society in which they live and the institutional contexts in which they
work. The problems and challenges are neither light nor likely to disappear. Indeed,
public accountability is being reshaped by new technologies, new public disclosure
42 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

standards, and new demands on ethical professionals in public service. We predict that
this development will expand rather than curtail individual responsibility and managerial integrity.
We agree with President John F. Kennedy’s message to Congress on April 27,
1961: “The ultimate answer to ethical problems in government is honest people in a
good ethical environment.” He called on government leaders “to develop in all government employees an increasing sensitivity to the ethical and moral conditions
imposed by public service.”
Case: Right at Ground Zero
Passed just eleven days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001,1 the Victim’s
Compensation Fund (VCF) is the first of its kind.2 It aimed to protect the airlines (and,
by extension, their suppliers and subcontractors) by limiting their liability and providing “a no-fault alternative to tort litigation for individuals who were physically injured or killed as a result of the aircraft hijackings and crashes on September 11,
2001.”3 Victims or their beneficiaries who are willing to waive their right to sue may
be compensated for economic and noneconomic loss related directly to physical injury sustained at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, or Shanksville, Pennsylvania (see
Exhibit 1.4).
Kenneth R. Feinberg, the unpaid and highly credentialed4 special master appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to oversee the multi-billion-dollar fund, described the VCF as “an unprecedented expression of compassion on the part of the
American people to the victims and their families devastated by the horror and tragedy
of September 11th.” He goes on, “While there is no amount of compensation that can
replace a human life, our goal is to aid those who have so greatly suffered as a result
of this horrendous act” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001). The fund surely is a gesture of the American people’s compassion and a symbol of the value they place on
human life.
A mix of corporate protection and public compassion, the VCF is associated with
different and sometimes incongruent goals and values, seemingly inconsistent
promises, and, therefore, some misunderstandings and misguided expectations. The
contradictions led one legal scholar to plead that we “not continue to confuse the tort
system and the inspiriting charitable impulses that infuse both private and public compensation initiatives” (Culhane, 2003, unpaginated). One newspaper headline aptly
defines disaster aid as “the mix of mercy and politics” and quotes the 1996 congressional testimony of the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA): “Disasters are very political events” (Rosenbaum, 2003).
This is not the first public policy or first governmental process to be grounded in
competing values. Contradictions are built right into the federal regulatory process,
for example.5 In fact, a whole literature has developed around the tensions among
What Is Important in Public Service? 43

44 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 1.4. WAIVING THE RIGHT TO SUE.

caring and compassion (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984), social equity associated with
the New Public Administration, and justice (Frederickson, 1974; Frederickson and Hart,
1985; Nozick, 1974; Rawls, 1981; see Resource A). The contradictions also explain why
some decision makers, beneficiaries, or even the public may feel swindled or betrayed.
Competing values are an inescapable feature of public managers’ workaday world, so
much so that many seasoned managers think it is prudent to anticipate allegations
of hypocrisy or unfairness.
Opposing values mean that different people, with different ideas about what is
fair and right, see the VCF in different lights. A leading advocate for victims and their
families and self-described as one of Feinberg’s “sharpest critics,” Charles Wolf, points
out that one thing that makes the VCF different is that it is very much in the public eye
and the public is not used to seeing such a calculation with disparate valuations (Wolf,
personal communication, Sept. 20, 2003; see also http://www.fixthefund.org).
Believing that the principle of compensation means making up for actual loss
rather than serving as political symbolism, some claimants advocate steep differences
in awards that reflect the wide variations in victims’ earnings (“vertical equity,” in economic jargon). After all, what’s fair is fair, one can almost hear them say, and this is
what Congress enacted and the president signed.
Believing that there are some circumstances, such as the events of September 11,
when market-based calculations seem inappropriate—even offensive—others argue
for equal compensation for all victims suffering similar harm (horizontal equity). A
mother who lost her son—a firefighter—says, “It’s not about the money. This is not
ever about the money” (Belkin, 2002, p. 92). A father protests, “The value of a life is
certainly not determined based on earnings. We’re talking about my son” (Glaberson,
2001, unpaginated). “Mr. Feinberg, they say, you have undervalued our loss, your cold
calculations have come up short” (Chen, 2003, unpaginated). “I don’t care how much
money it is. I just want fairness” (Chen, 2003, unpaginated).
An argument grounded in the inherent value of all human life would have everyone treated about the same, or at least awards would have been kept within a narrow
range. (Others argue on behalf of the value inherent in all life, human or otherwise.6)
Still others object to valuing life in dollars. “But the very idea of giving human life
a monetary value has struck many as not merely difficult but repugnant” (Kleinig, 1991,
p. 147). Rejection of any monetary valuation at all on human life would have shifted
the public purpose from compensation to providing a measure of financial security.
Assigning a monetary value to life is part and parcel of standard evaluation techniques such as cost-benefit analysis and environmental assessments in the United States
and elsewhere (Gillette and Hopkins, 1988; Linnerooth, 1975). For example, in considering road construction,
[T]the monetary value of fatalities . . . is what the economist means by “the value
of life.” The term is almost a joke, a bit of gallows humor to exorcise the ghoulishness that inevitably clings to analysis of life and death in monetary terms.
What Is Important in Public Service? 45

The problem is unavoidable. The road will be built or it will not be built,
and a decision either way is a statement about the value of life. . . .
Governments cannot avoid the trading of lives for money, but they may
establish the terms under which that trade takes place. The trade is unavoidable
because governments take responsibility for activities—health, transport, environmental protection, civil order, and especially national defense—where lives
can be saved at a price (Usher, 1985, pp. 168, 185).
In an interview with Feinberg, it was noted that the Federal Aviation Administration’s cost-benefit analyses (for deciding on safety procedures) uses a value of a life
saved at $2.7 million (Public Broadcasting Service, 2002). This is also the approach
taken in tort claims.
For centuries, civil lawsuits have tried to answer such questions in dispassionate
economic terms. . . . In measuring the value of a lost life, lawyers often say that
dollars are inadequate, but that they are all there is. In addition to damages for
economic losses, intangible things, like the suffering before an inescapable
death, are given a price tag (Glaberson, 2001, unpaginated).
Objecting to computational methods derived from tort law and thereby undervaluing nonmonetary aspects of a human life, some might argue that “someone’s own
worthwhile life is a good thing in itself, not merely an instrument for creating benefits
for others” (Rhoads, 1980, p. 242).
Despite the different views, it is the statute that defines the fund. The statute directs the special master to devise all the rules and procedures governing the fund’s administration, to determine awards, and oversee appeals. Wolf (undated) notes,
With a sparsely written law, Feinberg was forced to write most of the details
himself in the form of regulations. Then, he has to implement what he just
wrote, pointing back to those same regulations as unbendable rules. Finally,
he is the final adjudicator as the law prohibits judicial review by the courts.
Feinberg has the power of King George III; he is lawmaker, administrator, judge
and jury.
Asked how he calculated the value of life for purposes of compensation, Feinberg
replied, “We went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census, and
we developed a methodology . . . based on salary, age and number of dependents,
came up with presumptive awards. . . .” (Public Broadcasting Service, 2002).
Although the awards themselves are not subject to judicial review, the rules for
making them can be contested in court. With the power to make irreversible multimillion-dollar decisions, Feinberg exercises extraordinary discretion: “The buck stops
with me, and me alone” (Chen, 2002a).
46 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Yet the statute constrains Feinberg in at least three fundamental ways. First, the
fund’s method of valuation is specified by statute and mimics the assessment of economic and noneconomic loss associated with tort awards. The special master is directed to consider economic loss, defined by statute as “any pecuniary loss resulting
from harm (including the loss of earnings or other benefits related to employment,
medical expense loss, replacement services loss, loss due to death, burial costs, and
loss of business or employment opportunities) to the extent recovery for such loss is
allowed under applicable [s]tate law.” When making awards, he is obligated to consider noneconomic loss, statutorily defined as “losses for physical and emotional pain,
suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of
enjoyment of life” and all other “nonpecuniary losses of any kind or nature.”
Second, the statute stipulates that the award shall be reduced by collateral compensation, defined as “including life insurance, pension funds, death benefit programs”
and governmental payments associated with the terrorist-related airplane crashes.
Third, the deadline for filing a claim was set at two years from the promulgation of
regulations, which occurred on December 21, 2001.
Most simply, awards are based on actuarial estimates of lost income over one’s
lifetime, minus likely living expenses and collateral compensation. “Over the years,
Feinberg has worked out a method for dealing with sprawling, complex cases, the key
element of which he describes as stripping away the complexities. Under this method,
individual circumstances are reduced to numbers, so that the whole settlement can
be expressed in a set of tables” (Kolbert, 2002, unpaginated). According to Feinberg,
“The way you divvy up the money is to come up, to the extent you can, with an objective allocation formula” (Kolbert, 2002, unpaginated). (See Exhibit 1.5.) Because
the fund has no statutory cap, the special master in effect “has been granted what
amounts to a blank check on the federal Treasury” (Kolbert, 2002, unpaginated).
Numerous complaints and objections have arisen over Feinberg’s methodology
and other aspects of the fund. Compensation for economic loss means that lowincome earners are eligible for lower awards. “At first glance, the tables defy most notions of equity; the more needs a family is likely to have, the less well it fares” (Kolbert,
2002, unpaginated). A minimum award adopted by the special master addresses
this concern to some small degree. At the same time, the special master has so far
refused to compensate the beneficiaries of the highest-income earners with full economic compensation that would amount to tens of millions of dollars each. “Feinberg
counters that Congress vested him with enormous discretion in making payment
decisions, and that he is striving for a more democratic apportionment of the taxpayer
money that funds this compensation initiative” (Culhane, 2003, unpaginated).7
A strict application of the rules that contain neither minimum nor cap (and therefore do not set limits on outcome) would lead to a large disparity among awards. The
special master appears to have opted for compressing the range of awards.
Some beneficiaries decry the collateral offsets, which strike them as unfairly penalizing the family of a victim who conscientiously and responsibly paid life insurance
premiums or pension contributions. Appealing an offset, one attorney protested, “This
What Is Important in Public Service? 47

48 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 1.5. EARNINGS FIGURE INTO CALCULATION.

is about the principle of fundamental fairness” (Chen, 2003, unpaginated). Some
refuse to file because they thereby lose their right to sue the airlines or governmental
entities involved. These issues are dictated by the statute, not the award regulations
or methodology, and are not subject to the special master’s discretion.
Perhaps the most fundamental questions are built right into the fund by the
statute and center on the very spirit of the fund. They have to do with fairness and
how justice and compassion push in different directions. In Feinberg’s words, “What
you’re really asking is: All lives are equal, why isn’t everybody getting the same amount
of money? . . . . A very fair question, ladies and gentlemen. The answer is: Congress
told me that is not the way to compute these awards. Congress said you must take
into account the economic loss suffered by the victim’s death” (Kolbert, 2002, unpaginated). When asked in the spring of 2003 how he would change the fund, Feinberg responded, “Give everyone the same” (Culhane, 2003, unpaginated). This
solution certainly would have made his job easier (and suggests that public managers
may pay a price for broad administrative discretion).
All told, almost 3,000 people died at the three sites; there is no official tally for the
number of injured. More than 2,830 applications for deaths and more than 3,600 injury applications met the midnight deadline on December 22, 2003. A last-minute surge
pushed the application rate up more than 30 percentage points, to a 95 percent rate
(and rising) and well above the 90 percent mark Feinberg set as the program’s goal.
The jump in applications in part is attributable to “a massive turnaround in the popularity of the fund, which had drawn applications from fewer than half of the eligible
families as recently as the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks” (Hirschkorn, 2003,
unpaginated).8 About seventy-three families have opted to file lawsuits against the airlines (Barrett, 2003, unpaginated). The average lump-sum, tax-free9 award for a death
claim stands at $1.8 million, with “the highest award, about $7.9 million, going to one
of the badly injured victims who survived” (Barrett, 2003, unpaginated).
The public certainly has a stake in the fund and in other governmental and nongovernmental responses to the events of September 11. (See the case featuring the
Red Cross in Chapter Three.) After all, the public is who public managers are supposed
to serve, and the public is at the heart of the definition of democratic accountability.
But the public’s responses to the VCF reveal the fundamental problem: contending
values confound simple solutions and offer little or no clear-cut direction. When asked
in January 2002 whether the offsets for insurance and pensions should reduce awards,
35 percent of the respondents said yes (thereby agreeing with the statutory requirement), but 59 percent said no, and 6 percent were not sure (Time/CNN/Harris, 2002).
When a national sample of registered voters was asked in February 2002 how awards
should be structured, 15 percent opted for potential earnings (the statutory criterion),
32 percent chose families’ needs, 50 percent responded that all “should get about the
same, and 4 percent gave no answer or did not know (Quinnipiac, 2002). Neglected
is the question of whether government should compensate victims in these sorts of
circumstances.
What Is Important in Public Service? 49

The tensions among values emerge in nonmonetary ways as well. A poll released in
September 2003 shows that 54 percent of registered voters in New York City believe
that the names of all victims of the attack should be displayed together on the memorial at Ground Zero in New York City. However, 38 percent responded that there should
be a separate listing differentiating uniformed emergency workers. Their losses were
so great: 343 firefighters, 23 city police officers, and 37 Port Authority police. Although
taking no position on the matter, New York Governor George Pataki observes, “It’s one
thing to deal with the tragedy as America had to after September 11. It’s another to
run into the buildings while they’re still burning” (Hirschkorn, 2003, unpaginated).
It also is true that fewer than 300 bodies were recovered from Ground Zero, and the
remains of 1,521 victims have been identified by the city medical examiner’s office
(Hirschkorn, 2003).
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. In your opinion, is it possible to avoid a clash of values in public service? Is it desirable?
2. If you were the special master, would you compress the range of awards? How
would you justify your answer in ethical terms? (See Chapter Five.)
3. Sometimes a professional in public service has to implement an imperfect law. Is
this ethical? Does compliance with statute trump every other consideration? (See
Chapters Four and Six.)
4. The case suggests that public managers may have to pay a price for broad administrative discretion. What price? Does the exercise of public authority carry
with it any ethical obligations? What objections to administrative discretion should
a prudent public manager anticipate?
5. Should public opinion influence ethical professionals in public service? Why? (See
Chapter Three.) Explain your answer in ethical terms.
6. Take the NYC poll. How would you have responded, and why? What should you
think about as a citizen? As a professional in public service?
Note: Exhibit 5.3 examines alternative ethical perspectives that help sort out the
different objections to the VCF as a public policy and to decisions made by the special
master.
◆◆◆
Notes
1. The fund was signed into law by President George W. Bush on September 24,
2001, as a subsection of the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act
(P.L. 107-42).
50 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

2. A 1986 federal statute provided compensation in the amount of $50 per day plus
interest to military and civil service members held hostage in Iran from November 4, 1979, to January 21, 1981. See National Victim Assistance Academy by
Internet at http://www.ojp.gov/ovc/assist/nvaa2002/chapter22_9.html (accessed
Nov. 13, 2003).
Although numerous support, insurance, and disaster mitigation programs
exist, governments in the United States ordinarily do not compensate for natural disasters, contagious illness, or other socially shared risk.
3. For a synopsis of the VCF, see http://www.usdoj.gov/victimcompensation/faq1.pdf
(accessed Sept. 12, 2003). For the law, final rule, and other documents, see http://
www.usdoj.gov/victimcompensation/civil_01.html (accessed Sept. 13, 2003).
4. Among Feinberg’s credentials are his settling the Agent Orange case for Vietnam
veterans and the suits against the Dalkon Shield IUD and Dow Corning over breast
implants.
5. Executive Order no. 12866, issued on September 30, 1993, by President William
Jefferson Clinton directs, “When an agency determines that a regulation is the best
available method of achieving the regulatory objective, it shall design its regulations
in the most cost-effective manner to achieve the regulatory objective. In doing so,
each agency shall consider incentives for innovation, consistency, predictability, the
costs of enforcement and compliance (to the government, regulated entities, and
the public), flexibility, distributive impacts, and equity.” Seehttp://reginfo.gov/
eo12866.htm (accessed Sept. 10, 2003). On an overview of the federal regulatory
process, see http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/tutorial/tutorial_000.pdf (accessed Sept. 15, 2003). On the value of statistical life, evaluation of life-saving benefits, and federal environmental, health, and safety rules, see, for example, Shogren
and Stamland, 2002, and Viscusi, 1993. For the most comprehensive federal study
yet of the cost and benefits of regulatory decision making, see OMB’s 2003 report
to Congress (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, 2003).
6. This perspective is associated with, for example, Deep Ecology, commonly dated
to 1976. See http://www.cyberus.ca/~sustain1/deepE.html (accessed Aug. 3,
2003). See also Resource A.
7. This hits hardest the beneficiaries of deceased employees of Cantor Fitzgerald, the
brokerage firm whose casualties represent nearly a quarter of all those killed in the
attack on the World Trade Center (Chen, 2002b and Cantor Fitzgerald, 2002).
8. Attributing his change of heart to Feinberg’s own changes in the program and attitude, Charles Wolf submitted his application to the VCF in November 2003
(Wolf, 2003b). Over 97 percent of the World Trade Center families applied, compared to 70 percent of Pentagon families and 30 percent of Shanksville families
(Hirschkorn, 2003). “Plaintiffs’ attorneys have said the Pentagon and Shanksville
families would have stronger wrongful death claims against the airlines and would
be impacted less by the legislative cap on damages per airplane” (Hirschkorn,
2003, unpaginated).
9. See Victims of Terrorism Tax Relief Act (P.L. 107-134, 115 Stat. 2427), at http://
www.usdoj.gov/victimcompensation/civil_01.html (accessed Sept. 12, 2003).
What Is Important in Public Service? 51

52
Let us start out by admitting that being a public manager brings with it real power.
Wielding power and public authority entails special ethical obligations. This asymmetrical power relationship—the power of people in public service relative to the
power of those they serve—is behind the idea that, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, “public service is a public trust.”
In this chapter, the obligation of legal compliance derives from the mix of power,
public trust, and promise keeping. Its knotty spin-offs include differentiating among
legal obligations, disobeying illegal orders, and engaging in personal dissent. A fundamental decision model that concludes the chapter centers on legal obligations without devaluing other core managerial concerns.
Public managers work with public power at their backs. They actually implement
decisions through the compulsory powers of legitimate government authority. The
public relies on law to tame arbitrary power. The rule of law effects justice and produces predictability and reliability in public programs and in society more generally.
Otherwise unfettered discretion is tied by law to authorized, permissible public purpose and procedure.
Administrative discretion refers to the degree of latitude or flexibility exercised by
public administrators when making decisions or conducting any agency business.
The chief source of administrative discretion comes from legislative bodies that have
drafted vague laws. These skeletal statutes essentially allow public administrators
CHAPTER TWO
OBEYING AND IMPLEMENTING THE LAW
Y

the discretionary power to interpret laws as they see fit, as long as their discretionary interpretations do not contradict specific statutory provisions (Warren, 2003,
unpaginated).
Government authority gives public servants power over ordinary citizens. Dependent on government services, including the administration of justice, citizens are
vulnerable to public servants’ decisions, from program eligibility to arrest, taxation,
and more. According to many governmental and professional codes, special obligations are the result of unequal power and of public managers’ exercising public authority. Along these lines, ASPA’s code commits members to “Exercise discretionary
authority to promote the public interest.”
This power imbalance between the public manager and the citizen is the reason
ethical duties are so often framed in terms of (1) not doing harm, (2) taking care of those
depending on us, and (3) taking into account ethical claims such as promises made. The
link between power and ethics goes back to ancient times. In The Peloponnesian War,
Thucydides wrote, “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only
in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak
suffer what they must.” Democracy depends upon law to equalize power so that right
dominates decisions and interactions.
The whole political system turns on trust, public confidence, and faith in the fairness of public servants and institutions. Democracy relies on public trust to accomplish civic purposes through voluntary compliance. The reciprocal is that public
managers are obligated to implement and comply with the law. Failure to do so is a legal and ethical violation. The law draws boundaries around public power; it curbs commitments
to mission, client, or personal claims. Two broad boundaries compel public servants to
take action (mandamus) and forbid action beyond legal authority (ultra vires).
Taking the Job and the Pledge
The ethical values of truth telling and promise keeping underlie citizens’ faith. They
place their trust in public servants who have sworn to uphold the law. Like so many
ideas in public service, the idea of taking an oath can be traced to the roots of Western civilization; the Pledge of the Athenian City-State (see Exhibit 2.1) reveals the
idea’s durability.
By taking the job, you have given your word. The promise to obey and implement
the law is part of taking a public position. The promise may be unspoken, but it is still
understood. Many public service employees, such as those in nongovernmental agencies, do not actually take an oath. Yet the implicit promise underlies the public’s grant of
trust. Reinforcing the commitment to special ethical principles, the promise functions
Obeying and Implementing the Law 53

as a symbol of conferring public power on the one hand and, on the other, agreeing
to exercise it within permissible boundaries. This function is obvious in ceremonial
oaths, of which the presidential oath of office, set forth in the Constitution, is an
outstanding example: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the
Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Many government employees do take a formal oath. Newly appointed federal executive, legislative, and judicial appointees swear “true faith and allegiance” to the
Constitution by taking the oath of office. The oath is required by Title 5, Section 3331
of the United States Code (hereafter, U.S.C.) for all individuals (except the president)
“elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed
services.” Federal civilian employees complete the appointment affidavits (Exhibit 2.2)
when appointed and take an oath to uphold the Constitution.
By taking the military oath of office, military personnel swear (or affirm) to defend the Constitution and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” Donning the
uniform means accepting its terms. This promise induces the ethical obligation for
military personnel to abide by civilian authority and the rule of law.
Those in public service in all branches of state (and, by extension, local) government also give the promise by assuming the office or taking the job. Article VI, Clause
3 of the Constitution states:
54 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 2.1. PLEDGE OF THE ATHENIAN CITY-STATE.
We will never bring disgrace to this our city
by any act of dishonesty or cowardice,
nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks;
We will ever strive for the ideals and sacred things
of the city, both alone and with many;
We will revere and obey the city’s laws
and do our best to incite to a like respect and reverence
those who are prone to annul or set them at naught;
We will unceasingly seek to quicken the sense
of public duty;
That thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this city
not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful
than it was transmitted to us.

Obeying and Implementing the Law 55
EXHIBIT 2.2. FEDERAL APPOINTMENT AFFIDAVITS.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United
States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support
this Constitution.
These oaths spell out the foundation of duty in public service. By taking the job,
office, or position, the public servant promises legal compliance. The federal ethics
code (P.A. 96–303, unanimously passed by Congress and signed into law by the president on July 3, 1980) spells out a simple standard: “Uphold the Constitution, laws,
and regulations of the United States and of all governments therein and never be a
party to their evasion.”
This grounding in law applies to all in public service, including nonprofits. The
model value statement and ethics code approved by the INDEPENDENT SECTOR in January 2004 states, “Adherence to the law is the minimum standard of expected behavior. Nonprofit and philanthropic organizations must do more, however, than simply
obey the law. We must embrace the spirit of the law” (INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 2004).
The principle sounds simple, but it raises practical (and philosophical) questions
that managers are bound to face. Laws and regulations with the force of law may push
managers to behave in a personally objectionable way. And sometimes laws or regulations conflict. At other times, the spirit and purpose of public service is undercut
by to-the-letter or by-the-book legal obedience.
The difference between ethics and legality is an inescapable challenge in public service, as Figure 2.1 points out. Sophocles’ Antigone is a classic statement of this difference,
but let us not forget that not so long ago our predecessors enforced Jim Crow laws.
Two questions in particular have hounded public service for centuries: (1) What
are a manager’s obligations in the face of an illegal directive? and (2) What if the manager dissents and sincerely believes a law is unjust, wrong, or immoral?
The Force of Law
Not all legal formulations are of equal weight. The oaths noted earlier reflect the
primary position of the Constitution. Public service is both rooted in and bound by
the Constitution’s provisions (Rohr, 1989, 2003; Rosenbloom, 1992). They are the ethical manager’s framework for action and the citizen’s basis for trust.
The responsibility for seeing that lesser laws conform to the Constitution lies with
the Supreme Court. A public servant who renders a legal opinion on unconstitutionality to justify his or her own noncompliance goes far beyond official competence and
legal boundaries. When the elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in
2003 defied a federal district court order to remove a monument depicting the Ten
Commandments from public display in the courthouse rotunda, the issue was not
56 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Obeying and Implementing the Law 57
FIGURE 2.1. SPIRIT AND CHALLENGE OF PUBLIC SERVICE.
whether the monument was in violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Courts recently have issued conflicting rulings over such displays, and the debate
continues over whether they violate separation of church and state (Associated Press,
2002; Roig-Franzia, 2003). The issue simply was whether the display was lawful. The
state court’s associate justices ordered compliance, cited Article VI of the Constitution, and wrote that they were “bound by solemn oath to follow the law, whether they
agree or disagree with it” (Alabama Supreme Court, 2003). A special nine-member
judicial court removed the chief justice from the bench (Gettleman, 2003).
In a real sense, usurping the Supreme Court’s role is abuse of office. When, who,
and how the law is tested against the Constitution is a matter for negotiation in the
agency and litigation in the courts. Yet in the face of a conflict between the Constitution and a statute, a regulation, or a supervisor’s command, the ethical public manager
is committed to the Constitution. This double-bind is part of public service reality.
NON SEQUITUR © 1999 & 2002 Wiley Miller. Dist. By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted
with permission. All rights reserved.

Reading the Rules
An agency’s rule has the force of law, but it should not be confused with the law itself.
Further, there are rules, and there are rules. According to the federal Administrative
Procedure Act, Section 551(4), rule “means the whole or part of any agency statement
of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or describing the organization, procedure, or practice
requirements of any agency.” (For details on U.S. federal rules and regulations, see http://
www.archives.gov/federal_register/tutorial/tutorial_000.pdf, http://www.regulations.
gov, and http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/index.html.)
A document submitted to a congressional hearing (U.S. House of Representatives,
1990) describes the Supreme Court’s formulation governing review of an agency’s deviation from its own regulations. A reviewer should
determine whether the regulation was intended (1) to require the agency to exercise
its independent discretion, or (2) to confer a procedural benefit to a class to which
complainant belongs, or (3) to be a “mere aid” to guide the exercise of agency discretion. If the first or second, invalidate the action; if the third, a further determination must be made whether the complainant has been substantially prejudiced.
If he has, invalidate the action; if not, affirm.
Thus justice for a potential casualty of government discretion leads to the differential weighing of rules.
How does one read the rules? It depends. Existing agency rules entail legal liability, but the ethical obligation based on the oath to uphold the Constitution is of a
different order altogether. With that obligation in mind, rules are narrowly or broadly
interpreted, loosely followed, or scrupulously obeyed. With effort, rules can be waived
or changed.
A discriminating manager distinguishes the standard way of doing business in an
agency from formal procedure, regulations, and law. The obligation is legal compliance, not the manager’s or client’s slavery to routine. The distinction between organizational habits and substantive regulation is important if managers are to retain their
capacity for adaptability, innovation, and leadership (see Chapter Six).
Disobedience Before Illegality
Legal compliance imposes on managers the heavy burden of refusing to obey a superior’s illegal order or directive. For each manager empowered to guard the legal basis
of citizen trust, disobedience is preferred over illegality. Admittedly, the disobedient
manager “practices civil obedience under particularly stressful conditions because he upholds the rule of law against his lawless superior” (Rohr, 1989, p. 12).
58 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

The principle extends to military service. During the nationally televised
Iran-Contra hearings in the mid-1980s, Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii),
himself a wounded veteran, asserted for the nation to hear that even military orders
do not take priority over law.
An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed, but obeying such
an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts
have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while
following orders—if the order was illegal (Powers, 2004, unpaginated).
Nonetheless, military law “now generally excuses soldiers who obey a superior’s
criminal order unless its illegality would be immediately obvious to anyone on its face.
Such illegality is ‘manifest,’ on account of its procedural irregularity, its moral gravity,
and the clarity of the legal prohibition it violates” (Osiel, 1998, unpaginated). Moreover, and according to the manual for courts-martial (pt. IV, ¶ 14c(2)(a)(i) (1998), “When
an accused is charged with willful disobedience of a lawful order under Article 90,
UCMJ, the order is presumed to be lawful, unless it is patently illegal” (quoted in Osiel,
1998, note 74). A courtroom defense based solely on the “following orders” defense
dates back to 1799 in U.S. military history and was rejected by the Supreme Court;
it was similarly rejected at the Nuremberg tribunals in the wake of World War II (Powers, 2004; see also Chapter Four).
What about disobeying lawful orders? One view on this is expressed in the military context. The official reprimand when a U.S. Air Force major refused an order
to submit to an anthrax vaccine in 2000 reads, “Your disobedience of the lawful
order of a direct superior commander undermines the very essence of military
good order and discipline. Your failure to live up to these standards cannot be condoned” (Vela, 2000; see also Katz, 2001; Powers, 2004; Wenker, 1981).
Exhibit 2.3 shows a civilian version, where an unqualified no is overly formalistic
and uselessly simplistic, given what public managers know. Managers cannot afford
the self-indulgence of sentimentality or sanctimoniousness. Realistically, in the field
and in the central office, we know managers bend, twist, curve, and break laws and
regulations. This is what selective enforcement is all about: facing an ethical dilemma
and blinking. The blink may be for pragmatic reasons—to accomplish the mission and
get the larger job done. Or there may be an imperfect fit between by-the-book and
public purpose. Sometimes judgment rests on rival values or contradictory laws or regulations. At other times, faulty judgment or even downright ignorance is at work. Managers understand this, but they should not celebrate it.
Judgment, it often is argued, rests on fulfilling a superior’s underlying intention
and purpose, that is, the spirit rather than the letter of the order. This leeway enables flexible, instant response to changing circumstances. The same reasoning (spirit
Obeying and Implementing the Law 59

60 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 2.3. TO OBEY OR NOT TO OBEY!
Imagine you are an inspector in the engineering department and have the responsibility to inspect
the sidewalks of residents whose streets are being resurfaced. The policy is clear—residents who live
on streets that are partially resurfaced must pay up to $1,000 per home for their sidewalks to be
replaced. But residents on streets that are fully resurfaced are not required to pay. Your job is to
determine how much a resident who lives on a partially resurfaced street must pay to replace the
sidewalk. Sounds straightforward enough. Not so. Why? Because the technical criteria for determining the difference between a full resurface and a partial resurface are murky. Moreover, as the
inspector, you have suffered for many years trying to explain the system to residents who are impacted. And it is your strong belief that the required fee is too great of a burden, particularly as it
is not applied in all cases and a large percentage of the residents are retired. After years of expressing
your concerns to the director of the engineering department and having them ignored, you decide to take the matter directly to the mayor.
The engineering director does not find your conversation with the mayor amusing. Indeed, he becomes quite angry with you for going to the mayor and having his policy decision questioned. He
instructs you to proceed with collecting money from residents and lobbies the mayor to support the
current policy. You continue collecting checks and contracts from residents but decide not to cash
them or process the contracts because you feel the mayor will rule in your favor. And you are
right. The mayor concludes the system is unfair, and resident contributions are eliminated for all
sidewalk replacement projects.
Upon hearing the mayor’s decision, you return the unprocessed checks and destroy the contracts.
The director, not having budgeted for the change, instructs you to continue with the old policy for
the upcoming construction season and to initiate the new policy the following year. Concerned about
losing your job, you lie and say that you had not collected any money. You feel it would be impossible to collect the money for the upcoming project year, as the change in policy had already been
announced in the local press.
In the meantime, the director investigates and finds that the money has indeed been collected and
subsequently returned. In his opinion, this was contrary to a direct order. You admit lying but claim
that you had merely followed the wishes of the elected officials. The director gives you a pink slip,
thus terminating your employment. You decide to appeal the decision to the assistant administrator.
1. Now imagine you are the assistant administrator. What should you do?
2. Was the director right to fire the employee for her behavior?
3. Was the director acting out of his anger at having his decision overturned?
4. Was the employee acting in the best interest of the community?
5. Is it sometimes ethical to disobey an order when you feel it is the “right” decision? Should the
employee have been disciplined?
Reprinted with revision by permission of the American Society for Public Administration. Anonymous author. Originally published in PA Times, “Ethics Moment” column, edited by Don Menzel,
Sept. 2002. Internet [http://www3.niu.edu/~tp0dcm/aspa/ethicsec/moments/moments.htm].

and purpose over knee-jerk obedience) lies behind determining legislative intent. Different from discretion, intent really narrows wiggle room because it calls on managers
to abide more fully by the law.
Disobeying for Good Reason
We are not about to tell public managers that it is ethically defensible to break a law.
Given their promise to comply with the law, it is not. Moreover, those who do break
the law may be personally liable. This is not to say that managers do not and will not
do it; they do and will. Their reason is usually a good one, but it cannot serve as an
excuse whereby the offenders seek to be held blameless.
When other ethical claims push in the direction of illegality, the manager confronts a true ethical dilemma. Any decision in this situation stirs controversy; people
of good character and strong principles will disagree. The argument here is that the
law is the center of gravity in public service, and the Constitution is the touchstone.
Abusing Public Office for Personal Dissent
If a public manager believes a law is unjust or immoral, is he or she ethically obligated to comply? Or does another, higher law prevail? Managers today know there exists the possibility of an unconstitutional political order as, for example, symbolized
historically by Nazi Germany. This argument is a red herring. It changes the subject
from legitimate government to illegitimate regime. It changes the question from What
now? to What if? It is irrelevant to the contemporary constitutional system of American
public service.
Then there is the likelihood of unjust human law to consider. When ethical judgment conflicts with legal compliance in major matters, conscientious dissent or civil
disobedience substitutes a standard from outside the administrative system. Religion
(as in the case concluding this chapter) or philosophy may provide standards for judging whether a human law is just or not. “Civil disobedience rests its case on a higher
moral or natural law not on positive law” (Rohr, 1989, p. 12).
Civil disobedience is defined as follows:
[Civil disobedience is] a violation of law with the intent of effecting a change in
current policy, regarded as unjust by the citizens taking action. Important issues involved in civil disobedience include fidelity to the state, publicity of the disobedient
act, the permissibility of violence in civil disobedience, and the acceptance of punishment on the part of the protesters (Tedesco and Harris, 2002, unpaginated).
These factors distinguish civil disobedience from acts of terrorism.
Obeying and Implementing the Law 61

Plato’s Crito and Apology present Socrates’ take on the issue. As chronicled in Resource A, current politics is well versed in peaceful and not-so-peaceful civil disobedience, thanks to Gandhi’s struggle against colonialism, the sit-ins and freedom rides
of the civil rights movement, and the antiapartheid and antinuclear campaigns. In a
famous act of civil disobedience in December 1955, Rosa Parks disobeyed segregation
laws in Montgomery, Alabama, by refusing to give her seat to white passengers.
In his renowned “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” (1963, p. 6), the Reverend
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained:
Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954
outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical
to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate
breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there
are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. [O]ne has a
moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. . . . A just law is a man-made code that
squares with the moral law of the law of God.
King (p. 7) goes on to state a central tenet of ethical civil disobedience, which is
taking responsibility for one’s actions. “One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly,
lovingly . . . and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” Similarly, John Rawls sees
civil disobedience as an open political act—“an appeal to the majority and its sense of
justice, and by engaging in civil disobedience, one hopes to show the majority that the
policy or law in dispute is inconsistent with the society’s shared political values”
(Tedesco and Harris, 2002, unpaginated).
Contrast this with conscientious refusal, which “is not necessarily a political act and
thus may be grounded in one’s personal moral, religious, or philosophical convictions”
(Tedesco and Harris, 2002, unpaginated), which is illustrated by the case at the end of
the chapter. In A Matter of Principle, Ronald Dworkin examines “integrity-based civil
disobedience” and justifies refusal to obey the law “because when people violate
their morals, conscience, or integrity in order to obey a law, they suffer immediate,
irreparable harm by doing so” (Tedesco and Harris, 2002, unpaginated).
Dissenting as a Citizen
May a public servant ethically engage in conscientious dissent outside his or her office?
This question accents professional and organizational roles, but these are not the only
roles, which is the point of Figure 2.1. How should a city manager respond to an urban
planner who takes part in a peaceful demonstration opposing abortion? How should
a state finance analyst decide to participate in an antiwar protest? There are two issues when the action is not related to official duties: (1) responsible citizenship and the
62 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

(2) legality of the mode of dissent. (See Chapter Eight, where Exhibit 8.4 portrays
these issues in action.)
When the actions are legal, a yes underwrites important citizenship obligations
and reserves rights already limited by ethical standards, laws, and regulations discussed
throughout this book. In practice, the answer is often modified by the appearance standard discussed in the next chapter. Unwelcome professional consequences will likely
vary according to the visibility of the administrator and the action. Part of ethical action is a willingness to take responsibility for it.
Not all modes of dissent are legal. Respect for democratic processes, public trust,
and the promise of legal compliance ethically constrain the public servant. As a result,
the ethicality of dissent outside of office turns on the action’s legality. A county hospital administrator who challenges nuclear weapons by refusing to pay personal income taxes is breaking the law and shrugging off the ethical value of promise keeping.
Bear in mind that a sincere ethical argument can be made (as did Henry David
Thoreau in his 1849 essay that came to be called “Civil Disobedience”); the dissenter may believe that public interest is paramount in this instance.
Dissenting in Office
It may be ethically permissible or even imperative for a citizen to break a law. Yet that
does not extend to public servants the privilege of using government authority and public position to do so. The ethical manager may not use public office to dissent as a citizen.
By definition, civil dissent or disobedience is not possible through a public position that draws on government authority. Nor is it an option for an ethical public manager, who would thereby violate an important value and break the prior promise of
legal compliance. Pursuing conscientious dissent through public office, for whatever
reason, makes a liar of the public servant and a lie of public service. Were managers
to use public office to break the law at will, public trust would be broken as well. (Again,
we are speaking of routine circumstances, not an “evil empire” but a constitutional
system with implemented safeguards and exercised rights.)
What does an ethical public manager do when faced with a choice between legal
compliance and violation of a central, personal, ethical belief ? (Granted, a choice this
clear-cut is rare.) The answer lies outside public position. Because no organization or
law should dictate central ethical choices, if the choice is truly that momentous and
stark, then the preferred option may be to resign. In this case, walking away from the
job exercises and tones personal integrity.
If some misguided public servants try to have it both ways—to justify illegality
and to use public authority—then they are operating under the delusion of moral superiority and disguising it as legal authority. Having it both ways is inherently antidemocratic and unethical, and such individuals will find themselves caught in a vise
Obeying and Implementing the Law 63

of unethical behavior and public censure as a result. Grabbing for power under cover of
public position undercuts the very foundations of constitutional democracy. (A pragmatic note: managers also open themselves to legal action.)
Dissent through public position such as described in the case at the end of this
chapter reveals public servants disobeying the law on grounds of religion, conscience,
or superior knowledge.
Instances of this kind of personal dissent have been sobering experiences for the
public and for the players.
Go/No-Go Decision Model
In public service, the law prevails. From the Athenian pledge, “we will revere and obey
the city’s laws” (Exhibit 2.1), to contemporary standards and professional codes, additional ethical questions arise only after the legality of the action is settled. For example,
the code of the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and
Canada (GFOA) identifies legal compliance as an ethical responsibility; its members
shall “uphold both the letter and the spirit of the constitution, legislation and regulations governing their actions and report violations of the law to the appropriate authorities.” (Consider also the price tag of personal and organizational liability.) Accepting
the law’s priority is the first step in making routine decisions in public service. The
obligation to make a legal decision is hardly enough justification; the scope is still too
broad. A narrowly legalistic perspective may pervert rather than implement the law’s
purpose. This is what is offensive about legal manipulations to circumvent the appropriations process. The case, mentioned in the Introduction, of running up the postage
meter to expend funds at the end of the fiscal year illustrates that maneuver. Ethical
decision makers, sensitive to ethical concerns, aim at good decision making. Action
should be both legal and ethical.
There is also a third consideration: the job to be done. Effectiveness matters because
there’s a job to be done; there’s a service component to public service. Decisions must
be realistic and useful. Public managers are not in this business to spin wheels but to
solve the problem, meet the mission, deliver the service. Rational and busy managers take action not for its own sake but for the purposes they are trying to accomplish. There should be a logical link between the objective and the decision. Although
management without ethics is purposeless or worse, impractical public management
is doomed to failure. Useful action adds the element of pragmatism to decision making: action should be legal, ethical, and effective.
Simply giving up on an ethical, legal, but ineffective course of action can stifle
creativity or justify immobility. Therefore, not all matters should stop here. The next
64 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

step is to innovatively redesign the proposed action so that it meets all three criteria.
Likewise, if action is ethical and effective but illegal, it may warrant a place in the
agency’s legislative package.
The three questions asked in sequence in Figure 2.2 function as a first cut for
decision making. The go/no-go decision-making model aims at immediate action and
puts ethical concerns on the table as legitimate in decision making. This model is elementary but hardly simplistic; it helps decision makers act on legal obligations without devaluing other core concerns. Is the decision legal? Ethical? Effective? A no to any
Obeying and Implementing the Law 65
FIGURE 2.2. GO/NO-GO DECISION MODEL.
Unethical
Illegal no action* no action
Legal and Ineffective no action† no action
Legal and Effective action no action
Take immediate action
only at the intersection.
(Proportions do not depict number
or scope of activities or decisions
each arena represents.)
Ethical
* Pursue change in law? † Innovative redesign?
Legal Ethical
Effective
Three judgment calls on immediate action:
1. Is it legal?
2. Is it ethical?
3. Is it effective?

one question flashes a red light. Because only a yes response leads to the next question and a no ends the matter (pending alterations), this approach is efficient and managerial. Immediate action is taken only if the answer is yes to all three questions in
turn. The model is given a workout in Exhibit 2.4.
This model is useful in thinking through the falsification of public documents. Undeniably, this is illegal. Although there may be situations in which a small deception seems
an acceptable price for a greater good (as the third scenario in Exhibit I.2 illustrates),
the point of this venture is to undercut accountability, avoid taking responsibility,
and evade the test of publicity (described in Chapter Four). The cumulative impact of
each instance is unknowable because the record is, in fact, bogus.
Leaving a false trail via protective communication may become habitual or be
abused for personal purposes. A classic example is the defensive report—an informal mechanism for reconstructing reality for purposes of self-protection. Perhaps a
police officer files charges of resisting arrest because the suspect sustained injury
during a botched arrest. Or perhaps a performance appraisal reflects spurned sexual
overtures. Although fiction may be effective, it is neither legal nor ethical.
A related twist is passing bad news up the hierarchy, an unenviable task. It tests
courage by pitting self-protection against misrepresentation and points to the difference
between truth and candor. (By contrast, the issue is competence, not courage, when
an analyst or subordinate fails to scrutinize and evaluate data carefully, systematically,
and in accord with rigorous standards.) A former assistant to President Carter describes
“the government’s version of the law of gravity that bad news never flows up. The only
66 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 2.4. USING THE GO/NO-GO DECISION MODEL.
The cab of a chemical truck overturned on a back-country road, trapping the driver in explosive
fumes and precipitating an immediate threat. Although untrained and ill-equipped for the specific
hazard, the local volunteer emergency service was first on the scene and went in for an immediate
rescue. At the inquiry conducted by the state board, the local chief insisted that the successful rescue was anything but reckless or irresponsible. “I sort of weigh the risks. I wouldn’t do anything that
could hurt my people more than the good we might do. But we know that our job is to help people,
so what else could we have done?”
1. Should the chief have attempted the rescue? Use the go/no-go decision model.
2. Suppose you know that the jurisdiction will be sued for damages by the trucking company
and driver. Would that alter your assessment? Why?
3. Suppose you know that a volunteer emergency responder will be injured during the rescue.
Would that alter your assessment? Why?
4. Wear the chief ’s hat. What else should you think about before acting?

times I saw anyone struggle to warn his superior of impending trouble . . . were on
those occasions when the superior was sure to find out anyway” (quoted in Patterson,
1988, p. 47). Of course, the silent subordinate is not performing the job, despite the
promise implicit in taking it. Therefore, although the behavior may be legal and personally expedient (although risky, if discovered), it is not ethical. Presuming discovery,
how would you handle a silent subordinate? What is it about the behavior that offends
you? Is it that the behavior is unethical or organizationally ineffective, or that it shows
a lack of trust in you?
The case that ends this chapter illustrates duty-based reasoning in which opposing duties face off. (See Chapter Five.) These duties stem from religion, professional
medical tradition and practice, and the basic ethical injunction against doing harm.
Also, in biomedical ethics the duty to do no harm often is balanced with the duty to
do good (beneficence). Utilitarian reasoning is also evident in the effort to balance the
needs of both patient and provider through accommodation, referral, and grievance
or complaint procedures. Matters such as legal and organizational compliance in public service also rear their heads. The topic is birth control, over which there is national
consensus, with 94 percent of respondents in a national poll conducted in October
2003 responding that they “personally” find using birth control [the pill or condoms]
“morally acceptable” (ABC News/Washington Post Poll, 2003).
As you read the case, if you find yourself immediately and without reflection coming down on one side or the other, try substituting another issue. How would you respond to the case and the questions if religion mandated a practice that is commonly
accepted, such as dietary practices. What about abortion—an issue so divisive that it
typifies a cleavage issue: public opinion is about evenly divided and feelings run strong
(Gallup, 2004; Gallup/CNN/USA Today, 2004)?
The case also raises the question, What role should individual conscience play
in public service? Should appeal to religion or individual conscience trump other concerns? A birth control advocate argues, “The way we look at it is this: whose conscience
takes precedence? . . . The interest of the patient is at least equivalent, if not superior,
to the person providing service. . . . The conscience to be considered is the person
receiving care, not the person providing it” (Hamilton, 2004, unpaginated).
Is this viewpoint right, wrong, or neither? Why? (See the stakeholder analysis in
Chapter Seven). In his column, a retired senior navy medical officer asserts that the
case is unique in his experience and quotes the Hippocratic oath’s injunction to do no
harm (Johnson, 2004). (He does not quote the oath’s next sentence, which prohibits
giving abortions or even counsel about deadly medicine.) He also turns to the American Board of Internal Medicine: “Professionalism . . . comprises those attributes and
behaviors that serve to maintain the interest of the patient above one’s own selfinterest.” Is this formulation in the public interest? (See Chapter Three.)
Obeying and Implementing the Law 67

Case: A Matter of One Man’s Faith
As a primary care doctor at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Dr. Thomas V.
Messe sees patients who include women seeking birth control. But Messe is a devout
Catholic who believes that contraceptives are wrong and that to help patients get them
violates his religious beliefs.
Rather than participate in what he calls “a sinful act,” Messe arranged with the
Navy to be allowed to refer patients seeking birth control to other physicians. “I would
simply say to the patient, ‘Because of my religious beliefs, I don’t prescribe contraceptives. I will send you down the hall to my nurse’s office, and she will find a doctor
who can write a prescription for you,’” said Messe, 35.
The informal arrangement worked—for a while. But when the Navy questioned
it, then stipulated that Messe would have to make direct referrals to other doctors
rather than go through a nurse, he balked. Navy officials accused him of “patient
abandonment”—deliberately leaving a patient in harm’s way.
Now Messe has filed a complaint insisting on his right to have the Navy accommodate his religious beliefs and alleging harassment and discrimination.
Navy officials declined to comment on the specific complaint, but said the service
balances the needs of its patients and its health care providers.
“Medical personnel who object to participating in specific procedures of family
planning would not be required to do so,” said Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Navy
spokesman in Groton, “unless their refusal poses an immediate threat.” Carpenter said
others involved in the matter would not be allowed to comment on Messe’s complaint
because of the ongoing investigation.
A Thorny Issue
The Naval Ambulatory Care Center in Groton, where Messe has worked for four years,
is an outpatient facility serving more than 12,000 active duty members and their families, as well as reservists and military retirees.
Messe said that for about three years, the clinic would give a printed handout to
female patients before their exam, which read:
“Dr. Messe does not prescribe artificial contraception for personal reasons, but
after your visit you can meet with the nurse to arrange for contraception.”
Messe said most patients who wanted a birth control prescription could get it that
same day; occasionally a patient had to return if the nurse couldn’t find a doctor. And,
he said, most—though not all—patients accepted the situation.
68 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
The text of this case is reprinted by permission from TMS Reprints for the Hartford Courant.
The text is from F. G. Taylor, “A Matter of One Man’s Faith, Sub Base Physician Files Complaint
against Navy after Clash over His Birth Control Views,” Hartford Courant, Jan. 25, 2004.
Internet [http://www.ctnow.com] Jan. 25, 2004].

“It’s a thorny issue, and you try to be as tactful as you can,” he said.
Messe also said the doctors and nurses in the clinic supported him and did not
feel overburdened by the arrangement, although he knows one nurse strongly disagreed with his views.
The arrangement worked for about three years, Messe said, until a new director
of clinical services, Capt. H. A. Taylor, was assigned to the health care facility last year.
About the same time, a male patient filed a complaint when Messe declined to discuss
the man’s request for information on a vasectomy and sent him to a nurse for a referral. A few months later, Messe told a female patient who was taking a medication
that could cause birth defects if she became pregnant she should abstain from sex. He
did not give her any information about birth control.
Messe said Taylor told him that his arrangement was a burden to patients and
to other physicians.
“He said, ‘If you were the only doctor on a ship, you would have to prescribe contraception,’” Messe recalled. “And I said, ‘No sir, I don’t have to, and I wouldn’t.’”
Things went downhill from there. Messe said Taylor also suggested that perhaps
his practice should be limited to men and to women over 40.
In September, Messe said, he was called to the regional headquarters in Newport,
R.I., to meet with Taylor and with Capt. F. R. MacMahon. They offered repeatedly to
limit his practice, Messe said, and also discussed a possible transfer to the all-male
Marines, which would have separated him from his wife, Charnette, who was fighting
breast cancer, and their two children.
Messe said he felt both his career and his wife’s health were in jeopardy. Fearing
he could be kicked out of the Navy and lose the family’s health insurance, he said,
he felt coerced to accept a new arrangement they ordered: He would have to make
“physician to physician” referrals, rather than send patients who wanted contraceptives to a nurse.
Those referrals involved more than just writing a prescription: Before sending a
patient to another doctor, Messe had to determine whether she had a condition
such as liver disease or hypertension that could affect the type of birth control she
could use.
Each day he came home more guilt-ridden and depressed, he said, because he
believed his direct involvement contradicted his faith.
“I could stop seeing women under 40 or continue to sin against my God,” Messe
said. “That’s when everything blew up.”
On Jan. 2, Messe said, Taylor told him, “You are a wheel on the train that doesn’t
spin, so now the whole train won’t move.”
The next day, Messe filed charges against the two superior officers. Under Article 138 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, charges can be filed if a soldier or sailor
believes he or she is being harassed or abused by a commanding officer.
A mediator was called in, beginning a process that could take several months.
In the meanwhile, Messe is again sending patients who want birth control to a nurse
for referral to a physician.
Obeying and Implementing the Law 69

Fast-Growing Cancer
For Messe, his passionate stand is not solely about religion. It’s also personal.
A day after his wife, Charnette, then 31, discovered she was pregnant with their
second child, she was diagnosed with a fast-moving form of breast cancer.
The couple blame her cancer at such an early age on the fact that she used contraceptives, including birth control pills and Depo-Provera, in her teens and 20s.
A mammogram revealed that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. Their
son, Christian, was born prematurely in 2002. Charnette Messe had chemotherapy
and a modified radical mastectomy last May.
Her cancer is now in remission, but she is tearful at the memory. “It was all so unbelievable,” she said. “I told the doctor I had a 3-year-old daughter at home, and I
asked him if I was going to get to see her grow up. He said possibly not.”
The story of Charnette Messe’s battle to survive breast cancer and deliver her baby
led to an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and was chronicled in a number
of publications.
“Women want their contraception because they don’t know the risks,” she said.
“People like my husband are refusing to prescribe birth control because they know
what it can do.”
“There is a link between contraception and breast cancer,” Thomas Messe said.
“My wife is a classic example.”
The Word ‘Referring’
Under the guidelines of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, contraception
will be provided to patients upon request, but the rules also give physicians with moral
or religious concerns the option not to participate:
Medical personnel who object to participating in specific procedures related
to family planning services on moral, ethical, or religious grounds shall not be
required to perform or assist in such procedures unless their refusal poses an
immediate threat to the health of a patient. However, [as] a practitioner they
are responsible for referring the patient for services required.
The stumbling block, Messe said, “is that word ‘referring.’”
Capt. Jane F. Vieira, regional chaplain for Commander Navy Region Northeast,
would not comment directly on the case, but spoke about the right of religious
accommodation.
“The most common religious accommodation requests revolve around issues of
worship, religious dietary requirements, the wearing of religious apparel,” Vieira said.
“Every effort is made to accommodate requests of religious practice when the accommodation will not have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, discipline, standards or discipline, or otherwise interfere with a member’s military duties.”
70 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Vieira would not speculate on how frequently religion and contraceptive issues
collide. She suggested that Navy chaplains would view a case such as this one according to their specific religious beliefs. But, she added, “As far as Navy medical professionals, they are instructed through Navy Bureau of Medicine instruction.”
Pat Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Center, a public interest law firm in
Ann Arbor, Mich., specializing in religious liberty issues, said he is monitoring the case.
Messe contacted the center for advice before filing charges.
Though disputes concerning religious accommodation may occur with some regularity, Gillen said, this case is the first of its kind that he knows of. “The issue probably comes up a lot, but commanders might handle it in a more respectful way,” Gillen
said. “You can also see that the matter is systemic because of the way the regulation
is written. It acknowledges that he should not be compelled, yet it does require him
to cooperate in a referral.”
As for the possible burden that accommodating Messe’s beliefs might impose on
his colleagues, Gillen said, “Administrative inconvenience is not a justification to strip
someone of their constitutional rights.”
Messe puts it more simply: “I just need some justice and for people to wake up.”
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. Although the U.S. Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state, this
case seems to have far more to do with ethical issues than legal ones. What is the
difference, and where do they overlap in this case?
2. How far should the navy (or any public organization) go in making religious
accommodations? Are the accommodations that were offered to the doctor
reasonable?
3. Would the issues be different if the case occurred in the civilian public sector?
4. A local newspaper reports, “He said people who criticize him for using his faith as
a reason not to prescribe birth control contend he should not use his position to
stake out a political stand. . . . His commanding officer, he said, ‘is using this as
a platform for his bias on contraception’” (Hamilton, 2004). Does his view of his
superior’s alleged bias justify Dr. Messe’s taking a counter position? Why? (See
Chapter Nine.)
5. Regulations and standard operating procedures are not neutral but implicitly bear
ethical values and call on selected duties and principles. (See Chapter Ten.) One
of the central issues in this case is referral, obligatory under navy guidelines. Is
there a difference in terms of values, duties, or principles between prescribing contraceptives and referring patients to other staff? Is complicity an issue, given
that the patient requests the service?
Obeying and Implementing the Law 71

6. Should personal religious beliefs play a role in a public manager’s decision making and service delivery? Why? Is the doctor’s behavior here any different, from
an ethical perspective, from the chief justice’s defiance of a court order, as related
in Chapter Three?
7. You are the new director of clinical services and Dr. Messe’s superior. How would
you handle this, and why?
72 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

73
Another public service obligation is to champion the public interest. Invoked by
democratic imperatives, interdependency, and shared concerns, as well as
empathy and respect for future generations, this obligation generates three standards:
(1) avoiding conflict of interest, (2) maintaining impartiality, and (3) avoiding the
appearance of impropriety. This chapter proposes a model for exploring what public
interest means and confronts the realities of public scrutiny by offering practical guidelines for working with the media.
The use of a public position to pursue any personal agenda is unacceptable ethically (and politically) in public service. Public managers wield other people’s power
and authority. That these are on temporary loan is simply a fact of life in public service. Managers do much of the choosing in the authoritative allocation of values that is the
standard definition of what government is all about (as the case concluding Chapter
One and Exhibit 10.3 illustrate). A mission related to the public good is part of the
definition of a nonprofit agency. To keep the citizens’ trust, public managers are
charged with pursuing the public interest.
Trade-offs and paradoxes top today’s political agenda: the environment competes
with economic interests; public health programs and insurance proposals face off
against medical technology and an aging population; donors’ preferences clash with recipients’ needs; deficits challenge tax preferences; and so on. Resolution carries with
it considerable ethical content and fallout.
CHAPTER THREE
SERVING THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Y

The paradox is that private self-interest—selfish, greedy, and unrestrained or, more
technically, maximizing short-term, individual utility—plunders the common pot. Unbridled self-interest threatens shared resources, often the very source of the prize.
Bounty becomes booty, and the whole community is at risk (see Exhibit 3.2 later in the
chapter).
Protecting common assets is a governmental purpose. In the conventional contractual view, we voluntarily submit to coercion and establish government to restrain
liberty from destroying us all. Public service obligations derive from this creation myth.
Public servants ideally mold and sustain the links to our future and to the whole, without unduly curbing liberty.
In Hot Pursuit
The problems on the public service agenda call for “a fundamental extension in
morality” (Hardin, 1972, p. 250). These problems have no technical solution. Public
interest cannot be laid out on a spreadsheet or figured on a calculator. Public interest
mandates the forging of a link between the short term and the long term and between
individually rational self-interest and the aggregate, common good. (See Chapter Five
on rationality in decision making.) The agency’s mission statement is a sensible place
to start in understanding what public interest entails.
What does the injunction, “serve the public interest,” really mean for public managers, and why is it important? Often an answer draws on the definition by the U.S.
journalist, essayist, and social critic, Walter Lippmann (1889–1974): “The public interest may be presumed to be what . . . [people] would choose if they saw clearly,
thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently. . . .” (Bell and Kristol, 1965,
p. 5). Yet we need to ask, “How do we know the public interest when we see it?”
(Morgan, 2001, p. 153).
As a public service duty, pursuing the public interest is conceptualized more fruitfully as a process, not as an objectively identifiable endpoint. An elusive and sweeping
obligation, its pursuit is a never-ending process made meaningful more by practice than
by a product. “It can be simultaneously seen as both a state of being and an ongoing
process. Its quality and significance are bound up in both the process of seeking it
and in the realization that it must always be pursued” (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2003,
p. 67). Terry L. Cooper (1998, p. 77) asserts, “The function served by the concept of
public interest is not so much one of defining specifically what we ought to do or even
providing operational criteria for particular decision-making problems. Rather it stands
as a kind of question mark before all official decisions and conduct.” It is a moving
target in the sense that its content changes along with timeframe and condition.
74 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

For purposes of practicality and reasonableness, the duty to pursue the public interest is defined here by two demands it makes on professionals in public service. One
demand is to reflect on its many facets, as disclosed through broad representation and
dialogue. The second demand is to engage genuinely the duties and values associated
with four aspects of public interest: democracy, mutuality, sustainability, and legacy.
Selected as the common core in many formulations, these four aspects of public interest are arrayed in Exhibit 3.1, which packages public-interest issues the way they
often come to managers concerned with who, when, democracy, and ethics; the what,
of course, is the public interest. It asks us to address sincerely each aspect in sequence
and to dismiss none.
Serving the Public Interest 75
EXHIBIT 3.1. PURSUE THE PUBLIC INTEREST.
Step 1. Touch Four Bases in Sequence . . . Dismiss None
1. Democracy: delegate, agent
How? Listen and respond, balance competing popular preferences
Values: responsiveness, receptiveness
Tools: cost/benefit analysis, public opinion polls
2. Mutuality: statesman, trustee/steward
How? Create and define community, use moral imagination and dialogue
Values: inclusion, ethics, impartiality, civic virtue
Tools: analysis of constitution, mission statement, regime and professional values
3. Sustainability: steward, sustainer
How? Preserve, protect, anticipate
Values: empathy, benevolence
4. Legacy: steward, custodian, legator
How? Preserve, transmit, educate, cherish
Values: empathy, benevolence
Step 2. Reflect on Four Principles
• Trustee Principle—Protect future generations’ interests.
• Sustainability Principle—Secure future generations’ opportunity for comparable quality
of life.
• Chain of Obligation Principle—Provide for the needs of current and coming generations
and give near-term concrete risks priority over long-term hypothetical risks.
• Precautionary Principle—Absent compelling need, avoid imposing risk of irreversible harm
or catastrophe.
Step 1 is adapted from C. W. Lewis, “In Pursuit of the Public Interest,” delivered at the 2004
Ethics Forum, national conference of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public
Administration, Portland, Oregon, March 27, 2004; the four principles in Step 2 are from the
National Academy of Public Administration, 1997, p. 7.

Across Time
Two of the four umbrella categories in Exhibit 3.1 relate to public managers’
responsibilities to the present: democratic concerns and individual or private interests
on the one hand and, on the other, mutual interests and ethics. The other two speak
to public managers’ responsibility to future generations: ensuring a viable future and
preserving and transmitting civilization’s legacy. These four categories obviously crosswalk to the many roles, values, and duties associated with public service (discussed in
Chapter One).
The centrality of democratic values, especially as a constraint on administrative
arrogance, excess, or incompetence (Morgan, 2001), drives the sequence in Step 1 in
Exhibit 3.1. Starting from a democratic base, the public manager as agent or delegate
aggregates into public action the individual, private interests articulated as political
demands. In a democracy, managers must remain responsive to citizens, or the public
interest idea degenerates into irresponsible justification of antidemocratic action.
Beware of those who wrap themselves in the common good or confidently assert
future interests; demagogues or scoundrels may try to use these to justify current
oppression and repression. The key is the context and accommodating rather than
spurning the important values, principles, or interests at stake.
By itself, this first take on the public interest is inadequate to the manager’s task
as trustee or steward. (The distinction sometimes made in the literature between trustee
and steward is not useful here, so we use the terms interchangeably.) Henry Kass (1990,
pp. 113, 129) defines stewardship as the “administrator’s willingness and ability to
earn the public trust by being an effective and ethical agent in carrying out the
republic’s business” and “signifies the achievement of both effectiveness and ethicality.” (This is the theoretical underpinning of the go/no-go model shown in Figure 2.2.)
So now the manager shifts to mutual or community concerns. The buzzwords
“the public interest” encode the obligation to search for the common ground, to find
the common threads that bind us together. We read in the Federalist Papers no. 57:
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men
who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good
of the society. . . .” Louis Gawthrop (1998, p. xiii) asserts that “the ethos of public service, so essential for the spirit of democracy to flourish, can be realized only if directed
by a moral imperative bound to the common good.” Here, then, is added an explicit
and focused moral aspect, along with a more inclusive approach to public service (but
we argue that there are moral aspects to all four categories).
The method we recommend has two components. One is community dialogue,
in part to safeguard democratic values and in part to stimulate creative resolutions.
From the postmodern or discourse perspective, “the public interest has to be socially
76 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

constructed through a dialogical process that is open and free from all forms of oppressive constraints” (Morgan, 2001, p. 172; on dialogue and accountability, see Harmon, 1995, and Roberts, 2002). The public interest is well served when the manager
adds a dose of creativity to the dialogue. Public managers are expected to “search imaginatively for a public-will-to-be. In this search, the public servant is often a leader in the
creation of a new public will” (Bailey, 1964, p. 235; see also Chapter Six on moral imagination). The second component is to draw on constitutional, regime, and professional
values. Of course, expert knowledge also is called into play.
The “public interest” idea urges public managers to live in a dynamic time warp,
with a foot in the future. Therefore, one simple test of public interest is respect for future generations, which is simple to understand but not necessarily simple to do. For
this reason, the third aspect of public interest in Exhibit 3.1, sustainability, spotlights
biological and ecological viability. The moral responsibility here rests on future generations’ vulnerability to current decisions with irreversible repercussions. Public service
in its finest sense demands looking at the long-term implications of today’s decision.
This obligation is expressed with elegant simplicity in ancient Athens’ pledge (Exhibit
2.1): “We will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful
than it was transmitted to us.”
Legacy, the fourth obligation, speaks to matters of culture, civilization, and history. It is fourth because it is logically dependent on viability. The legacy aspect of
public interest is illustrated in Exhibit 3.2.
George H. Fredrickson (1994) asks, “Can public officials correctly be said to have
obligations to future generations?” In answering, he cites the future orientation in
the pledge of ancient Athens. Let us now fast-forward to a more recent example: the
founding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO, http://portal.unesco.org) in 1945 and the adoption in 1972 of its World
Heritage Convention that seeks to protect cultural treasures and natural habitats (and
boasted 754 properties on the World Heritage List as of 2003). In his speech, “Conservation as a National Duty” to the First Conservation Conference in 1908 President
Theodore Roosevelt spoke as follows:
[He remarked] on the anomaly whereby man, as he progressed from savagery to
civilization, used up more and more of the world’s resources yet in doing so tended
to move to the city, and lost his sense of dependence on nature. Lacking that, he
also lost his foresight, and unwittingly depleted the inheritances of his children.
“We cannot, when the nation becomes fully civilized and very rich, continue to be
civilized and rich unless the nation shows more foresight than we are showing at
the moment” (Morris, 2001, pp. 516–517).
Serving the Public Interest 77

We conclude that it is widely accepted practice to extend the public for whom public interest is being explored to encompass future generations (for this reason, future
generations are included in Figure 1.1).
Across Condition
Public interest mandates that the public manager take an empathic leap across time, yes,
but across condition as well. Empathy is another test of public interest and decrees openmindedness and participation. (The latter is an important part of ethical public service
and is built directly into the agency ethics process presented in Chapter Ten.) Even
Attila the Hun, “a dubious character upon whom to base a metaphor on leadership,” is
78 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.2. FROM BOUNTY TO BOOTY.
Perhaps no recent event better illustrates the worldwide recognition of the legacy obligation to future
generations than the reaction to the looting of Iraq’s National Museum of Antiquities in Spring 2003.
When the news broke, the media, international and professional associations, and museum and archeology sites on the Internet blazed with concern and condemnation of the U.S.’s failure to safeguard
the museum. Originally, 170,000 artifacts and art treasures were reported lost, and an archaeologist
described it as “a rape of civilization” (Booth and Gugliotta, 2003). In May, the UN Security
Council’s Resolution 1483 imposed a world-wide ban on illicit trade in Iraqi cultural property
[http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/section/080103_unesco.as]. By June it was known that “only”
33 important pieces from the main collection were missing. A senior official at the Baghdad Museum
and respected archeologist, Donny George, noted, “But look, these things can never be replaced.
That is why they call them priceless” (Booth and Gugliotta, 2003, p. A12). By September, the total
count of missing pieces was reduced to about 10,000 (Bogdanos, 2003).
UNESCO, international experts, Iraqi cultural experts, INTERPOL, and others have been
active in efforts to restore and preserve the artifacts. According to Col. Matthew Bogdanos, head of
the U.S. investigation into the looting (as a marine reservist called from his work as a public prosecutor in New York City and armed with degrees in law and classical studies), of the more than 3,400
items recovered as of September 2003, more than 1,700 were returned by Iraqis under an amnesty
program, and other items have been seized in Baghdad, at checkpoints and borders, and in Jordan,
Italy, Britain, and the United States. His analysis of the evidence “suggests three dynamics at work,”
including professionals targeting more valuable items, indiscriminate looters, and insiders with access and keys. He observes, “It must be stressed that the loss of a single piece of mankind’s shared
history is a tragedy. It is equally clear that numbers cannot possibly tell the whole story. Nor should
they be the sole determinant used to assess the extent of either the damage done or the recovery
achieved” (p. D6). Bogdanos articulates the legacy obligation when he states that the pieces “are indeed the property of the Iraqi people, but, in a very real sense, they are the shared property of
mankind. I speak for all when I say we are honored to have served” (Bogdanos, 2003, p. D6).
Exhibit is adapted from C. W. Lewis, “In Pursuit of the Public Interest,” delivered at the 2004
Ethics Forum, national conference of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public
Administration, Portland, Oregon, March 27, 2004.

credited with this: “Chieftains must develop empathy—an appreciation for and an understanding of the values of others, a sensitivity for other cultures, beliefs and traditions”
(Roberts, 1987, pp. xiii, 19).
The empathy component means that public managers are stewards for all the
public, including (and, some might argue, especially) the vulnerable, dependent, and
politically inarticulate—those most likely to be overlooked in formulations of the
public interest. The result is that public managers are responsible for hearing otherwise silent voices in the process through which the public interest is defined. Now us
is broadly defined to include future generations for whom current public service is a
steward.
Empathy may demand an inventive resolution needed to overcome an “ethical impasse” (Hart, 1974) that can otherwise paralyze decision makers. Here again we call on
the moral imagination. The downside is that new means untested, and this implies risk.
Step 2 in Exhibit 3.1 discriminates between the near-term and long-term future and
between concrete and speculative risks. Very much to the point, it has been argued,
“Most risk problems can be solved only by ethical analysis and democratic process: the
most important aspect of risk is not scientific but ethical” (Shrader-Frechette, unpaginated, 1998).
The “new public administration” of the 1970s (Frederickson, 1987; Hart, 1974;
Marini, 1971) reactivated the value of benevolence (Frederickson and Hart, 1985). The
ancient obligation to do good is found in the ethical complexion of most of the world’s
religions and so is not as radical as was thought at the time. It established social equity
as a “third pillar” in public administration (Frederickson, 1990), right alongside efficiency and economy, and was elevated to another “basic operational guideline” (Hart,
1974, p. 3).
This move was heavily influenced by John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), in
which the philosopher provides an idealized method for arriving at the public interest
or general welfare. By abstracting oneself from one’s own class, status, and social circumstances, one discusses and reflects behind a “veil of ignorance”; because decision makers do not know how they would be affected by decisions, they are persuaded
to minimize their own (and descendants’) risk by choosing truly just arrangements and
institutions (Heichelbech, 2004).
The voluntary assumption of social conscience by professional public managers was
also heavily influenced by the racial, economic, and intergenerational turmoil of the
1960s. President Lyndon B. Johnson captured the ethical content in his “War on Poverty”
and “Great Society” speeches. In calling for economic and racial justice—a new social
order—he declared a war on poverty on March 16, 1964: “Because it is right, because
it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.”
An unrealistic timetable and other factors (such as the escalation of the war in
Vietnam and racial protest) bred disillusionment and a turnabout in public—especially
Serving the Public Interest 79

government—programs and duties. The rapid reversal saw the realists (cynics,
some would say) among us reject public service’s competence and therefore its legitimate intervention in the pursuit of social justice. Inescapably, however, present-day
interactions and modern interdependencies speak for coexistence. They beg for an
inclusive, empathic stance.
Is the notion of empathy idealistic? Yes, intentionally so. Idealism, too, is a public service trait mirrored in the Athenian pledge. It has been said that the notion of
ethics itself “derives from man’s imaginative power, from his tendency to idealize, to
envision perfection, to extend his selfhood in identification with humanity as a whole”
(Bergson, quoted in Boling and Dempsey, 1981, p. 14).
Is the principle of public interest antipragmatic? No, because ethical public service rejects both naïveté and cynicism. The essential moral qualities of the ethical public servant include optimism, the faith that things can be improved, and the courage
to act on that faith (Bailey, 1964, p. 236). Optimism—pragmatic, realistic, confident—
combines can do with should do. Public service is privileged to retain an old-fashioned
and hard-headed belief in the possibility and desirability of progress.
Avoiding Conflict of Interest
Public interest, like law, draws a boundary between public and personal life. As a
result, conflicts among competing roles and claims are predictable in public service.
The very separation of public from personal roles induces the potential for conflicts
of interest. (Remember that secondary relationships are among the traits of Max
Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy.) It is the logical and practical by-product of the
multiple roles shown in Figure 1.1.
Managers are ethically obligated to act through their public position on behalf of
the public interest. This standard is a public service rudder by which public managers
are expected to steer. They are expected to have personal interests but are ethically
constrained from using public office to pursue them. Public managers should anticipate conflicts and temptations but not indulge them at public expense.
The separation of public from personal often translates in practice into an ethical
(and legal) prohibition against the sale of office, as Exhibit 2.2 illustrates. The fact is that
“no public official or administrator, high or low, owns the government, his organization,
or his office. The government belongs to the public, and the administrator’s role is that
of a trustee, not a proprietor, in the use of his authority” (Graham, 1974, p. 92). This
formulation depends on the legitimacy of property and ownership (which opens it up to
distributional questions beyond the scope of our discussion). Article 17 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights formalizes a universal right to own property privately and
collectively. This right has meaning only if theft is prohibited. The United Nation’s
Anticorruption Convention, adopted in October 2003, refers to “the principles of proper
80 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

management of public affairs and public property” (italics added). Because, whether by
bribery, extortion, or otherwise, use of office for personal gain is theft, this posture effectively enthrones a prohibition against the sale of office to a global standard. It is
outright abuse of office.
The principles behind prohibiting conflict of interest include the following: maintaining impartial and independent judgment, being responsive to public interest, rejecting
private gain from office or duties, and upholding public confidence in the integrity of
public service and public servants. Russell L. Williams (2002, unpaginated) writes,
Some consider conflicts of interest to occur only when specific conflict of interest
rules or laws are broken. Many of those laws are aimed at specific issues, such as
financial disclosure, nepotism, improper use of public resources, or influence peddling. However, in the larger sense, if an individual (or group) functioning under
governmental auspices, responsible for making decisions or taking actions affecting
the public, places self-interest ahead of public interest in exercising authority, then a
conflict of interest exists.
(On how this concept has shifted toward impaired judgment or a subjective definition of interest, see Stark, 2000.)
The avoidance of conflict of interest by public servants is so widely accepted in
different societies that it ranks as orthodoxy. It persists as a standard precisely because
violations continue and typify conflicts between public and personal claims. At its most
minimal, the standard is this: use of office for personal gain for oneself or others is unethical (see Exhibit 9.4). Usually, it is also illegal.
Outright bribery—a form of sale of office—usually is prohibited outright. Exhibit
3.3 points to its historical role and political implications. According to one government
definition, “A bribe is an offer to employees of something of value to (a) do something they
should not do or (b) fail to do something they should do, in their official duties. The something of value need not be money; it can be anything of value” (U.S. Department of
Defense, 1984, p. 40). Bribery competes for the title of most unambiguous ethical offense.
There is evidence of a worldwide rejection of official bribery (Gilman and Lewis, 1996).
Some temptations do not and will not ever disappear; individuals succumb, no
matter how widely accepted the ethical standard. One example is nepotism, meaning
favoritism shown to relatives. The word’s derivation reflects its longevity and persistence. It comes from the old Italian word for nephew and refers to special favors in job
placement shown church dignitaries’ relatives in Europe centuries ago. A more recent
is from Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. Asked about awarding a contract to his
son, Daley reputedly said, “If you can’t help your family, who can you help?” (Chicago
Metro Ethics Coalition, 1989, p. 4). Today, nepotism is prohibited widely and outright.
In public service, preferential treatment for personal gain, even if not one’s own immediate gain, is unacceptable.
Serving the Public Interest 81

82 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.3. READ ALL ABOUT IT.
Why does corruption capture the headlines today, when it is such an old story?
If it were a new story, we would not read this in Deuteronomy 16:18–20: “You shall appoint
magistrates and officials for your tribes . . . and they shall govern the people with due justice. You
shall not judge unfairly; you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes….Justice, justice
shall you pursue.”
More evidence of corruption’s durability comes from ancient Athens, whose citizens pledged,
“We will never bring disgrace to this, our city, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice.” And one keystone of the British and U.S. legal systems, the Magna Carta, stipulates, “To no one will we sell, to
no one will we refuse or delay right or justice.”1
A late-seventeenth-century manual on local administration in China advises: “The magistrate
is obliged to remain impartial and render judgments strictly in accordance with the law. If, unfortunately, the magistrate is fatuous enough to accept a bribe, his impartiality will be compromised”
(Huang, 1984, p. 114).
And this is the point precisely: corruption undermines justice in principle, in fact, and in the
public’s perception of its government.
Again: If it is not new, why is corruption newsworthy? One answer is this: corruption is newsworthy when it appears systemic, endemic, and at high levels. On the scandal sheet over the past
decade, we find elected officials, appointed officials, senior staff, civil servants, nonprofit managers
and board members, educators, scientific researchers, contractors, and others. For government, corporations, foundations and charities, academia, and the media, an abbreviated list of offenses includes bribery, influence peddling, plagiarism and research falsification, and violations of contract
procedures and gift bans.
We discover a culture of corruption in our leading institutions, and this discovery is greeted
with outrage. This outrage surely is another part of the answer as to why corruption rates headlines.
Now we are betrayed. We are victims of corruption, and the cost is more than dollars—it is our confidence and trust (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).
Politicians and pundits across the country deplore the damage done by ethical lapses to the trust
deemed fundamental to a democratic political system. The data presented in Chapter One on the
“most important problem” from Gallup polls suggest that attention to corruption is scandal-driven
and short-lived. Public corruption is newsworthy and attention short-lived in the United States
because corruption is, in fact, uncommon in the more than 87,000 state and local governments. From
1980 to 2001, the number of state officials indicted for corruption in public office (a federal crime)
increased from 72 to 95 individuals; indictments of local officials declined by about 9 percent to
224 (calculated from U.S. Census, 2003, Table 340).
When our attention is once again diverted, what can we do to prevent systemic, high-level corruption? The answer relies in great measure on constitutional checks and balances among the
branches of government. Arguing in support of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison cautioned in
Federalist no. 51, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. . . . A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on
the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” So
we also rely on robust, independent watchdog institutions such as ethics commissions and campaign
finance commissions. The latter need strengthening and deserve our support. We depend on their
independence, strength, and expert staffs to combat corruption so ancient and durable that its reappearance is a sure thing.

Standard of Impartiality
The impartiality standard, which is closely tied to avoiding conflict of interest, speaks
to the possibility, even the likelihood, of bias. Public managers are ethically obligated
to promote the public interest, which demands impartiality. Because competing claims
make impartiality problematic, ethical public managers bend over backward to retain
objectivity and reduce bias in action and decision making. This can be done by steering away from any avoidable influence that may cloud vision, bias decision, or appear
as if it may.
Exhibit 3.4 illustrates this routinely frustrating, yet invariably tough, standard.
West Virginia’s Governmental Ethics Act of 1989 (Chapter 6B, Section B1.2) speaks
directly to this matter, as shown in Exhibit 3.5.
Bias stemming from political party affiliation has had a long and altogether infamous career in American public service. President Grant’s administration even today
epitomizes the problems: ineptitude, preferential treatment, and public contempt.
Terms such as party boss and machine politics conjure up the old images of public employees being required to toe the party line and donate time, money, and even votes
to partisan campaigns. Spearheading the professionalization of public service over a
century ago, the move to civil service began the divorce of public administration from
partisanship by interposing the concept and practice of “merit” (Williams, 2002).
The federal Hatch acts, enacted on the eve of World War II, sought to protect
further the public interest by forbidding partisan political activities by federal employees
and, by extension, all government employees whose jobs touch federal programs or
money. Many state and local jurisdictions followed suit. The generally recognized public service standard of impartiality rejects bias in action or decision making for reasons of political party affiliation or preference.
That the impartiality standard, like so many other things, is easier said than done
does not diminish the obligation. This is widely recognized among senior managers.
Serving the Public Interest 83
If we so depend on institutions, then, in the words of another ancient, Juvenal, “Who guards
the guardians?” This is the citizen’s responsibility in a democracy: to demand accountability, hold
leaders’ feet to the electoral fire, clamor that the link between government and justice remain
uncorrupted, and refuse to tolerate the sacrifice of public interest to personal or political gain.
The headlines inevitably remind us that this responsibility cannot be transferred, delegated,
or forgotten.
1 Note: The Great Charter of English liberty was granted (exacted by the barons, given the threat
of civil war) by King John in 1215 at Runnymede. U.S. law derives from English experience, so it
is hardly surprising that Article 2, Sec. 4 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates bribery among the
grounds for impeachment.

While some acts are clearly wrong (where the individual uses his or her office for
private gain, or for the benefit of someone with whom he or she has a private relationship), others are not so easy to characterize, such as those occasions when the
official believes he is acting in the public interest despite a private relationship
(Cowan Commission, 1989, p. 145).
The argument holds for personal policy preferences as well.
Appearance of Impropriety
Publicity is an evaluative test regularly applied to ethical choices in all spheres of life
(Rawls, 1971, p. 133). It is particularly meaningful in public service, where obligations
are linked to public confidence and trust. Public servants are expected to attend to the
public’s perception of the way their activities and decisions look and the public’s response.
It is not enough for managers just to uphold the law and be ethical. Public service must
look right, smell right, feel right; in short, it must avoid the appearance of impropriety.
On the one hand, the appearance standard is rarely, if ever, defined. On the other,
it operationalizes public confidence and public scrutiny at the level of community
84 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.4. NYC CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST BOARD’S ETHICS
GUIDE FOR PUBLIC SERVANTS.
The City’s Conflicts of Interest Law prohibits public servants from using or appearing to use their
City positions for their own personal benefit. To comply with the law, you cannot:
• Use your City position to gain any private advantage for yourself, a close family member, or anyone with whom you have a financial relationship.
• Use City resources for any non-City purpose, or disclose confidential City information to any
private person or firm.
• Accept any valuable gift from someone doing business with any City agency, or from anyone for
performing your City job.
• Take a second job with a firm, or own all or part of a firm, that has business with any City agency,
unless you receive approval from the Board and your agency.
• Enter into any kind of private financial relationship with a superior or subordinate.
• Ask a subordinate to work on a political campaign or make a political contribution.
• Take part in a not-for-profit organization’s business dealings with any City agency.
• Discuss possible future employment with a firm you are currently dealing with in your City job.
• Communicate with your former agency on behalf of a private firm for one year after you
leave City service, or ever work on a matter you personally and substantially worked on while
with the City.
Source: City of New York, undated. Internet [http://www.nyc.gov/html/conflicts/downloads/pdf/
ethicsguide.pdf] (accessed Feb. 15, 2004). Used with permission of the NYC Conflicts of Interest
Board. ©1999, 2004. All rights reserved.

standards. Although appearance is often defined as “what a reasonable person could reasonably believe,” this definition leaves a good deal to the imagination (see Exhibit 3.6).
What is an impropriety? As it appears to whom? Do facts count? In its best form, this
standard reciprocally obligates the public to be informed, which is not always the case.
Some managers interpret this appearance standard to imply that looking good
is as important as doing good. They see it as offensive, intellectually barren, or practically bankrupt. For some, it recalls the old quip about obscenity—“I can’t define it
but I know it when I see it”—and represents an unjust basis for civil or even administrative sanctions. A book on the subject is subtitled How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined
American Government, Business, and Society (Morgan and Reynolds, 1997). Because others,
such as management guru Peter Drucker (1981, p. 28), question whether the standard
involves leadership or hypocrisy, it is important to note that the American Bar Association (1980, p. 47) cautions against subordinating duty to potential misunderstanding or criticism. It also is important that the standard in Common Law for appearance
demands that the observer making judgments be both reasonable and informed.
Serving the Public Interest 85
EXHIBIT 3.5. FROM MONTGOMERY COUNTY’S ETHICS CODE.
Sec. 19A-2. Legislative findings and statement of policy.
(a) Our system of representative government depends in part on the people maintaining the highest trust in their officials and employees. The people have a right to public officials and employees who are impartial and use independent judgment.
(b) The confidence and trust of the people erodes when the conduct of County business is subject
to improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence.
Sec. 19A-14. Misuse of prestige of office; harassment; improper influence.
(a) A public employee must not intentionally use the prestige of office for private gain or the gain
of another. Performing usual and customary constituent services, without additional compensation, is not prohibited by this subsection.
(b) Unless expressly authorized by the Chief Administrative Officer, a person must not use an official County or agency title or insignia in connection with any private enterprise.
(c) A public employee must not use any County agency facility, property, or work time for personal
use or for the use of another person, unless the use is:
(1) generally available to the public; or
(2) authorized by a County law, regulation, or administrative procedure.
(d) (1) A public employee must not appoint, hire, or advocate the advancement of a relative to a position that is under the jurisdiction or control of the public employee.
(2) A relative of a public employee must not be employed in a position if the public employee:
(A) would exercise jurisdiction or control over the position; and
(B) advocates the relative’s employment.
Source: Ethics Code of Montgomery County, Maryland. Internet [http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/
gateway.dll?f=templates&fn=default.htm&vid=alp:montgomerycounty_md] (accessed Apr. 19,
2004). Used with permission.

86 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.6. APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY.
One of the most controversial concepts in public service ethics is the notion of the appearance of
impropriety. Whereas few would question the evil of impropriety in carrying out one’s public duties, many have great difficulty with the modifier “appearance.” After all, some might argue, cannot any action be falsely perceived? Does not the appearance standard leave anyone open to attacks
by the most excessive elements of the community? Is not appearance an excuse for subjective extremism? Even if all these questions are answered affirmatively, reality for those who serve the public is that the appearance of impropriety is a critical standard by which to evaluate public officials.
. . . [A]t the end of the day, it might be the most important standard by which to judge the actions
of public officials.
Appearance standards are not limited to public administrators, but also extend to legislators
and judges. In fact, many professional associations [including ASPA, ICMA, and the Association of
Government Accountants] . . . have codes that have appearance as one element. Recently, the appearance of impropriety has even been raised for private-sector companies whose multiple business
lines seem to conflict with each other (e.g., public auditing companies and their consulting firms).
Appearance standards are all derived from the English Common Law Standard of the Common Man Rule, or in its modern incarnation the Prudent Person Rule: Historically known as the
prudent or reasonable man rule, this standard does not mandate an individual to possess exceptional
or uncanny investment skill. It requires only that a fiduciary exercise discretion and average intelligence in making investments that would be generally acceptable as sound. The Prudent Person Rule
provides a model test: Would a reasonable person armed with all the facts conclude that an action
or inaction was inappropriate?
TOWARD A DEFINITION
Appearance of a conflict of interest, appearance of the loss of impartiality, and appearance of
impropriety often are used interchangeably. Although some might claim that it is valuable to refine the differences among them, for our purposes these concepts are synonymous. A claim can be
made that conflicts of interest are a subset of impropriety; however, in applied, practical cases it is
almost impossible to support the distinction. Andrew Stark has argued that appearance of impropriety can either take “a factual or a normative caste (or sometimes both). Either (a) it looks like the
official did something wrong or (b) the official did something that looks wrong” [Stark, 1995, p. 328].
In other words, an official’s action is questioned; however, no law was broken and no broadly agreedon mores were violated. Instead, people feel there should have been a law against the action (or
result), or it should be defined as an actually improper action (or result).
On a number of levels such judgments seem unfair. They are prejudiced (decided before the
facts are actually known) and also seem to smack of ex post facto laws (laws made after the action). Following Stark’s argument, in civil matters such standards of legal fairness are excessive because they assume protections inherent in criminal prosecutions (e.g., innocence until proven guilty).
. . . . In the vast majority of cases, appearance issues do not rise to criminal standards. Most
often, they are punished either politically or administratively, with the most extreme penalty being
removal from office. In addition, we assume that public officials will be held to supererogatory standards, thereby justifying the public’s trust.
Another argument against an appearance standard is that it rests on knowing one’s intention…. [But] . . . as Dennis Thompson pointed out, “because appearances are often the only
window that citizens have on official conduct, rejecting the appearance standard is tantamount to
denying democratic accountability” (Thompson, 1993, p. 376).
. . . . [I]f we understand appearance not in its juridical form, but as a way of clarifying values,
it seems to take on a wholly different character. Where a law, regulation, or rule would emphasize

Serving the Public Interest 87
a “bright-line” test of whether you violated the precept, a values approach requires balancing various principles and interests.
An additional dimension of appearance is that it is dynamic, often varying with historical tides, scandals, and changing societal mores. For example, the press and public often
ignored sexual peccadilloes in the nineteenth century when “affairs of the heart” seemed
to be part of the privilege of the ruling class. Well into the twentieth century, both Franklin
Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were purported to have long-term relationships with
mistresses. Today, the slightest hint of such a relationship would be front-page news….
SPECIFIC RULES
Attempting to clarify the concept of appearance of impropriety, numerous governments
codified the concept in the 1990s. Although this is true for a number of federal, state, and
local governments, as well as Canada and Australia, the paradigm case is the executive
branch of the U.S. federal government. In 1989, . . . President George H. W. Bush issued
Executive Order 12674, which articulated 14 general principles of government conduct,
including “employees shall endeavor to avoid any actions creating the appearance that
they are violating the law or the ethical standards promulgated pursuant to this order.”
In the executive order, President Bush further ordered the U.S. Office of Government
Ethics (OGE) to promulgate regulations to clarify and allow for enforcement of these
standards, including appearance….
[OGE’s] . . . regulation . . . provides several vignettes to illustrate how to apply the
regulation, for example: An employee of the Internal Revenue Service is a member of
a private organization whose purpose is to restore a Victorian-era railroad station and
she chairs its annual fund raising drive. Under the circumstance, the employee would
be correct in concluding that her active membership in the organization would be likely
to cause a reasonable person to question her impartiality if she were to participate in
an IRS determination regarding the tax-exempt status of the organization….
CONCLUSION
The appearance of impropriety is both a vexing and illuminating concept. It is vexing
because, although it appeals to fundamental values, it also undermines fairness. It is illuminating because it points to the extraordinary set of responsibilities of public servants,
and the growing expectations around those responsibilities held by the public. In a sense,
the appearance of impropriety is the leading edge of the organic expansion of public service ethics. Impropriety acts as a sort of tidewater mark, to which laws and regulations
ultimately rise. Dennis Thompson (1993, p. 376) calls this phenomena mediated political corruption….
Reprinted courtesy of Marcel Dekker from S. Gilman, “Appearance of Impropriety,”
Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, edited by Jack Rabin. New York:
Marcel Dekker, 2004a. Internet [http://marceldekker.com] (accessed Apr. 26, 2004).
Notes omitted.
Despite criticisms and cautions, the standard that calls for avoiding the appearance
of impropriety drives public service. In no small measure, it even defines it. But the obligation to avoid the appearance of impropriety is not intended to substitute for ethical
action. Instead and ideally, it points to the public manager’s obligation to reinforce
public perception of legitimate authority exercised on behalf of the public interest.

How are we doing in this realm? The data in Chapter One suggest the answer:
not nearly good enough. It is not just that more needs to be done in this area but that
avoiding the appearance of impropriety is an ongoing and never-ending challenge.
Three decades ago, in his 1961 message to Congress on codifying standards in federal
service, President Kennedy noted,
There can be no dissent from the principle that all officials must act with unwavering
integrity, absolute impartiality, and complete devotion to the public interest. This
principle must be followed not only in reality but in appearance.
Public Duties, Private Lives
Media revelations about U.S. Supreme Court nominees, members of Congress, presidential candidates, religious leaders, and others have embarrassed and even brought
low many in high places in recent years. Entire books have been written about the role
of scandal in U.S. politics (Garment, 1992).1 Offenses include smoking marijuana,
hiring illegal aliens, plagiarizing, sexually harassing others, engaging in pedophilia,
having government workers volunteer to do work in a private home, and attempting to
hide unsavory personal histories; other violations are petty and repeated theft, campaign finance violations, adultery, and perjury…. And the list goes on. These incidents
are newsworthy because they raise issues of judgment and character (as well as illegal behavior in some instances), and sometimes eclipse questions of policy and beliefs.
Many city managers, police chiefs, state commissioners, and others can testify that
the spotlight shines on appointed officials and career professionals as well. The impact
of public scrutiny was aptly summarized almost a half-century ago: “[E]very governmental executive lives and moves and has his being in the presence of public dynamite” (Appleby, [1945] 1987, p. 162).
Recent events trigger thoughtful but still inconclusive probing into the distinction
between public roles and private lives, a subject that has sparked debate for millennia.
Does the public’s right to know mean there is no realm of wholly private behavior unrelated to job performance and, more broadly, public trust? (See the scenario in Exhibit 1.2.) In this light, consider the case of a second-shift maintenance worker with
several years of service with the county; the employee is convicted on a minor gambling charge. Are you ethically justified in dismissing the worker?
Disclosure Standards
There really is no consensus here. Frequently, standards are limited to official action or
public activities. Federal administrative standards fall in this category. Alternatively,
standards may extend to personal realms as well. This is an ancient idea. The Oath of
88 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Hippocrates, the fifth-century B.C. Greek physician, stipulates, “With purity and with
holiness I will pass my life and practice my art.” The International Association of
Chiefs of Police’s Oath of Honor states, “On my honor, I will never betray my badge,
my integrity, my character, or the public trust. Its Law Enforcement Code of Ethics
says, “I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all and will behave in a
manner that does not bring discredit to me or to my agency.” The ICMA’s ethics code
(2002) obligates members to “Be dedicated to the highest ideals of honor and integrity
in all public and personal relationships in order that the member may merit the respect and confidence of the elected officials, of other officials and employees, and of
the public.”
In 1974, Washington State’s Supreme Court articulated a standard that is readily extended beyond elected officials to appointees and employees. In some respects, it
amounts to the compelling interest justification:
The right of the electorate to know most certainly is no less fundamental than
the right of privacy. When the right of the people to be informed does not intrude
upon intimate personal matters which are unrelated to fitness for public office, the
candidate or officeholder may not complain that his own privacy is paramount to
the interests of the people (quoted in Weimer, 1990, p. 15).
When the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the disclosure of a teacher’s sickleave records, Chief Justice Ellen A. Peters declared, “We note that when a person accepts public employment, he or she becomes a servant of, and accountable to, the
public. . . . As a result, that person’s reasonable expectation of privacy is diminished,
especially in regard to the dates and times required to perform public duties.” And the
Freedom of Information Commission’s executive director opined, “While some say
it’s a privacy issue, I see it as a public accountability issue” (Tuohy, 1993, pp. C1, 13).
Dennis Thompson (1981) suggests that high office and high visibility march in
step with the public’s right to know. Recent experience suggests these same factors
affect the likelihood of public disclosure. Some of these issues are illustrated in an administrative setting described in Exhibit 3.7.
The Press Pass
What makes a person fit or unfit for public service is a consideration for the media
no less than for the public person who works under the glare of the spotlight or the
threat of disclosure. Visibility cues vulnerability; exposure increases the higher one
climbs in public life. Other determining factors may include public and private, youth
and adult, community standards, public record, and character indicators. Although
the media exercise selectivity, nothing is inherently excluded. According to the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics (1996), “Ethical journalists treat sources,
Serving the Public Interest 89

subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.” Members should
“[r]ecognize that private people have a greater right to control information about
themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.”
The preamble states, “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that
public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.”
For the media, self-censorship means filtering the public’s right to know. The competition over news—to break a story or at least not be caught napping—is also
compelling. People make a better “story angle” for television viewing than abstract
ethical or technical issues. Hypocrisy, greed, sexual exploits, and the like give events
a “personal touch.” They help an exposé “reach a critical mass,” allowing that the
“ability to reduce complicated events to colorful drama is the key to a scandal’s market value” (Kurtz, 1989, p. D5). As a result, the civics conversation tends to be “conceptually narrow and impoverished” (Jennings, 1989b, p. 23). “The quality of
deliberation in a democracy is debased when sensationalist exposés of private activities displace discussions of questions of public policy” (Thompson, 1981, p. 225).
90 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.7. PUBLIC WORKS.
Joe has lived in this city of 25,000 residents most of his life, and now he is a civil engineer and the
public works director. He’s invited several neighbors and friends, some of whom work with him at
City Hall, to his home for cocktails to mark the holiday season. He agrees cordially when a neighbor asks whether she may bring along her dinner guest—a reporter for the local newspaper. Unfortunately, Joe succumbs to too much holiday spirit and drunkenly collapses in the kitchen before
the guests depart.
• Has Joe done anything unethical, or has he just been stupid?
• Should the reporter print the story?
• Is Joe’s home a protected reserve?
Changing the circumstances clarifies the mode of reasoning and pinpoints critical factors in making judgments. Closed questions force decision making; open-ended questions encourage analysis.
Would your answers to the three preceding questions change if
• Joe’s drinking were habitual, perhaps affecting his performance on the job?
• Joe had made several racist remarks during the party?
• Joe were chief administrative officer in a city of 300,000?
Would your answers to the first two questions change if it had been an office party in a local
restaurant?
Do the public opinion polls affect your answers? Should public opinion affect a manager’s
ethical choices?

Do people in public life have a right to any privacy? Balancing privacy with the
public’s right to know becomes more troublesome as the speed, capacity, and standards
of disclosure change. Today so much is public record that it is hard to distinguish
privacy from anonymity. The functional equivalent of puritan New England’s public
pillory is the nightly news, but with at least one big difference. Not too long ago, private peccadilloes were isolated from public responsibilities. Public scrutiny (and public voyeurism) was limited by technology and convention. At one time, living a lifetime
in a small town meant that friends and neighbors knew everybody’s secrets, but
anonymity was within a few day’s ride on horseback. Today our neighbors may not
know our names, but personal matters are headlines for the entire world to see. In some
respects, modern life has turned the public and private domains inside out.
Public-Private Boundary
Although it is squarely in the American political tradition to apply one set of standards
of behavior to the private citizen and another to a public figure, we have not yet developed selective material criteria. Beginning with George Washington, presidents have
made great public contributions more significant historically than their private mischief, including their love lives. Ralph Chandler (1989b, p. 1) calls for “moral grandeur”
in making judgments rather than in making grand demands on someone else’s behavior. On the other hand, historically the criticisms of the president (even George
Washington) have been harsh. The accusations made by the Federalist press during
the Jefferson administration would make even today’s caustic commentators pale.
Is “appearance of impropriety” a code term (pun intended) for higher standards
or double standards? Is it an excuse for titillation at the expense of public officials and
employees? Can we separate what is trivial or irrelevant from what is meaningful?
Should we distinguish a youngster’s misstep from a character defect in the mature manager? Some have suggested that we apply to those in public life a statute of limitations
or proclaim an amnesty (Raspberry, 1987, p. A27). The courts use a “least restrictive
means” test for curbs on individual liberties. Cannot a comparable standard be developed for public appointees and employees? Should a line be drawn between pertinent public and private behavior? If so, where? And by whom?
When ethics is politically—and cynically—abused for partisan purposes, public
managers and employees, their morale, and the image of government all get hit in the
crossfire. Who gets blamed and takes the heat? Which agency, which manager, which
political party? The current stew is heavily spiced with partisan ingredients. Given
ethical charges and accusations, “the very language of political judgment has become
suspect and subsequently debunked” (Jennings, 1989a).
If the test of competence includes perfection, then we are doomed to disillusionment and to the loss of public confidence. Therefore, the obligation to maintain
Serving the Public Interest 91

the public trust must not degenerate into spouting sanctimonious platitudes or feeding vulgar curiosity. The genuine obligation depends on meeting meaningful standards
and intelligible guidelines.
Pressing Business
There are at least five lessons for the public manager in all this: (1) use common sense,
(2) go on record, (3) establish ethical credibility, (4) tell it as it is, and (5) tell it as it should
be. Let us take them one at a time.
1. Use common sense. Be realistic. Learn what to expect from the media—nothing;
that is its calling and professional duty. Be prepared for special scrutiny, not special treatment.
2. Go on record. Professional survival skills include making it difficult to be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or misquoted. Giving good interviews and writing good
press releases are useful professional skills. Although professional standards may
urge anonymity, a public manager may not always have a choice in the matter.
3. Establish ethical credibility. Take a hand in training; help break in media novices to
establish a good working relationship and personal rapport and to expose them to
the legal and professional standards operating in the jurisdiction. This exposure
can include workaday ethical choices and even a crisis or two. (See Chapter Ten,
concluding this book.)
4. Tell it as it is. Tell the truth. Let the media know they are dealing with a person they
can trust. Lying is both unethical and impractical. Surely, we all make mistakes;
the key is to admit them and not repeat them. Ethics restrains deception but does
not prevent error.
5. Tell it as it should be. The fifth and final proposal shifts from self-protection to plea
bargaining. It invokes a senior manager’s responsibility to protect a blameless subordinate who is unjustly accused. It also invokes the value of compassion, which
is more compelling when not self-serving. If an otherwise promising subordinate
with a valid excuse (meaning a reason to be treated as if innocent) is threatened,
a manager can call out the artillery: reason. One forceful argument is that only
hypocrites will respond to a call for perfection. Another is the need to allow for
human error and personal growth. The public manager can also urge caution
along with compassion by suggesting that even when moral judgments are wrong,
the personal damage persists. Also the senior manager is responsible for who does
what on his watch. The senior manager’s purpose here is to speak up, not cover
up, and keeping subordinates’ trust demands both charity and courage.
92 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

When operating under public scrutiny, the manager’s acid test is whether he or
she would like to read all about it on the front page of the local newspaper. Imagine,
too, explaining that behavior or decision to family and friends. To safeguard personal
integrity in the face of public disclosure, another important test consists of asking and
answering some hard questions. What kind of person would do this? Do I want to
be and be known as this kind of person? This approach is shown in Exhibit 3.8.
Nonprofit organizations and charitable organizations in particular have been in
the spotlight in recent years. Among them is the American Red Cross (the subject of
the case concluding this chapter) and the U.S. Olympic Committee, which concludes
Chapter Ten. The INDEPENDENT SECTOR, Better Business Bureau, Urban Institute’s
Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, and scholars (for example, Light, 2002) have
scrutinized fundraising, finances, and more. (See Resource B for nonprofit Internet
sites.) In response, national umbrella organizations developed model codes and accountability standards that recognize that these organizations’ lifeblood is donors’ confidence and trust.
Serving the Public Interest 93
EXHIBIT 3.8. AUDIT DECISIONS AGAINST FOUR STANDARDS.
˛ The mirror test for integrity asks,
“What kind of person do I admire and want to be?”
˛ The publicity test for accountability asks,
“Am I willing to read about this in the newspaper? Tell my family?”
˛ The visceral test for implementation and authenticity asks,
“Am I willing and likely to follow through? Can I live with this?”
˛ The signature test symbolizes personal responsibility and asks,
“Do I take public responsibility for this recommendation, analysis, or decision?”
Signed __________________________________________
Date _______________________
Case: In the Black with the Red Cross
September 11, 2001, is scarred into the contemporary consciousness. The horrific images simply are unforgettable; symbols of U.S. economic and military power were attacked, and thousands of innocent victims fell to terrorism.
The American Red Cross (ARC) was there, helping tens of thousands of people
made homeless and families in despair because of the loss of loved ones, and providing support to an untold number coping with this national tragedy (see Exhibit 3.9).

Propelled by a desire to help somehow, Americans and people from all over the globe
responded by sending money to the Red Cross. In the first six months, over $850 million had been donated to the Red Cross’s 9/11 relief fund, the Liberty Fund.
In the past, Red Cross executives have steadfastly said the organization’s policy
was to state in its appeals for funds that money collected in the wake of an event would
be used for “this disaster or similar disasters.” Some community groups countered that
the statement often was overwhelmed by gripping images of local victims and the use
of local addresses as mail-in sites. The implication in the Red Cross advertising was that
the money was to be used to address the tragedy of 9/11 in some way. Some cosponsors also emphasized this theme, for example, by saying “A portion of the profits from
X will go to Red Cross’ Liberty Fund to help survivors of 9/11.”
Local Red Cross leaders in at least a half-dozen areas of the country hit by large
disasters in the past decade have said they have had to pressure the Red Cross to release millions of dollars in donations that the public intended for their communities.
Criticism dates to at least 1989, after the San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake, and
continued through the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1997 Red River flood
in parts of Minnesota and North Dakota. In these cases, local officials said the Red Cross
launched emotional appeals after each disaster that tapped into a charitable outpouring, and then delayed spending portions of the money locally until community
leaders protested. In early 2001, victims of San Diego wildfires waited for money
earmarked for them while funds were spent on vehicles and a telephone system upgrade for the local Red Cross chapter, an audit found.
The Donor Expectations Survey—a national survey sponsored by the Better Business Bureau’s (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance and conducted by Princeton Survey Research
Associates in Spring 2001—finds,
When people are asked to weigh the importance of many different kinds of
information, they rate two other areas almost as important to their giving decisions as charity finances—the accuracy of a charity’s advertising and promotion
94 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.9. SNAPSHOT OF THE RED CROSS.
In 1863, Henri Dunant and other Swiss nationals established the International Committee for
Relief to the Wounded and initiated the humanitarian movement now known as the Red Cross.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was founded in Paris by five
national societies (Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States) in 1919 and has 178 recognized societies today.
Founded in 1881, the American Red Cross has been operating under congressional charter for
more than a century. The avowed mission of the American Red Cross is to “prevent and alleviate
human suffering wherever it may be found” and its “purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being” (American Red Cross, 2002a).

(73% very important) and the effectiveness of a charity’s programs (70% very
important). The public’s broader informational agenda is underscored by the
finding that two-thirds (67%) of adults would not want an independent watchdog organization that monitors charities to focus exclusively on charity finances,
but instead report on many different aspects of charity operations. The public’s
other priorities include information about the truthfulness and accuracy of
fund-raising appeals (rated “very important” by 81%), willingness to disclose
information about operations (80% “very important”), and the effectiveness of
a charity’s programs in achieving their purpose or mission (70% “very important”)” (Better Business Bureau, 2001, p. 2).
The report concludes, “Public trust in charities today is stable, an improvement
from the declining confidence that characterized the public mood in the early 1990s”
(p. 5).
The Red Cross reversed course in November, 2001, in its handling of a fund drive
for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (American Red Cross, 2001). Responding to
public criticism, the Red Cross backed off plans to reserve some of its so-called Liberty
Fund for long-term projects, promising that all donations would be used for the victims of terrorism. Its board of governors adopted the changes on the recommendation of the organization’s new chief executive officer in charge of a $3 billion operation.
Active fundraising ceased for the Liberty Fund, now pledged to remain a separate, segregated fund. By this time, $137 million of the $543 million raised had been spent
from the Liberty Fund.
Acting on complaints from donors to the Red Cross and critical reports about its
post-September 11 fundraising (Washington Post, 2002a), the BBB asked the Red Cross
in February 2002 for information to help determine whether it still meets bureau standards for charities. The Red Cross was criticized for initially saying it would use some
money for projects unrelated to the attacks.
By June 2002, the fund had raised almost a $1 billion. That same month, in response to criticism from the BBB and other charitable watchdog groups, the Red Cross
issued a press release that tried to put these concerns to rest (American Red Cross,
2002b). The organization’s external auditor, KPMG, issued an unusual audit statement
that covered the disbursements from the 9/11 fund through October 31, 2001, and
another audit of fund activities for the period September 11, 2001, through June 30,
2002. The unqualified audit statements (“no material weaknesses in internal controls”)
were used to buttress the Red Cross’s argument that it was discharging its fiduciary responsibility (or proper stewardship) of the funds. It was certainly the case that professional accounting rules were followed.
This did not satisfy external watchdogs. In August 2002, the BBB’s Council released
its evaluation of the Red Cross (Better Business Bureau, 2002). Using its twenty-three
criteria for charitable solicitations, the BBB determined that the Red Cross failed to meet
two of these criteria, thereby losing its status as an approved charity of the BBB.
Serving the Public Interest 95

Criterion 1:
1. 9/11 donations were being used for broader purposes than solicitations
indicated.
2. Appeals that did disclose the Red Cross’s intention to spend funds on broader
purposes did not do so in a clear and conspicuous manner that would be reasonably understood by potential donors given the circumstances of 9/11.
Criterion 5:
Some corporate sponsors that the Red Cross made agreements with did not
disclose what portion of the profits would benefit 9/11 victims and their families but nonetheless used the fund as a marketing tool.
Hard on the heels of criticism that it should be clearer about how it uses disaster
donations, the Red Cross announced significant changes in its advertising and public
solicitations. A major policy shift saw the Red Cross acknowledge that it had not clearly
explained to donors that funds contributed to a local disaster could wind up being
used anywhere in the country for other relief efforts. Now the charity will notify the
public when the costs of a disaster have been met, and it will stop using prominent
references to local disasters in fundraising for its national Disaster Relief Fund.
“One lesson from that controversy,” Red Cross Chairman David McLaughlin said,
“is that the public expects greater accountability from the Red Cross and other large
charities. We need to be more transparent. We need to be totally clear in our message.
We need to clarify donor intent, document that donor intent and affirm that donor intent so there is no misunderstanding” (Washington Post, 2002b).
As part of the group’s new program, donors who make undesignated contributions to the Disaster Relief Fund will be asked to confirm that they understand how their
donations will be used before the money is accepted. They also will receive a written
acknowledgment to reconfirm their intent.
Charity watchdogs and members of Congress generally applauded the changes.
Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said, “People think hard about how much they
can afford and where their money will do the most good. Charities should treat them
accordingly” (Washington Post, 2002b, A9).
The BBB’s Standards for Charity Accountability went into effect in March 2003
and “recommend ethical practices beyond the act of disclosure in order to ensure public confidence and encourage giving. As voluntary standards, they also go beyond the
requirements of local, state and federal laws and regulations” (Better Business Bureau,
2003b). In May 2003, the BBB’s reevaluation found that the Red Cross meets its
solicitation standards. “After a review of copies of recent Red Cross appeals, the Alliance concluded that the Red Cross has demonstrated it has implemented its previously announced plans to change its disaster appeal language to help donors
understand how their gift will be used” (Better Business Bureau, 2003a, unpaginated).
As of March 2003, the Liberty Disaster Relief Fund had received more than $1 billion in donations and had disbursed about 77 percent (Better Business Bureau, 2003a).
◆◆◆
96 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Discussion Questions
1. Should nonprofit and charitable organizations be held to a high fiduciary standard? Why? Is the Red Cross being held to an unreasonable standard in this case?
What should one consider in answering these questions?
2. Should charities, if they are given more money than they need for one project,
shift the funds to other worthy projects that are underfunded? Otherwise, what
should they do? Return it or spend it needlessly? What principles and ethical perspectives apply here?
3. What ethical obligations do nonprofit organizations and charitable organizations
in particular owe to donors?
4. Often working closely with government agencies when responding to emergencies and a federal instrumentality by virtue of its congressional charter (1905), the
American Red Cross is required to fulfill responsibilities delegated by the federal
government (including providing family communications for U.S. military personnel). The IRS gives charities nonprofit status (501c3), which means they are exempt from taxes and some other forms of government regulation. (See Figure I.1.)
Given this special relationship and the need for public confidence and trust, does
government have an obligation to ensure proper stewardship, or should this issue
be worked out without government intervention, perhaps in the marketplace?
5. In this case, did the Red Cross operate in the public interest? Why should or should
not this be among its concerns? Some might argue that, for nonprofits, “The challenge . . . is for the board of directors to provide direction and leadership while
meeting the competing needs of multiple stakeholders, as well as reconciling the
rival demands of both the fiduciary principle and the common good principle”
(Groudine and Miller, 2002, p. 124). Do you agree or disagree, and why?
◆◆◆
Note
1. If the truth be known, the only dirty book in our offices is Kenneth W. Starr’s report on alleged financial improprieties (Whitewater) and perjury and obstruction and obstruction of justice (Lewinsky scandal) delivered by the Office of the
Independent Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives. The New York Times
Web site devoted to the Starr Report (http://www.time.com/time/daily/scandal/
starr_report/files) shows the following warning: “The following report contains
sexually explicit language.”
Serving the Public Interest 97

98
This chapter converts public service obligations into general guides to ethical action in public agencies by drawing on the idea of individual responsibility in both
everyday and extreme bureaucratic experiences. The chapter confronts central facts of
managerial life: individuals work in organizational settings, exercise discretion, and ply
their expertise. We start by warning against substituting scapegoating for problem solving. Then we move from individual responsibility to responsibility for means and ends
and, finally, to professional competence. A concluding case puts the action guides to work.
Ethical principles are guides to action; they operationalize values and cue behavior
that is befitting public service. Three clusters of action-driving principles stem directly from
legal compliance and public interest, core ethical obligations in public service, and the
definition of ethics. These action guides point to individual responsibility, substantive responsibility, and competence. The level of generality thwarts a formula-like application, which is all to the good. Ethical decision making demands individual judgment, and
workaday problems are so diverse and so complex that even an encyclopedic compilation would not cover all possibilities. The goal is to guide action, not stymie or dictate it.
Searching for Demons
Most principles, in their exaggerated or absolutist versions, are shaky, even suspect.
Thus demanding individual responsibility can decline into preoccupation with allocating blame, ferreting out the guilty, and finding the one at fault. This outcome is
CHAPTER FOUR
TAKING INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
Y

encouraged by the fact that individual wrongdoing is easy to understand, or at least easier than legalistic abstractions or systemwide flaws. As a result, we occasionally try to
dodge difficult issues by finger-pointing. Sometimes we use a person as an example or
escape hatch: victor, villain, or victim. Diversionary tactics and scapegoating are ethically unsound. Often they are not even very useful in the long run and are trivial
subplots in passionate dramas over profound ethical issues.
Three incidents corroborate the generic quality of the diversion-scapegoat proposition. In 1968, almost six hundred largely unarmed and unresisting civilians were massacred at My Lai in Vietnam. U.S. soldiers in Charlie Company under platoon leader
Lieutenant William L. Calley were directly responsible. The ex-serviceman whose letter originally provoked the investigation, Ron Ridenhour, said in an interview two
decades later (Cockburn, 1988, p. 403), “The important thing is, this was an act of
policy, not an individual aberration. My Lai didn’t happen because Lieutenant Calley
went berserk. There were similar acts of policy all over the country. I mean, every once
in a while they decided they would make an example.” (Note that Ridenhour’s letter
begins the ethics chapter in West Point’s 1985 textbook on leadership [U.S. Military
Academy, 1985, pp. 21–1]).
In time, the army charged about two dozen officers and enlisted men with direct involvement in the massacre but convicted only Calley, who wound up serving
three years under house arrest. William Wilson, the army colonel in the inspector general’s office who handled and later wrote about the investigation, quoted General Peers:
“The failure to bring justice to those who inflicted the atrocity casts grave doubts upon
the efficacy of our justice system.” Wilson concludes, “I do remember being startled
when the public seemed to make a hero out of Rusty Calley, or at the least a victim.
It sure didn’t look that way from up close” (Wilson, 1990, p. 53).
The American response to the massacre at My Lai is worth comparing to the thenSoviet Union’s response to the disaster at Chernobyl. Pravda, the Soviet Communist
Party’s newspaper, blamed plant managers for ignoring safety measures in “cleaning
up” after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in April 1986. Although charges ran the
gamut from nepotism and drunkenness to management abuses, the main point is that
blaming plant managers for stressing power production at any cost,” including repair and maintenance, obscures the realities of pressure from Moscow to increase energy output (Keller, 1988). Undoubtedly, that pressure was linked to the accident in
the first place. Although many acts of personal courage marked the events, the irresponsibility and ineptitude of scientists, senior officials, and government workers in
the planning, construction, and operational phases contributed to the tragedy to which
Soviet physicist and then-dissident Andrei Sakharov attributed universal significance
(Sakharov, 1991, p. viii).
In May 2004, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning
the abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and calling for a full investigation.
Taking Individual Responsibility 99

The U.S. Army general, whose March 2004 report described abuses by American soldiers and interrogators, “was shaped by that strong moral compass and by his vision
of the Army as a noble calling” (Jehl, 2004, unpaginated). In his May 2004 testimony
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he identified the cause: “Failure in leadership from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision” (quoted in Jehl, 2004, unpaginated). “At the end of the
day, a few soldiers and civilians conspired to abuse and conduct egregious acts of
violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international laws
and the Geneva Convention” (quoted in Branigin, 2004, p. A04). Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld said, “It is a body blow when we find that we have . . . a few who
have betrayed our values by their conduct” (quoted in Semple, 2004, unpaginated).
The individuals charged with misconduct are on trial. It is too soon to tell whether organizational responses will be taken. The fact that, as one journalist points out in the
headline, “Only a Few Spoke Up on Abuse as Many Soldiers Stayed Silent,” suggests that an organizational response is needed (Zernike, 2004).
The purpose behind the storytelling is not to defend the indefensible; in fact, some
individual public servants have committed reprehensible deeds. The infamous Ramparts scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s started with the arrest of “one bad cop” but spread so far and swept up so many that the department
came under federal supervision (Cannon, 2000). The central allegations revolve around
revelations provided by former LAPD officer Rafael A. Perez, who stole eight pounds
of seized cocaine from a department locker and received a lighter sentence in exchange
for information about police corruption.
Most of the charges involve the anti-gang CRASH (Community Resources
Against Street Hoodlums) unit operating in a neighborhood just west of downtown,
known as the Rampart Division (Booth and Sanchez, 1999). Our purpose here is to
emphasize that individual responsibility is by no means identical to sole responsibility.
These stories have a perverse ending: a search for demons functions as a sorry
substitute for solving systemic shortcomings or organizational flaws. (By way of contrast, see Exhibit 4.1.) According to the U.S. Military Academy text (1985, pp. 21–23),
Whether the My Lai incident . . . is interpreted as simply the fault of a few weak
or flawed characters who happened to hold key leadership roles or is seen instead
as symptomatic of a complex organizational phenomenon, moral failure on such
a scale . . . illustrates the awesome importance of the ethical dimensions of organizational leadership.
Accountability is not just a military or government problem but a bureaucratic one.
The Columbia tragedy in 2003, like the Challenger disaster in January 1986 in which
corporate executives and engineers played a crucial role, testifies to its immediacy
and magnitude. Melvin J. Dubnick (personal communication, June 15, 2004) argues:
100 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Taking Individual Responsibility 101
EXHIBIT 4.1. THE TRAGEDY OF MISSION STS-107.
The Columbia Space Shuttle Mission STS-107 was lost on February 3, 2003, sixteen minutes before scheduled touchdown. In one journalist’s eyes, “In so many ways, the shuttle was a machine
made from the raw material of the American character. Columbia embodied calculated risk” (Hotz,
2003, unpaginated). Sean O’Keefe, the relatively new head of NASA, within hours appointed an
independent investigatory panel—the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB [http://
www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html]). Its head, Admiral Harold Gehman (who had led the
panel investigating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole) testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on May 14, 2003: “If we find that something could have been done, then the benign
bureaucratic decisions made earlier take on a whole new significance.”
Some questions asked during the Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing centered on just
who in NASA was responsible for rejecting the offered satellite images of possible damage to the
shuttle. Gehman spoke of “missed signals going up and going down” NASA’s hierarchy. He “blamed
NASA’s system, not any individuals, and said there was ‘not one person responsible’” (Recer, 2003,
unpaginated).
The CAIB report concludes that NASA’s “failings include an institutional culture that plays
down problems, as well as constraints from Washington that may have reduced the ability to reach
space safely” (Schwartz, 2003, unpaginated; currently unavailable).
On what it terms NASA’s organizational culture, CAIB (2003, notes omitted) reports,
The CAIB also investigated communications procedures between NASA engineers and
managers. The nature of [the] Shuttle program is complex, given the high level of technology used and the multiple civilians, contractors, and Centers involved, each integral
to the success of the program. CAIB found the need to communicate effectively between the
individuals and organizations involved in the Shuttle program to be paramount, given
the technology, and risk involved.
Pressure to stay on an existing launch schedule and inadequate resources also are considered to be
contributing factors of the STS-107 accident. CAIB also found that NASA’s safety program falls
short of achieving the level of safety necessary for the shuttle program. As a result, CAIB recommended that the safety system at NASA be restructured.
Accountability matters, but not in the way most people think. Those who believe
that greater accountability is the key to justice, democracy, ethical behavior or
better administrative performance have yet to prove their case. They have little
to offer except rhetoric and unsubstantiated assumptions to support their calls
for reform. What we do know is that accountability in its many and varied forms
can provide effective protection against the thoughtlessness that Hannah Arendt
warned against in her elaboration of the “banality of evil.” On those grounds
alone we should make every effort to enhance accountable governance.
(On public service accountability, see Behn, 2001; Bovens, 1998; Gormley and Balla,
2004; Romzek and Dubnick, 1987.)

A public manager’s first task is to fix the problem and only secondarily to fix the blame. These
incidents demonstrate the need for both ethically supportive organizations and ethically responsible individuals.
We Are Individually Responsible for Our Decisions
and Behavior
Ethics rests on voluntary moral judgment, with the individual as ethical player.
Rephrased, this idea means individual responsibility for making judgments and choices.
Logically, decision making turns on selecting and accepting responsibility. The problem of individual responsibility within an organizational framework is often referred
to as the problem of “many hands” (Thompson, 1980). However, individual responsibility is not obliterated by collective decision making in organizations and agencies.
Because most of us work in organizations most of the time, arguing otherwise would
put ethics (along with contemporary civilization) on the endangered species list.
The organizational habitat of public managers affects decision making, action,
and ethical analysis. The ecology features implicit norms, predominant values, established routines, underlying decision premises, and pressures for obedience and loyalty
(for example, rewarding the team player). To these are added explicit policies, procedures, and routines. Public administrators need to be and usually are attuned to the
organizational context of decision making.
Through selective recruitment and the imbibing of organizational habits and
group norms (socialization processes), many—but not all—organizational members
come to identify strongly with the organization and absorb its standards as their
own. Hierarchical, peer, and career pressure is not just a classroom theory, as the case
concluding this chapter illustrates. Many public managers have recounted to us the
pressures they feel to compromise their personal values and standards of behavior.
And they are not alone.
Harvard researchers found in their study of one hundred young professionals that
the subjects professed themselves willing to compromise their integrity to advance their
careers (Rimer, 2003). In its 2003 National Business Ethics Survey of 1,500 U.S. private sector workers, the Ethics Resource Center (Ethics Resource Center, 2003) found,
“Nearly a third of respondents say their coworkers condone questionable ethics practices by showing respect for those who achieve success using them.” ERC describes
“observed misconduct” and “pressures to compromise ethics standards” as “key indicators of ethics-related problems in the workplace.” It reports that both have declined since the 2000 survey: observed misconduct from 31 percent to 22 percent and
pressure from 13 percent to 10 percent.
102 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

In some cases, the identification becomes extreme. “Their job contract with bureaucracy soon becomes a psychological contract” (Hummel, 1987, p. 7). As a result,
“what is likely to be substituted for ethical deliberation is an application of the individual’s
understanding of the norms and values of the organization” (Denhardt, 1988, p. 91).
The bureaucratic mentality (or, more accurately, bureaucratic dispositions; Heclo,
1987) applies to large-scale corporate cultures and nonprofit organizations, along with
governmental ones. Bureaucracy is not solely a governmental trait; it is the way contemporary society organizes joint action to perform complex tasks. Some experts view
bureaucracy as inherently constricting, pathological, amoral, or even immoral. Others,
such as Charles Goodsell in The Case for Bureaucracy (2004) and James Q. Wilson in
Bureaucracy (1990), counter with contrary evidence and arguments. Beneath these broad
generalizations lies a mix of cultures, missions, procedures, and other characteristics.
Bureaucracy is neither uniform nor monolithic, and bureaucrats are not of one face
or one mind.
Although stereotyping does injustice to all employees, organizations do exert pressures on members to conform. The pressures can be for better or for worse. A public position
itself is ethically neutral—used for good or bad, right or wrong—until people use it
or, rather, abuse it for something other than solving people problems and meeting the
mission. Peter Drucker (1989, p. 229) explains: “Management is about human beings.
Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
Mutually restraining interaction between the individual and organization is an
institution’s danger and its promise, and it is precisely the point of building ethically
supportive agencies. At any rate, while organizational demands may challenge individual responsibility, they do not erase it.
The ethical benchmarks of the twentieth century (itemized in Resource A) teach
us that bureaucracy is powerful, but power is neutral, that is, it can be used for great
good as well as great evil. The very fact that these benchmarks are extreme cases helps
crystallize issues and clarify thinking. By definition, they do not reflect daily routine in
public service. The distance and magnitude of awesome events sometimes make them
useful learning devices. Both heroic behavior and heinous behavior direct our attention to the interplay between individuals and organizations and their capacity for good
and evil.
In this light, consider the Nuremberg Charter of 1947. It specified the procedures
and principles underlying the trial of the major Nazi war criminals by the victorious
allies (the United States, France, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union) after
World War II. On making decisions and giving orders, Part II, Article 7 of the charter states, “The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from
responsibility or mitigating punishment.”
Taking Individual Responsibility 103

SO IT FOLLOWS THAT WE CANNOT HIDE BEHIND OUR BOSS
OR OUR DESK TO ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY.
In the organizational habitat, the manager’s niche is defined as a particular spot
in the chain of command, the hierarchy of legitimate authority. Here deference to
superior-subordinate relations generally and routinely prevails. It is supposed to do so.
But neither discipline nor obedience defines the boundaries of subordinates’ ethical
responsibility. (See the section “Disobedience Before Illegality” in Chapter Two.)
Moral outrage, incomprehension, or both are usual responses to the notorious
words of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official kidnapped to Israel, tried by an Israeli
court, then hanged in 1962. Denying legal culpability and ignoring ethical responsibility, his defense is popularly rendered as “I was only following orders.” On taking orders, Part II, Article 8 of the Nuremberg Charter states, “The fact that the defendant
acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from
responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment.”
The former prison psychologist at Nuremberg notes the “psychologically aberrant
nature of an adult person who defines good and evil merely as synonyms for obedience
and disobedience to one’s superiors” (Miale and Selzer, 1975, p. 6). Hannah Arendt’s
thesis in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1964) is that ordinary people are capable of doing evil. Stanley Milgram’s well-known psychological experiments
on obedience in the early 1960s required subjects at Yale University to inflict painful
electric shocks that were, unknown to them, counterfeit (Milgram, 1983, and Ochs
and Whitford, 2004). Arendt’s and Milgram’s works are often marshaled as evidence
of how easy it is to unthinkingly obey authority and ignore questions of right and
wrong, good and evil.
Maybe so on both counts, but that does not justify the behaviors or make them
ethical. Guy B. Adams (personal communication, June 16, 2004) notes,
When the damaged or dead human beings are visible in the managerial rear-view
mirror and colleagues reassure you that it was the right thing to do or that you
were “just following orders,” it is too late for you to reflect on whether “marking”
a group of people as “superfluous” (less than human, a “disease,” or “insects,” or
“vermin”) might lead to administrative evil.
(On administrative evil, see Adams and Balfour, 1998).
Although few indulge themselves in outright evil and fewer still in righteousness,
people are evidently influenced by authority, by apathy, by thoughtlessness, and by
their environment. Take a moment to think about the results of ceding responsibility
for moral reasoning. Renowned Italian author and Holocaust survivor, Primo Levy,
draws on his experience as an inmate at Auschwitz: “Monsters exist. . . . But they are
104 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are . . . the functionaries
ready to believe and to act without asking questions” (quoted in Hochschild, 1998,
p. 121).
Think about the willingness of many, though not all, of Milgram’s subjects to inflict shocks on human subjects who were already in pain. (The shocks were sham, as
was the participants’ pain, but the subjects didn’t know that.) As a counterbalance,
keep in mind that a member of Calley’s platoon refused to shoot; Sherron Watkins
blew the whistle on Enron (Solomon, 2004); some speak up (Zernike, 2004), and some
step up. The individual and the setting interact. But whether that setting is a help or a
hurdle, the individual is still the responsible agent.
Blaming one’s own unscrupulous behavior on circumstance or other people is a
well-worn excuse, summarized by Machiavelli in The Prince:
A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily
come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore it is necessary for a
prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use
this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.
Even if one accepts the personal utility argument, being coerced into it by rogues,
villains, or one’s boss does not make the behavior any more ethical.
To act as ethical agents and retain personal integrity, public managers must avoid
the trap of what Dennis Thompson (1985) calls the ethic of structure. Here responsibility
is defined by the job description, and to say “it’s not my job” lamely justifies irresponsibility. (“The Contract”—the case concluding this chapter—illustrates this, as
does Maria’s problem in the Introduction’s first bullet.) Inaction or looking the other
way is a choice but not necessarily an ethically neutral one. Invalidating moral reasoning and responsibility altogether, the claims are (1) “not administrators but the
organization (and its formal officers) should be held responsible for its decisions and
policies” and (2) “personal moral responsibility extends only to the specific duties of
their own office for which they are legally liable” (Thompson, 1985, pp. 555, 559). By
shedding the burden and possibly the onus of organizational outcomes, this argument
denies individual responsibility, efficacy, and ethics. Even were these claims valid, the
manager could not duck responsibility: What is one doing working in that agency?
Responsibilities and loyalties to the boss complicate the cross-currents of obligations. One pitfall is exaggerated personal allegiance. Aaron Wildavsky (1989, p. 779)
puts it this way: “What is the temptation of administrators? By confusing their patron
with their God, they mistake serving their superior with helping their people.”
Despite the boss’s relative power, successful managers are fully aware that the boss
does in fact depend on them. Management pundit Peter Drucker (1986, p. 16) defines
a manager as “someone who is responsible for the performance of all the people on
Taking Individual Responsibility 105

whom his own performance depends. The first person on whom a manager’s performance depends is the boss, and the boss is thus the first person for whose performance
a manager has to take responsibility. Managing the boss means, above all, creating a
relationship of trust.” Although Drucker is speaking of business managers and has rejected the notion of distinctive business ethics (1981), the implication for public managers is that mindlessly following orders serves neither ethical nor managerial purposes.
SO IT FOLLOWS THAT WE CANNOT HIDE BEHIND
OUR SUBORDINATES.
President Ronald Reagan dramatized the principle that we cannot hide behind
our subordinates in his response to the critical report issued by the Tower Commission he appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s. In a nationally televised address on March 4, 1987, Reagan said, “First, let me say I take full
responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I
may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for
those activities…. [T]his happened on my watch.” By publicly and personally taking
responsibility and despite his disengaged management style that abetted the activities,
the president went a long way in the minds of many toward separating this affair from
Watergate. The principle guiding action is echoed in Senator Howard Baker’s famous
question, asked during the Watergate hearings: “What did the president know and
when did he know it?”
The idea is far older and broader than American public administration, however.
The advice given Moses in Exodus 18 about designing an administrative structure emphasizes Moses’ responsibility for recruiting subordinates of good character and for
retaining the hard cases for himself. In a change of venue, consider that negative responsibility in the Tokyo war trials (after World War II, in 1946–1948) held that a superior
can be guilty for failing to prevent subordinates’ actions that were preventable. The
results of two national surveys, shown in Exhibit 4.2, provide a more workaday example of managerial responsibility.
Reasonably, a city manager is not directly answerable for a road crew’s unauthorized coffee break any more than the president is answerable for what goes on deep
in the innards of a cabinet-level department. Commonsense yardsticks such as proximity, saliency, and gravity rightly affect our assessment of managerial responsibilities.
Reasonable people would take a hard look at chain of command and span of control.
A key in the question posed by the New York Times surveys shown in Exhibit 4.2 is the
word widespread. Although managers may not know what is going on, shouldn’t they?
What about managerial responsibility for supervision?
The principle of responsibility for subordinates’ actions is tied to the principles
introduced next, which involve knowledge and competence. For example, in the July
106 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1987 congressional hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, John M. Poindexter, former
national security adviser to President Reagan, testified that the president was misled
or lied to by omission to protect him: “I made a very deliberate decision not to ask the
president so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability.” The end result is that plausible deniability is usually implausible, and its costs
are figured in terms of credibility.
SO IT FOLLOWS THAT WE CANNOT HIDE BEHIND OUR IGNORANCE.
Because serving the public interest means, in part, identifying the public interest, getting the facts is an important and often first step in thinking through ethical
problems. Usually, there is not enough information or time to guarantee being absolutely certain of all spin-offs and side effects, as Exhibit 4.3 suggests. Yet public managers cannot be paralyzed. They must make decisions as best as they can.
Unanticipated or unintended results, if by-products of indifference, thoughtlessness,
or carelessness, point to inexcusable ignorance. Here the rule of reason applies, and ethical people can make mistakes. There is an obvious kinship between this principle and
competence. “Where the welfare of so many is at stake, officials must make exceptional efforts to anticipate consequences of their actions” (Thompson, 1985, p. 560).
A profession is defined largely by its specialized knowledge, on which its privileges
rest. Ignorance undercuts all members. Many professional codes incorporate standards
that require the continuing professional training and tutoring of junior colleagues. The
Taking Individual Responsibility 107
EXHIBIT 4.2. SHOULD THE AGENCY HEAD RESIGN?
Question: If an investigation reveals widespread corruption at low and middle levels of a government
agency, but it is clear that the head of the agency was not corrupt and did not know about it, should
the head of the agency resign, or not?
Responses December 1985 April 1986
Should resign 16% 19%
Should not 75 75
Depends 4 2
Don’t know/No answer 5 4
• Do you agree with the majority response?
• Managers may not know what is going on, but shouldn’t they?
• Although the agency head may not be corrupt, is that person acting responsibly and doing the job?
The question and responses came from New York Times surveys conducted in 1985 and 1986.

most elementary standard of required knowledge springs from the obligation of legal
compliance: know the law. (Chapter Two lays this out.)
Even more to the point is the fact that specialized knowledge is a source of substantial power in today’s information society, and its manipulation increases the handler’s exploitative potential. Many professional codes stress confidentiality and the
public’s right to privacy. North Dakota’s 1999 Code of Professional Conduct for
Educators declares that educators “shall disclose confidential information about individuals, in accordance with state and federal laws, only when a compelling professional
purpose is served or when required by law” (Section 67.1–03–01–01, http://www.
state.nd.us/espb/practices/ethics.htm).
The danger zones in information handling are outright deception; prejudicial distortion; inaccuracy; spurious accuracy and false certainty; proprietary, privileged, and
confidential information; disclosure, public access, freedom of information, and privacy; and data integrity and computer security. There are so many first-rate negative
108 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 4.3. IMPROVISING A HOMELAND DEFENSE.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States (9–11 Commission [http://
www.9–11commission.gov]) was established by law in 2002 as an independent, bipartisan
commission.
Neads [Northeast Air Defense Sector] did not know where United 93 was when it first
heard about the hijacking from F.A.A. at 10:07. Presumably, F.A.A. would have provided
the information, but we do not know how long it would have taken, nor how long it would
have taken Neads to find and track the target on its own equipment.
Once the target was known and identified, Neads needed orders to pass to the pilots.
Shoot-down authority was first communicated to Neads at 10:31. Given the clear attack
on the United States, it is also possible—though unlikely—that Norad’s [North American
Aerospace Defense Command] commanders could have ordered the shoot-down without the authorization communicated by the vice president.
Norad officials have maintained that they would have intercepted and shot down
United 93. We are not so sure. We are sure that the nation owes a debt to the passengers
of United 93. Their actions saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved
either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction.
The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex. But the
details play out a simple theme. Norad and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] were
unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11,
2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense
against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to
meet.
Excerpt is from National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States: Staff Statement
No. 17, “Improvising a Homeland Defense.” June 2004. Internet [http://www.9–11commission.gov/
hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_17.pdf] (accessed June 18, 2004).

examples of how defective disclosure degenerates into abuse of information and deception that it would be superfluous to provide one here.
Public managers are responsible for actions undertaken under the umbrella
of their authority or in their name. Expert advice, professional judgments, and policy
recommendations—all part of the daily routine—ideally rest on up-to-date information and assessment techniques. Getting the facts is logically part of many ethical
decision-making models. In direct contrast to the nonchalance exhibited in Figure 4.3,
responsible information management demands honoring basic standards. Checking
against the seven questions in Exhibit 4.4 should help minimize bias and error.
We Are Responsible for What Is Done Along with
How It Is Done
With the traditional boundary between politics and administration routinely breached
by discretion (decisions made) and expertise (decisive influence), responsibility extends
to both meaning and method, to substance as well as technique. Most managers perceive some scope and clout (Warren, 2003). More than a half century ago, at hearings
on establishing a commission on ethics in government before a Senate subcommittee
on June 27, 1951, Paul H. Appleby related the cross-pressures to hide behind impotence and to duck managerial responsibility for building an ethical work environment.
Public officials dealing with public programs struggle with problems . . . constantly
in the business of drawing the line between desirable considerations of citizen concerns in a somewhat flexible and sympathetic way and carrying on systematically in
pursuit of the general public interest without discrimination and without favoritism.
Taking Individual Responsibility 109
EXHIBIT 4.4. GETTING THE FACTS.
Yes
˛ 1. Are underlying analytic assumptions known and open?
˛ 2. Are significant omissions disclosed?
˛ 3. Are reliability or error estimates provided?
˛ 4. Are factual disagreements declared?
˛ 5. Is information appropriate for the intended use and user?
˛ 6. Are available consequential data or views included?
˛ 7. Are data sources credible? Independently corroborated?
Checking yes to all seven questions conforms to basic standards.

In one sense these problems are most acute for low ranking officials engaged in
operational dealing with the citizens and groups most directly concerned. They
often feel weak and insecure as minor cogs in a great machine, and may on that
account bend too easily to importunities from groups which seem to them powerful;
they may feel unable to guess what backing they will get at higher levels if they hold
firmly what would appear to them to be the general public-interest line. They may
also be so closely associated functionally with such groups as to mistake them for the
public. These subordinates can act reasonably well only with institutional patterns
of responsibility laid down, and constantly supported and developed by officials at
higher levels.
Discretion and expertise obviously operate in policy analysis and at the higher administrative ranks, where broad policy decisions are made. Legal, budget, and personnel decisions affect everything that goes out the door. But think of the many daily
decisions made at the operational level, especially by those line employees who are direct service providers, or “street-level bureaucrats”—a term Michael Lipsky (1980)
contributed. Here are the building and health inspectors, zoning enforcement officers,
lifeguards at county parks, police officers, emergency dispatchers, air traffic controllers, park rangers, and even teachers. Away from the central office and often unsupervised, they meet the citizen, treat the citizen, and teach the citizen about
government on the justice-compassion continuum shown in Exhibit 1.3. Each transaction shows the human face of government through individual but not arbitrary treatment.
Discretion
Line employees dispense services by making choices every day. These choices are constrained to a limited range of responses by standard operating procedures (SOPs;
see Exhibit 10.3, “Hardly Neutral”) dictated by the agency or supervisor, intergovernmental mandate, judicial directive, legislative oversight, professional association,
and other sources, including the organization’s informal culture. As a result, operational employees interact with people by case management, according to categories assigned by that public employee but defined by procedure. That the categories
themselves, the assignment of them, and interactions based on them have profound
ethical content is often dramatized by triage in medical services. Discretion is all about
rationing resources, time, and attention, with serious ethical content and grave practical outcomes. Many professional codes of conduct recognize the power inherent in
administrative discretion and the responsibility that power entails. Rules and resources
must be selectively, sensibly, and sensitively applied in day-to-day operations. (Note
that discretion has been called “a structural invitation to corruption” [Chambliss, 1988,
p. 96]).
110 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Means and Ends
Martin Luther King Jr. (1963, p. 13) argued that “it is wrong to use immoral means to
attain moral ends [and] it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.” In its ethics code, ASPA bids members, “Exercise discretionary
authority to promote the public interest.” This requires Aristotle’s practical wisdom, meaning “the ability not only to know the means to certain desired ends, but also to know
what ends are desirable (worthy of desire)” (Tong, 1986, p. 88). As Aaron Wildavsky
(1989, p. 787) sees it, “For public administrators, the second question is how well you
accomplish objectives; the first is which objectives it is right to try to accomplish. Answers to the second question matter, but only after the first is settled.”
Both public purposes and managerial practices have ethical dimensions. Often
managers do what they can rather than what is best according to some objective standard. Contemporary thinking about decision making views the connection between
ends and means as part of the routine decision-making process. According to Charles
Lindblom (1959), goals and methods are intertwined, not distinct.
A 1988 administrative decision illustrates how ethical considerations about method
can temper an otherwise single-minded commitment to meeting goals and getting the
job done. A protest letter from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
prompted the agency’s chief to ban data from Nazi experiments on humans from an
EPA report. The use of data on phosgene (a toxic gas) provoked a debate about benefiting from unethically obtained information, along with questions about its reliability.
One toxicologist argued that use of the data threatened to “condone taking some lives
in order to save others,” while an opposing opinion argued that “when data is [sic] collected in an unethical fashion, if it is important in protecting public health and is not
available in any other way, I would use it” (Shabecoff, 1988, p. A17). Is the use of
tainted data ethical, if it promises benefit to society (Alt and Weinstein, 2003)? Is the
use or the disregard of such data tantamount to confounding means and ends?
Ethical neutrality is different from policy impartiality, unbiased treatment, and
nonpartisanship. The “ethic of neutrality” denies that morality is possible in public
bureaucracies by asserting that public managers “should follow not their own moral
principles but the decisions and policies of the organization” (Thompson, 1985, p. 555).
Ethical neutrality takes bureaucracy and transforms it into an assembly line. It means
working in one’s own little cubicle or with blinders on. It fosters refusing to admit or
act on the implications of one’s decision. Such a posture attempts to transform human
beings into technical problems of transport, timetables, case quotas, check processing,
and so on. Ethical neutrality strips the humanity from both the manager and service
recipients. Dehumanizing the players serves to deny the ethical element. Blaming
the victim generally accomplishes the same thing.
By ousting the individual ethical agent who thinks through ethical problems and
makes judgments, this reasoning also jettisons ethics. A famous quotation from the
Taking Individual Responsibility 111

great American nineteenth-century essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson sums it up perfectly:
“We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession.
It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What
business has he with an evil trade?”
Incompetence Is Abuse of Office
Today’s professional public service is based on competence, in contrast to the old
patronage and citizen-volunteer methods of staffing. (Although there is no test of competence for political appointees in the executive branch, the United States survives
a large number of political appointees without massive corruption.) According to
President George H. W. Bush (Volcker Commission, 1989, p. 2), “How well the tasks
of government are done affects the quality of the lives of all our people. Moreover,
the success of any political leadership in implementing its policies and objectives
depends heavily upon the expertise, quality, and commitment of the professional
career employees, of government.” Mary Ellen Guy (1990, p. 15) asserts, “The pursuit of excellence means striving to be as good as one can be. . . . It is not enough to
be content with mediocrity,” and puts that pursuit on her list of essential ethical values. A posture of competence (“we can do it”) implies a commitment to needed change
and demands a good-faith effort.
Competence is an ongoing aspiration, a moving and therefore always unmet goal,
and a professionally decreed ethical obligation. Applying to public service generally,
this standard is a heavy payload because it means, by definition, that managers permanently fall short.
Professional public service is rooted in making government more businesslike (as
discussed in the introduction), and productivity and efficiency remain pivotal (see
Chapter One). The general standard in federal service from 1965 to 1989 specified
that employees avoid any action or appearance of “impeding government efficiency
or economy.” Its successors, signed by President Bush in 1989 and 1990, stipulate:
“Employees shall put forth honest effort in the performance of duties.” Quality and
continuous improvement figure among the contributions of Total Quality Management and its derivative management reforms (Deming, 1986; Osborne and Gaebler,
1992).
Competence in public service turns on more than just these values, however.
APSA’s code commits members to “Strive for Professional Excellence” as well as to
“[t]ake responsibility for their own errors.” The competence standard is related logically to responsibility for the specialized knowledge associated with a profession.
Professional competence is obligatory in many professional codes.
112 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Perfecting, Not Perfection
Incompetence is an intolerable condition, a breakpoint or floor below which an action
is unacceptable. For professionals pledged to strive for competence, operating below
the floor delineates unethical action (or inaction). “Incompetence can lead to such
catastrophes as the failure of a bridge, the spreading of epidemic or endemic disease, the growth of narcotics addiction, playground accidents and fatalities, and the
‘blighting’ of urban areas” (Graham, 1952, p. 262). Incompetence traced to pressures
to contract out can result in disaster (Cohen and Eimicke, 1996). The problem is
that outcome, over which managers may have little control, is part of the public’s competence test. (See Exhibit 4.1.)
Within the agency, fairness demands that due consideration be given employee
performance. Expectations of infallibility serve no good purpose and do no one any
good. Being wrong for the right reasons is quite different from behaving unethically;
allowance for error is imperative. Here it is fitting to cite Murphy’s Law: “If anything
can go wrong, it will.” Fortune may play a role in outcomes, but in public service, competence plays the lead.
The competence standard demands from public managers not perfection but perfecting, that is, an effort to do the best that can be done, given the state of the art
and within reasonable limits. Expert judgment is, after all, still judgment. In a world
of scarce resources, uncertainties, and unknowns, performance as well as product and
effort as well as outcome define competence. The competence standard is bounded by
realistic limits and driven by high expectations, as a comparison of Exhibits 4.1 and
4.3 suggests.
A fair standard of performance distinguishes incompetence from a professional,
good-faith effort that proves to be erroneous by subsequent events. The standard allows
that being wrong or falling short does not necessarily translate into being unethical.
There are four parts, then, to a fair competence standard: (1) perfecting, not perfection; (2) performance and product; (3) effort and outcome; and (4) doing the best
that can be done, given the state of the art and reasonable limits.
Self-Victimization
Bureaucrat bashing is an all-American spectator sport. Yet it is unjust and demoralizing for public managers and employees to accept bureaucracy’s inaccurate street image.
Three well-known maxims about bureaucrats’ alleged incompetence communicate the
image: slouch, bumbler, bungler. The Peter Principle (Peter and Hull, 1969) couples
eventual inadequacy with promotions until a bureaucratic organization is inherently
inept. Parkinson’s Law sights inefficiency: “Work expands so as to fill the time available
for its completion” (Parkinson, 1957). Boren’s testimony (1971), a parody presented as
Taking Individual Responsibility 113

irreverent testimony to a House subcommittee, counsels, “When in charge, ponder;
when in trouble, delegate; when in doubt, mumble.” A can-do attitude of competence
rejects that image; there is no reason for managers to disparage public employees by
accepting satire as gospel.
There also is no excuse for managers’ tolerating incompetence as business as usual.
Perhaps a good start is owning up to the pressures pushing against it: a manager who
allows employee incompetence to protect the agency in the short run ends up embroiled in cover-up and deception; a supervisor’s easygoing leniency is misread as a
go-ahead. Here the manager is letting compassion or caring subvert other values.
Forbearance and leeway make daily routines flexible, bearable, and humanistic, but
the point is to enable public employees to do their job, not dodge it. Providing some maneuvering room should coincide with communicating the message that competence is
the standard of performance. Organizational competence and individual competence
are supported directly by “responsible communication habits” (Brown, 1990, p. 168).
Impossible Promises
Incompetence may be organizationally induced by managers’ own exaggerated
promises and underestimated costs—manipulative deceits designed to bypass full
disclosure. (Padding budget requests may be a commonplace practice, but it is deception nonetheless.) Substituting strategy for neutrality and accuracy, managers are
then forced to follow through on the proverbial shoestring. Cutting corners is an illusory
response to cutting budgets when making do slides into gross negligence, as well as
when planning is shortchanged, corrective steps are not taken, or testing goes undone.
Nothing symbolizes public service’s competence more than the phrase “the eagle
has landed,” radioed back from the first manned lunar landing. It took less than two
decades to descend from this to the Challenger disaster and then later, the Columbia,
as described in Exhibit 4.1. An agency commitment to competence as an ethical standard is needed as much as the routine remedies of staff and budget increases.
In actual practice and public perception, public management operates—or should
operate—in a “culture of performance” (Volcker Commission, 1989, pp. 13, 47). An
all-too-frequent scramble to prove competence rather than improve it, individually or organizationally, revives the issue of blame raised at the beginning of this chapter.
Leave Responsibility Where It Belongs
Responsibility for ethical decision making belongs in the hands of individual managers.
Detailed, hard-and-fast rules preempt individual responsibility and may chain, rather
than empower, public service. Ralph Chandler (1989a, p. 605) notes that “certain
114 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

ethical precepts have guided American public administrators from the earliest days of
the republic. Some are implicit, some are explicit, and several are contradictory to
each other, and all are subject to differing interpretations.” It is hardly surprising, then,
that many alternative game plans for ethical behavior have been spelled out over the
years. Knowing this, some managers ask for more direction, for definite rules based
on duty or law.
George Graham’s “rules of the game” for professional administrators strikes a
middle ground. Relatively clear-cut and concrete, this formulation demands impartial
open-mindedness. Graham divides “the hard questions” into three categories: participation, compromise, and implementation. Each is related to “accepting the melding
process as a necessity in organized representative government in a democratic society,
and guided by the principles of due process which are embedded in the public law of
the land” (Graham, 1974, p. 91). Accordingly, the administrator’s role summons three
sets of standards and obligations: participation, compromise, and implementation.
1. Participation. Inform participants of significant information relevant to their role.
Interpret and explain data and policy impact, while ensuring no personal conflict of interest and revealing personal values. Advocacy is guided by the issue’s importance and the administrator’s cognizance and competence. “Accept decisions
made within the ‘rules of the game’ . . . made rationally by informed persons, acting within their authority, and attempting to be fair and reasonable” (p. 91). Defend
such a decision, but remember that one is “not required under any circumstances
to testify falsely” on facts or personal judgment.
2. Compromise. Contest provisional decisions outside routine channels only when assured the mistake is significant, judgment is unbiased, and the issue’s gravity justifies personal risk and potential contributions. Sign only documents one approves.
Obey and enforce the law. Resign if controlling orders cannot be accepted.
A correlate of this is that administrators are forbidden to order a subordinate to
take illegal action; suppress significant information, distort facts, or deceive; take responsibility for an opposed decision for which the superior can take responsibility;
or sign unapproved documents.
3. Implementation. Implement a legal, final decision whether agreed with or not. If
legality is in doubt, “‘go slow’ until legality is determined” (p. 92). Alternatives are
to request a transfer or to resign.
Like our approach in this book, Graham’s formulation calls for legal compliance
and action in the public interest.
Many managers prefer guidelines over rules because they equip managers to make
decisions in varied, everyday situations and keep responsibility in the managers’ hands.
Many may agree with one manager’s appeal: “I want guidelines—not rules—and I
Taking Individual Responsibility 115

want them to say, ‘Here’s how we do business around here’” (Rice and Dreilinger, 1990,
p. 103). We prefer guidance as key to the fusion route because it bridges compliance
and integrity and keeps responsibility with the individual decision maker.
The action guides in this chapter are geared to summarizing and sorting public
service obligations and responsibilities so that they are linked logically and practically,
retain their intellectual content while broadly guiding behavior, and can be mustered
from memory. We believe they represent consensual ethical guidelines developed over
more than a century of professional public administration in the American democratic context. Their practical ramifications are explored and refined time and again in
the cases and discussions in this book. The case that immediately follows (and Exhibit
2.3) depicts this chapter’s principles at work.
Case: The Contract
An influential community leader lets you know that you are expected to sign off on a
shoddy job by an independent contractor with political connections in towns across
the state. You suppose that this leader sincerely wants to avoid a public ruckus that
could embarrass your municipality and believes that a possible malfunction wouldn’t
really hurt anyone. Although you genuinely disapprove, as a sole-supporting, single
parent you can ill-afford the luxury of intemperate indignation or sentimentality. How
should you handle this?
1. Working in an organization (and for other people) takes compromise, so why not
just sign off?
This irresponsibly hands ethical judgment over to others.
2. What about signing and covertly filing a dissenting memorandum to protect
yourself?
Irresponsible, ineffective, cowardly, and fails tests for making ethical decisions.
3. Why not cooperate because you must support your child?
A shrug and easy calculation that one must cooperate in order to support one’s
child express the market price, not the ethical position. Of course the parental
obligation is serious, but it does not automatically cancel all others.
Reject the following excuses:
• Everybody is doing it.
People sometimes blame others to get off the hook by pointing to common
practice as an excuse. Because responsibility is fundamental to ethical reasoning,
this is an ethically bankrupt argument.
116 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Thomas Paine: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right.”
• I did it in self-defense.
A related excuse forecasts others’ wrongdoing, which in turn prompts anticipatory action. This argument often justly triggers charges of hypocrisy. Try using a
classical yardstick from Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1678): “Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue.”
Points to Ponder
Purchasing Department Head in Meriden, Connecticut, Wilma Petro (personal communication, May 2004), advises that reasoning and response may depend on how
high in and how new to the organization the public servant is. Higher management
may try to blame those below for their approvals, while subordinates may, rightly or
wrongly, perceive pressure to please the “powers that be.” On this very point, see Paul
H. Appleby’s testimony earlier in this chapter.
The Ethics Resource Center’s 2003 National Business Ethics Survey of American
workers finds that younger, newer managers were less likely to report workplace misconduct than older employees and more likely to feel pressure to compromise company ethics standards (Ethics Resource Center, 2003).
“Compared with other employees, younger managers (under age 30) with
low tenure in their organizations (less than 3 years) are twice as likely to feel
pressure to compromise ethics standards (21% versus 10%).”
“Younger employees with low tenure are among the least likely to report misconduct (43% as compared with 69% for all other employees). They are also
among the most likely to feel that management and coworkers will view them
negatively if they report.”
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. What guidance does your official code offer?
2. What does your professional code offer?
3. What do you recommend? ________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
Taking Individual Responsibility 117

PART TWO
TOOLS FOR PERSONAL
DECISION MAKING
Y

121
Earlier chapters expose the problems, conflicts, and claims shouldered by public
managers. Here we work to reconcile and sort them ethically. Part Two provides
the techniques and tools to use in doing that by turning to how individual managers
make ethical decisions.
This chapter looks at how ethical reasoning is grounded in common sense and two
broad philosophical perspectives: (1) duty, or principle underlying an action and (2) the
consequences of action, or results. Overlaid with the clash between the delegate versus
the trustee roles for public servants, these perspectives lead to very different outlooks
on what is ethically important in a given decision. The ethical public manager draws
on impartial open-mindedness to overcome an ethical impasse or resolve an ethical
dilemma. Political traditions and practical experience counsel moderation and
reconciliation in preference to ethical extremism. In the case at the chapter’s end,
different ethical postures lead to different stands on an everyday problem.
The public manager must act quickly in a gray, marginal area where laws are
silent or confusing, circumstances are ambiguous and complex, and the manager is
responsible, well-meaning, and perplexed. Consider the first four cases in the Introduction. These examples summon honesty, justice, impartiality, loyalty, fairness,
confidentiality, public interest, and prudence, which pull the manager in different
directions.
Where does the manager turn? Ethics commissions or designated agency ethics
officers (see Chapter Eight) are not available in all jurisdictions; where they do exist,
CHAPTER FIVE
FINDING SOLID GROUND
Ethical Standards and Reasoning
Y

their emphasis on compliance means that the legal staff may not be able to help; they
also take time to respond. What other resources are there? A friend? The boss?
Religion? Philosophy?
A survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal (1988) asked one thousand corporate
executives to name their most trusted confidant when faced with an ethical situation.
The single largest category (44 percent of all responses) was “myself.” In 1993, a
national adult survey posed the question, “Do you agree or disagree that when it comes
to morals and ethics [that], people must decide for themselves what is right and wrong,
there are no absolute standards that apply to everybody in all situations?” More than
seven out of ten agreed “strongly” or “somewhat” (Barna Research Group, 1993).
Although this kind of self-sufficiency may be popularly admired, ultimately—what
ethical integrity boils down to—it is inadequate in a head-on collision over contending ethical values and principles. Accountability precludes public managers from playing
cowboy, shooting from the hip, and roaming where they please. Ethical benchmarks
and philosophical sounding boards keep managers in tune with public service.
Common Sense and Character in Decision
Making as Guides to Action
The manager may prefer to rely on character and upbringing for a commonsense, visceral choice between right and wrong. (This is, after all, the point of Figure 1.2.) In
fact, we make most of our ethical choices this way: in the pit of the stomach, automatically, reflexively, intuitively in the popular sense, by common sense, and in tune
with the first category in Exhibit 5.1. We must do this, or contemplative demands
would bring the office to a standstill and suspend our daily lives.
Going with how the situation feels is a suitable and efficient method for making
relatively straightforward, routine choices between right and wrong. Having faced these
predicaments before, we use our experience again. Of course, this problem-solving
approach can only be as good as the character and common sense of the decision
maker.
Dating back to Aristotle, “virtue ethics” stresses character and values. James
Bowman (2003) explains:
Goodness is the result of internal imperatives to do right, not sanctions from moral
rules or rewards from expected consequences. Formulation of a problem can never
be a purely technical procedure. People do good not because of reasoning about
moral dilemmas . . . as a result of personal conviction, incremental development,
behavior patterns, and the everyday choices stemming from them. Sound judgment
is based on good character; beliefs, sensitivity, and experience are key in ethical life
and should not to be taken for granted.
122 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

The role of character in leadership and management is widely recognized as important, but its practical bearing remains unsettled. A 1998 survey “showed Americans
sharply divided on what to expect from a political leader. Half of those interviewed—
49 percent—say it is performance alone that counts in a president, agreeing that ‘as
long as he does a good job running the country, whatever he does in his personal life
is not important.’ But just as many disagree: They say the president has a ‘greater
responsibility’ to set ‘an example with his personal life’” (Morin and Broder, 1998).
A commonsense or character-based approach works well on routine problems and
moral choices. These are the ones amenable to President George H. W. Bush’s advice,
“It’s not really very complicated. It’s a question of knowing right from wrong, avoiding conflicts of interest, bending over backwards to see that there’s not even a perception of conflict of interest” (Volcker Commission, 1989, p. 14). This is the approach
presumed in the argument, “Ethical government means much more than laws. It is a
spirit, an imbued code of conduct. It is a climate in which, from the highest to the lowest ranks of policy and decision-making officials, some conduct is instinctively sensed as
correct and other conduct as being beyond acceptance” (Volcker Commission, 1989,
p. 1; emphasis added).
Finding Solid Ground 123
EXHIBIT 5.1. HOW DO I MAKE ETHICAL CHOICES?
If I believe
I learned to tell right from wrong as a child and that does not change
an itch, warning bell, or uncomfortable feeling tells me it is wrong
What is there to think about? I have to live with myself and my conscience
sophisticated arguments are used to justify unethical behavior
then I may be using a commonsense approach.
If I believe
some principles like the sanctity of human life must not be compromised
fundamental right and wrong never change, only excuses change
the way we do something is more important than what we do
there are certain things I would never do or condone, for any reason
it is my responsibility and no other reason is needed; it is that simple
then I may be using a principle-based approach.
If I believe
it is not fair to treat people in different circumstances the same; rules are rigid;
we need flexibility to respond to changing situations
what matters is people; we do not agree on principles anyway
government should be efficient and effective; it is results that count
noble principles are fine, but I have to be practical when I spend taxpayers’ money
then I may be using a results-oriented approach.

But what about other problems less readily susceptible to commonsense solutions?
How best to grapple with dramatic, compelling matters that defy commonsense and
demand moral reasoning? Exhibit 5.2 presents such a problem. With blurred boundaries and mixed messages, some issues are messy, perhaps when they invoke self-interest
or seem to have nominal impact. Other issues might focus on right-versus-right decisions
as when, for example, a health-care provider has a limited number of vaccines and
faces the choice of inoculating the elderly (who are most vulnerable) or first responders (who are needed to help the elderly and others who get ill or hurt). In these kinds
of cases, it is imperative to have managerial tools that allow effective moral reasoning (see Resource C).
Philosophical Perspectives at Work
Well-meaning managers sometimes find themselves sincerely baffled and needing to
bounce decisions off someone or something else. The philosophical concepts that have
penetrated our society and culture over thousands of years are rich resources. But is
this an unfashionable topic? Apparently it is. An annual survey shows a decline in
the proportion of college freshmen for whom developing “a meaningful philosophy of
life” is essential or very important. With the proportion falling from three-fifths in 1976
to two-fifths in 1989 (“Fact File,” 1990, pp. A33–A34) and to less than two-fifths in
2003 (Young, 2004), new recruits into public service are unlikely to bring philosophical proficiency with them. Granted, a busy manager may dismiss philosophy as artificial and impractical—an abuser’s guide to reality. And agency problems do not always
fit neatly into standard ethical categories.
124 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 5.2. TOUGH CALL.
In 1996, the Unabomber suspect was arrested as a result of information given to the FBI by members of his family. The next week, a national adult survey (Gallup/CNN/USA Today, 1996) asked,
“If you were faced with the same decision, would you have provided the F.B.I. with information
about a member of your own family, or not?”
How do you respond as a private person? What should you think about?
• Those who said they would have provided the FBI with information were asked, “Would that
have been an easy decision for you to make or a hard decision?”
As a private person, what do you say and why?
Fully 88 percent of respondents answered yes, while no (at 6 percent) tied with don’t know and
refusals. The majority (71 percent) described their decision as hard, compared to 28 percent who
responded easy.
• Now revisit the questions, first wearing the hat of a state manager and then a local police officer. Do your answers change? Should they? Why?

Sometimes the administrative world is complex, circumstances ambiguous, and
the situation new; thoughtful reflection is needed for ethically sound decision making.
In that case, when bumping against a true dilemma we need expert advice. Philosophy
is the expert in ethics: a “systematic attempt to understand, establish, or defend
basic moral principles or rules of conduct, judgments about what is right and wrong”
(American Society for Public Administration, 1989, p. 101). Our thinking about ethics
rests on two broad philosophical traditions, one based on the duty or principle underlying action (deontological) and the other on the consequences of action (teleological). The case at the end of this chapter brings both into high relief in an administrative
setting; Exhibit 5.3 shows the perspectives at work in our daily decisions. A brief review
serves as a reminder of their main features. There is no need to repeat at length what
is readily available in many philosophy and ethics texts.
Duty or Principle as Guide to Action
According to deontological frameworks based on duty or principle, some types of
behavior or acts are either good or bad in themselves, and the outcome is irrelevant
to moral judgment. As its name implies, this approach uses duties or moral rules or
principles as guides to action. The Golden Rule is a familiar example. Another comes
from Le Chambon, France, whose residents, community leaders, and public officials
defied Nazi orders and saved thousands of people. According to the pastor’s wife
(recorded in Johnson, 1989-1990, p. 19), “Sometimes people ask me, ‘How did you
make a decision?’ There was no decision to make. The issue was: ‘Do you think we
are all brothers or not?’”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) provides the categorical imperative, a rational rather
than a religious formulation whereby one should only act as if one were legislating a
universal law for everyone to follow in a preferred world; people are never treated
instrumentally, as a means, but only as ends in themselves (Heichelbech, 2003a).
The categorical imperative is a simple thought experiment: if you generalize any action to everyone in society, what would be the impact? An insistence on human beings’
dignity and worth is central to Kant’s ethical perspective.
Finding Solid Ground 125
EXHIBIT 5.3. EVERYDAY USE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES.
Put yourself in the driver’s seat of the only car pulling into the parking lot. The night is dark, and
rain is pounding on your windshield; little wonder that no one else seems to be around. You must
run into the convenience store for just a minute to pick up a carton of milk. The vacant parking
space right in front of the store entrance is reserved for handicapped parking and you do not
qualify. What should you do? What should you think about?

Deontological reasoning comes in many shades, depending on whether the rules
of behavior are seen as permanent and universal, knowable or unknowable, derived
from revelation, human law, or community norms, and so on. All permutations dictate
that there are certain underlying principles by which behavior is judged, and no matter
how desirable the consequences, there are certain things the manager (and government) may not do.
Results as Guide to Action
The results-based or teleological approach judges ethical worth by an action’s consequences (Heichelbech, 2003b). Because this standard is frequently applied to international affairs, U.S. power on a global scale makes it especially important to understand.
In results-based reasoning’s most familiar form—utilitarianism—ethical action
means utility maximization, defined as society’s net benefit over harm. An excessively
simplistic formulation would have it that the ends justify the means, but Figure 5.1
sounds the imperative warning against this caricature. More sophisticated formulations speak on behalf of impartiality and benefiting all concerned. John Stuart Mill
argued, “As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him
to be strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”
Variations within the results-based approach stem from the good to maximize
happiness or pleasure and whether the rule or the act drives the utility calculation. According to rule utilitarianism, “Each act, in the moral life, falls under a rule, and we are
to judge the rightness or wrongness of the act, not by its consequences, but by the consequences of its universalization—that is, by the consequences of the adoption of the
rule under which this act falls” (Hospers, 1986, p. 108). Rule utilitarianism begins with
the greatest good but generalizes it as a rule across society and time by developing a
rule to balance immediate needs with future needs. However, act utilitarianism looks at
an act in terms of its immediate consequences for the greatest good. “An act utilitarian judges the rightness or wrongness of actions by the goodness and badness of their
consequences” (Smart, 1986, p. 80). Exhibit 5.4 looks at these alternative ethical traditions in the context of the case that concludes Chapter One.
Accommodating the Two Traditions
Contemporary democratic society has been unable or unwilling to reconcile the
deontological and teleological traditions or to choose between them. So our ideology
accommodates both. The American political system operates according to two different ethical standards within constitutional and legal limits. Teleology’s utilitarian
principle is deeply embedded in American culture and politics, as illustrated by the
widespread use of formal and informal cost-benefit analysis. The Bill of Rights
126 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Finding Solid Ground 127
FIGURE 5.1. SELF-CENTERED RATIONALIZATION IS A
SORRY SUBSTITUTE FOR ETHICAL REASONING.
CALVIN AND HOBBES ©1989 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All
rights reserved.
EXHIBIT 5.4. ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES IN ACTION.
Let us revisit the case concluding Chapter One to examine alternative ethical perspectives that help
sort out the different objections to the Victims Compensation Fund as a public policy and to decisions
made by the special master. Act utilitarianism triggers concerns of fairness, equity, and responsibility. Rule
utilitarianism eliminates certain objections (such as the insurance offset) but, as important as it may be
to a public servant, it hardly satisfies grieving stakeholders unimpressed by seemingly formalistic statute
and regulation and personally searching for something emotionally more satisfying. And last, from a
duty-based or deontological approach, it appears that the fund is compassionate but misguided; its
very structure violates the notion of respect for people simply as people by discriminating among them
through a differential valuation of loss. (See Kleinig, 1991, and Rhoads, 1980, as illustrations.) Because
this case presents real ethical dilemmas, no formulation may satisfy all ethical objectives and objections. This defines the reality of the job for many professionals in public service.

represents deontology’s alternative of underlying principles. Their joint role in political discourse is invoked by President Kennedy’s appeal to both duty and results in his
1961 inaugural address:
To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the
bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for
whatever period is required—not because the communists may be doing it, not
because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the
many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Other political systems also call on these different philosophical traditions. Exhibit
5.5 from Canada’s Institute on Governance shows how the different ethical traditions
influence managers’ perspectives and ethics codes (see Chapter Eight). The result is to
burden each elected, appointed, and career public servant with responsibility for
deciding which standard applies and when.
The scope for disagreement is evident in arguments about, for example, acceptable police and military force and interrogation tactics (as examples in Chapter Four
show). Concern with the ethical principle to sustain human dignity vies with the
“urgency of obtaining information about potential attacks and the opaque nature of
the way interrogations are carried out can blur the line between accepted and unaccepted actions” (van Natta, 2003, unpaginated). That thoughtful people may not agree
on what constitutes appropriate behavior in particular circumstances is hardly
surprising; different ethical standards lead to different views of acceptable behavior.
128 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 5.5. ETHICAL TRADITIONS.
Responses to the Task: “Describe the Good World” and Implied Focus
The good world is . . . Focus
. . . a world populated by virtuous people (1) Attitude or character
. . . a world in which the use of, e.g., the Golden Rule is pervasive (2) Rules to guide actions
. . . a world in which, e.g., overall happiness is maximized (3) Goals to guide actions
Ethical Traditions in Relation to Language Used in Ethics Codes and in Management
Tradition Focus
Virtue Ethics (1) Values (character, intentions, motives, attitudes)
Deontology (2) Standards (compliance), duty, rules, means (emphasize consistency)
Utilitarianism (3) Outcomes, consequences, goals, ends (emphasize context and flexibility)
Source: Saner, 2004, Tables 1–2, pp. 3–4. Reprinted by permission.

Some argue on principle and underlying duties, and dismiss the results. Others appeal
to opposing, results-based standards, sometimes irrespective of underlying ethical
boundaries or law, and argue for doing whatever it takes to accomplish policy goals.
The two ways of thinking induce different responses to problems and offer competing
premises on which to make decisions.
These lopsided arguments blindside the public manager and damage public service. Ethical public service demands that public servants touch base with all ethical perspectives. This
is why changing decision-making premises, meaning the philosophical framework, is
so useful in thinking through ethical dilemmas (and underlies the go/no-go model in
Figure 2.2.) The questions that follow are designed to trigger the open-mindedness
that incorporates both impartiality and responsibility:
1. What philosophical tradition underlies your proposal or posture?
2. What other moral principles could guide action and alter the proposal or decision?
3. What considerations emerge from alternative philosophical positions?
4. Why would a public manager try to design a proposal that reconciles different
philosophical perspectives?
5. Should anything else be considered?
6. In your view, is the proposal personally acceptable and ethically persuasive?
Try applying these questions to the cases that conclude subsequent chapters in
this book.
In the end, the individual decision maker is left with the judgment and the
responsibility for exercising it.
Different Views of Public Service
Examining different ideas enriches our thinking by providing nuance and depth. At
the same time, these ideas complicate matters by offering different views of public service and behavior befitting different roles. Ideologically, contemporary public service
follows the Platonic tradition that stresses public interest as distinguishable from selfinterest. According to Bruce Jennings (1989a, p. 175), this is precisely what judgment
entails in the political arena within which public service operates. “Political judgment,
in the classical sense of the term, is the capacity to tell the difference between public
and private ends. It is also the ability to spot a private interest masquerading as a public good.” Machiavelli’s very name has come to signify the opposite: rational, selfinterested decision making conducted in the long and short term. (In contrast to the
classical Platonic tradition of abandoning personal interests, the rational self-interest
theory underlies arguments for pay parity with private sector counterparts.)
Finding Solid Ground 129

Contrasting notions of organizational and professional roles complicate matters
further. Chapter Four treats this issue in some detail. Again, American democratic and
bureaucratic practice combines main ideas—the trustee and the delegate—associated
with philosophers such as Locke, Bentham, and Mill. As interpreter, the steward or
trustee acts statesmanlike in the community’s best interest, as the decision maker
sees it. The U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate, political executives, and senior
administrative generalists fit this category, as do claims of electoral mandate. A famous
speech by English philosopher Edmund Burke coincided with the American
Revolution: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment.”
The delegate, on the other hand, is more like a conduit who purposefully brings the
constituency’s views to bear and faithfully reflects them. This stance is typified by public opinion polls and some elements of populist and representative bureaucracy.
In sum, we have an ethics stew simmering on the back burner for every public
manager. Ethical choices bubble up from ideas about morality, about public service,
and about organizational and professional roles derived from classical philosophy and
political thought. The sheer number of options drawn from philosophical traditions
indicates that philosophy will not make our choices for us. Instead, it clarifies the
reasoning behind our choices. The burden of multiple sets of ethical standards is all
the heavier because the public manager uses public authority and enormous government power to back up decisions. As a result, the obligation for informed ethical
reasoning—thinking through a dilemma and making a morally reasonable decision—
falls on the shoulders of the individual public manager.
Purity Versus Receptivity
The purpose behind mastering the conceptual tools of ethical analysis here is to make
moral judgments about one’s own actions and decisions, not to evolve into a judgmental, self-righteous arbiter of other people’s behavior. (See the section on vigilante
ethics later in the chapter.) Imputing intent and motivation is dangerous business.
Although this is a traditional element in judging legal culpability in the courtroom, a
jury is used, along with confronting accusers, advocacy representation, and other safeguards. Because true motives may be camouflaged from the decision maker—never
mind an observer—accurately tracing back from action to intent is tricky at best. We
therefore conclude that ethical judgment is best when it is self-applied.
If we allow for human error, faulty reasoning, or incorrect facts, then what we
observe may not be what is intended. There are observational snags, too. What we witness as an isolated action in fact may be part of a series and therefore we misinterpret
the single data point. Also we sometimes may confuse an excuse with an explanation. An excuse states why one should be considered innocent or blameless despite an
action; an explanation cites the reason for choosing that action.
130 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Because it is so difficult to confidently distinguish surface from substance at a distance, judging others’ behavior easily degenerates into charges of selective enforcement or casual labeling: Unethical! Hypocrite! There are many reasons for apparent
inconsistencies and contradictions in ethical reasoning and behavior, including the
following:
1. Courage. The problem may be more a matter of following through on what one
knows to be right when it is unpleasant or costly or demands sacrifice.
2. Multiple roles. We may adjust our behavior and reasoning to conform to different
roles with different but associated standards, and when incompatible claims (such
as public interest and family loyalty) clash, the choice of an appropriate primary
role may lead to behavior that would otherwise be unacceptable.
3. Camouflage. Motivation is a tough call, and the underlying reason may not be clear,
even to the decision maker.
4. Rhetoric. An appeal to noncontroversial, vague values (such as justice or honesty)
is quite different from an explanation of ethical reasoning. For example, what values
are tapped by arguing that “the most important thing about government is
democratic process”? Moreover, this statement obscures the mode of reasoning.
5. Confusion. Public interest has been defined as the majority (sum of individual interests) and the shared (overarching interest). Representation can mean being a
delegate or a trustee. Conceptual ambiguity may lead to misunderstanding and
mixed signals.
6. Excuse, not explanation. Offering an excuse (reason one should be held blameless) instead of an explanation (reason for a choice) is a common source of confusion.
7. Consensus. Agreement is intuitively satisfying, and there is a temptation to claim all
ethical ground in order to satisfy everyone. This may communicate unsound reasoning or political expediency.
8. Hard but different choices. Not all ethical problems are the same. If the dilemma is
real and values or standards do conflict, then choices may reflect different assessments of, for example, the stakes or values involved. Immediate life-and-death issues are often treated differently, or at least more carefully, than others.
9. Error. Reasoning may be faulty or partial. Intention may be undermined by factual error or omission.
10. Selectivity. If every decision warranted and received thorough analysis, we would
be immobilized. Pressures on time and attention mean that many decisions and
actions are prompted by common sense or conscience rather than reflection or deliberation; sometimes we choose to downplay the wrong issue and fail to see a
choice’s serious ethical implications.
These ten reasons for seeming inconsistencies and contradictions induce a wise
manager to reserve most moral judgments for self-application and to leave some matters to
Finding Solid Ground 131

psychologists or clergy. Emphasizing a strong moral commitment, President George
H. W. Bush took a forbearing stand in his 1989 inaugural address when he said, “A
president is neither prince nor pope, and I don’t seek a window on men’s souls. In fact,
I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easygoingness about each other’s attitudes and way
of life.” A 1998 national survey shows that the American public reflects this forbearance. Fully 70 percent of respondents agree with the statement, “We should be more
tolerant of people who choose to live according to their own moral standards even if
we think they are wrong” (Morin and Broder, 1998, p. A01).
Appeal to Consensus
When it comes to giving explanations, consensus is intuitively satisfying, perhaps because public service is concerned with appearance and widespread public support.
There is a temptation to claim all ethical ground in order to satisfy everyone, including oneself. “Most people . . . will move across ethical systems and use more than
one approach to grapple with an ethical dilemma. We feel more ethically certain when
we derive a common answer using two or more different ways of moral reasoning,”
according to Stuart Gilman (1989, p. 21). Also, as problems vary from the trivial to the
significant, we may shift from one ethical basis to another. Table 5.1 shows the six main
bases public managers may wish to touch. (Touching different bases is different practically and analytically from moral relativism.)
In a historic specimen of ethical explanation (excerpted in Exhibit 5.6), President
Gerald R. Ford explained his decision to pardon President Richard M. Nixon in 1974
on grounds of secular duties and religious rules, pragmatic effects and political results,
and an intuitive appeal to conscience. He asserted a commitment to ethical integrity
by seeking “to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.” Conforming
to the ethical reasoning model laid out in the next chapter, he explicitly accepted responsibility on the basis of his public role as president rather than on friendship. He
noted his fact-finding efforts, referred to advice, and cited preeminent values of substantive justice (which President Ford defined as equal treatment) and procedural
justice (due process). He spoke of moderating justice with compassion and exhibited
empathy for the affected party.
132 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
TABLE 5.1. TOUCHING SIX BASES.
Trivial Concern Significant Problem
Common sense or character
Duty
Results

Finding Solid Ground 133
EXHIBIT 5.6. PRESIDENTIAL EXPLANATION.
It is interesting to compare the explanation offered here with President Abraham Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural Address of March 4, 1865; with President Clinton’s statement of apology on December 11,
1998 (http://www.npr.org/news/national/981211.apology.html); and with Clinton’s letter of
December 3, 1969, to Col. Eugene Holmes, director of the ROTC program at the University of
Arkansas (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html). Try comparing them in terms of role diagnosis (Chapter One), ethical perspective, stage of moral development, use of explanation versus excuse, and stakeholder analysis (Chapter Seven).
Following are excerpts from President Gerald R. Ford’s Explanation to the Public of his Pardon of
Richard M. Nixon, September 8, 1974:
I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as
soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do….
My customary policy is to try and get all the facts and to consider the opinions of my countrymen and to take counsel with my most valued friends. But these seldom agree, and in the end,
the decision is mine….
I have promised to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right,
and to do the very best that I can for America….
The Constitution is the supreme law of our land and it governs our actions as citizens. Only the
laws of God, which govern our consciences, are superior to it….
Theirs [Nixon and his family] is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could
go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do
that, and if I can, I must….
I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans . . . The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen
accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized….
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused.
And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad….
As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the
United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience….
My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every
means that I have to insure it. I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right. I do believe that right makes might and that if I am
wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference….
Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power
conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these
presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against
the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken
part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974….

134 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
The subsequent drop in the president’s standing in opinion polls suggests that
even a beautifully crafted ethical explanation may not work. People may still think you
are wrong, or worse. A universal claim to being right may backfire by undermining credibility and conveying unsound reasoning, self-interest, or expediency. Ethical explanation may smack of a public relations campaign. Justifying decisions on ethical grounds
is no guarantee of professional or political success or approval. But that is not the point;
if success governs ethical choices, then standards and principles (and codes of conduct)
apply only if they produce tactical advantages. This Machiavellian argument would have
public managers strong like a lion, wily like a fox, and devoted exclusively to results.
Over the Long Haul
Long-term purity—indelible, unmixed, and unchanging adherence to a single way of
thinking—is unlikely if public managers are like other people, whose capacity for thinking abstractly and applying general principles varies over time. Despite methodological and epistemological criticisms (Gilligan, 1982; Hirschmann, 1989), research by
psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg and his colleagues has deeply influenced contemporary thinking about cognitive development (White, 1999).
Kohlberg identifies six general, universal patterns that are sequenced in invariable stages of cognitive development, based on the individual’s use of generalizable
abstractions (1981). These six orientations or “total ways of thinking” he terms “stages
of moral development” (1980, p. 31). The stages progress from the pre-conventional
level (stages 1 and 2), which is concerned with physical and hedonistic consequences,
to the conventional level of conformity and loyalty (stages 3 and 4), and finally to the
post-conventional level of autonomous, principled reasoning (stages 5 and 6).
According to Kohlberg (1980, pp. 91–93 and 1981), the stages are these:
Stage 1. Punishment and obedience orientation
Stage 2. Instrumental relativist orientation (market relations)
Stage 3. Interpersonal orientation (intention, pleasing others)
Stage 4. Law-and-order orientation (authority, duty, order)
Stage 5. Social contract legalistic orientation (utilitarian overtones, procedural
rules)
Stage 6. Universal ethical principle orientation (logical comprehensiveness,
universality, consistency of abstract ethical principles)
Grouping the stages in levels of moral development, Table 5.2 relates the levels
to self-perception and the value accorded to human life.

In looking over this list, it is useful to bear in mind the following: “It is not the
invoking of ‘high principles’ that credits a subject with high-stage thinking, but rather
the way that a subject sets up the problem and deals with the claims of all participants
in a dilemma” (Rest, 1980, p. 121). “Kohlberg insists on a close relationship between
the level of moral development and procedural justice to insure a moral baseline for
his body of theory. To him, moral development theory is grounded upon a Rawlsian
concept of morality about how humans cooperate, how they manage conflicts, and
what concepts of fairness they adopt” (White, 2003, unpaginated). This formulation
stimulates objections and disagreements over moral content (Wilson, 1980), over invariable evolution, over the relative weight assigned to the use of abstract principles
in lieu of humanistic concerns, and over the theory’s usefulness for predicting or understanding behavior. Each stage is identified via expressed reasoning rather than
actual behavior. “The first, and in some sense the most basic, continuing issue in assessing the moral stage theory approach in public administration relates to whether
the underlying assumption of ‘principled reasoning’ as the normative ideal is the right
assumption for public administration” (Stewart, Sprinthall, and Shafer, 2001, p. 473).
Kohlberg (1980, p. 92) identifies the fifth stage as the “official morality” of the
U.S. government and Constitution. Recent research has sought to establish a “baseline measurement of moral reasoning” (Swisher, Rizzo, and Marley, 2001) among public managers.
Finding Solid Ground 135
TABLE 5.2. KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT.
SelfLevel Perception Stage Value of Life
Preconventional Outside 1. Obey or pay, 1. Confused with
group punishment orientation. physical objects.
2. Self (and sometimes 2. Instrumental to
others’) satisfaction. needs of possessor.
Conventional Inside 3. Win others’ approval 3. Based on empathy
group by helping them. of family.
4. Law-and-order mentality. 4. Based on legal rights
Doing one’s duty. and duties.
Postconventional Above 5. Respect individual 5. Life is universal
group rights. Accept critically human right.
examined values.
6. Act with logically 6. Life is sacred.
developed and universally
accepted principles.
Source: White, 2003. Reprinted by permission of Marcel Dekker.

This research draws on the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1986), as tailored specifically to public management by Debra Stewart and Norman Sprinthall. Although their
findings show a tendency among U.S. public managers toward conventional reasoning’s Stage 4—the law-and-duty orientation (Stewart, Sprinthall, and Shafer, 2001)—
other research shows a tendency toward post-conventional moral reasoning (Swisher,
Rizzo, and Marley, 2001).
Also important to understanding ethical reasoning is the fact that “people at
different developmental stages perceive moral dilemmas differently,” and empirical
tests confirm that a person’s orientation is not permanent (Rest, 1980, pp. 109, 113).
“Instead of existing as fixed traits, moral character occurs in a series of developmental stages” (Sprinthall and Sprinthall, 1988, p. 17). Furthermore, stages are orientations,
meaning that, at any one time, an individual mixes the current, preceding, and next
stages. Whether one agrees with Kohlberg or not, it is useful for understanding ourselves and working with others to allow that we are all engaged in an ongoing process
of moral development. (This is the reasoning behind the memorandum exercise
concluding this book.)
Impartial and Open-Minded
Purity in ethical judgment is hard to come by. Motives and reasoning usually are mixed
and are bound to change over circumstance or time. In public service, the search is for compatibility and balance, reconciliation and accommodation.
Moral absolutism rejects alternatives; moral relativism fails to distinguish among
them. Public service rejects both by combining empathy, responsibility, and receptivity. The moorings for action are secured in moral character, and thinking is anchored
in moral principles, including obligations to implement and comply with the law and
to promote the public interest.
Our passionate, messy world of public service violates purity and precision at every
turn. The way Debra Stewart (1984, p. 20) sees it, “Most managers are neither pure
deontologists, nor pure utilitarians, but rather operate according to a kind of ethical
pluralism . . . [a] synthesis of moral systems.” The recommendation is not for fickle
or expedient reasoning but rather that alternative perspectives be used so managers
can see their behavior as others do. This “double focus” would have each of us “strain
to experience one’s act, not only as subject and agent, but as recipient, sometimes
victim” (Bok, 1978, p. 30). (See Chapter Seven on stakeholder analysis.)
Many managers’ judgments change with circumstances. A flexible manager, responsive to human distress, may not see all ethical problems as identical and amenable
to a single, invariable verdict. He or she may prefer to blend consistency and flexibility, along the lines of mitigating factors in courtroom sentencing. Different values and
136 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

stakes may alter the calculus as when, for example, an immediate threat to life outweighs the otherwise cherished value of telling the truth.
An unyielding, adamant position represents moral absolutism, which always
applies timeless principles to every situation. Seductively simple, this view by and large
negates individual judgment (not to mention compassion, mercy, and other unexceptional values).
By contrast, many managers pursue accommodation or reconciliation. They distinguish between “the principle of compromise and the compromise of principle,”
and understand that “willingness to compromise in order to reach an agreeable, ethical solution is very different from a willingness to jettison ethics altogether in a compromise of principle” (Guy, 1990, p. 19). According to Tom Peters (1987, p. 241),
author of management books that have topped the bestseller lists,
The reality—whether you are in the executive branch of government or the legislative branch or the private sector—is that there has never been an effective leader
yet who has not devoted 90 percent of his time to consensus building. All effective
managers spend most of their life building consensus around the key issues where
they want to make a difference.
Managers put it all together by selecting pragmatically from a number of right
choices as they shift from abstraction to practical problem solving. What is needed to
overcome an ethical impasse or resolve an ethical dilemma is impartial open-mindedness.
This is individual ethical pluralism that tolerates moral ambiguity (Denhardt, 1989).
It recognizes the acceptability as well as the probability of varying standards, principles, and rankings of what is right and important in different ethical choices. (See
Chapter Six’s decision-making model and Chapter Ten’s agency process.)
Receptivity is distinct from promiscuity—the ethical relativism that rejects the validity of ethical judgment in the belief that right and wrong are only culturally defined
or simply idiosyncratic personal opinions. Relativism leads to indiscriminate decision
making. In its highly reduced version, relativism tumbles into the wanton, amoral “do
your own thing.”
Nor does sincere open-mindedness mean plugging in theories until one finds
the perfect rationalization. This is the charade of sifting through ethical arguments
until an appropriate justification is found for a decision already made (the “linear
reasoning” described in French, 1983). Ethical locus remains an unsettled issue in
American society. In an opinion poll conducted by Kane, Parsons, and Associates
(1989), 48 percent of the respondents said that there are absolute standards of right
and wrong, whereas 44 percent said that right and wrong are related to the specific society a person lives in. In 1998, when a national survey asked whether respondents
agreed or disagreed with the statement, “The world is always changing and we should
Finding Solid Ground 137

adjust our morals and values to those changes,” 42 percent agreed strongly or somewhat, while 57 percent disagreed strongly or somewhat (Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation/Harvard University, 1998).
Open-mindedness allows “that there might be diverse traditions, beliefs and opinions about morality within a society but that this does not preclude widely shared agreement on the morality of certain basic practices” (American Society for Public
Administration, 1989, p. 102). In that spirit, these authors suggest altering decision
premises and circumstances to double-check ethical judgments or reconcile different
philosophical perspectives to imaginatively resolve a thorny problem. (See “moral imagination,” discussed in Chapter Seven.)
What does this open-mindedness do to personal integrity? Being true to oneself
does not mean shutting others out in order to sleep at night; it means managers seeing themselves the way managers actually live, that is, related to other people and
ideas. Impartial open-mindedness is the first-order test of genuine empathy in public service. The
decision calculus calls for bending over backward to compensate for bias. Astute
managers take care not to see only what they are told; empathy is balanced with analysis. Public service mandates thinking inclusively, listening closely (which begins
with fact-finding), and striking a balance among competing ethical perspectives (and
values).
The impartial public manager is ethically driven, not ethically empty. Unfortunately, a habit of empathy and concern for facts and legal obligations may be condemned as alleged bureaucratic caution. The manager in public service is often on the
receiving end of ethical judgments. A decision maker bent on moderation, inclusiveness, and reasonableness may appear hypocritical, indecisive, or self-serving for those
very reasons. Tolerance, breadth, and delay—byproducts of the search for balance—
may be interpreted as lack of conviction, as well as lack of resolve. It may be small
consolation to remember that a temperate inclination is not temporizing, that looking
around is not at all the same as looking over one’s shoulder.
An inclusive perspective aims not at stopping action but at making action and integrity possible. It is part of the definition of integrity, of being whole, of what it means
“to serve with honor” (the title of the 1989 report of the President’s Commission on
Federal Ethics Law Reform).
Vigilante Ethics
A danger here is that we will abuse ethical judgment by being too hard on ourselves
or on others, by using ethics to intimidate instead of inspire. Using ethics like a vigilante’s rope in an old film version of the American West, we can wield ethical judgment to bludgeon public service into submission by demanding perfection or lifelong
138 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

uniformity. Lord Acton’s observation in the nineteenth century that “power tends to
corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” emphasizes the danger of militant
claims to moral superiority. Excess is a real threat in relations with employees, with
dependent service recipients, and even with the boss.
The American tradition of public service sees both “rule” and “result” postures as
dangerous when they are exaggerated and alienated from each other. From a stand usually rejected in American administration, ideologues justify wiping away all concern
for the opposing ethical standard. This runs contrary to consensual accommodation—
the customary composite of American politics. The dogmatist is a true believer for
whom ethical rules are untempered by pragmatism and who sacrifices policy objectives to first principles and rules of conduct at whatever cost. Zealots, by contrast, sacrifice principles to policy, and their appetite for results cancels out all rules of acceptable
behavior. (The key, of course, is having the power to choose the particular purposes
that justify neglecting all principles.) Reduced to simple extremes, both lead to
fanaticism.
In American public service, uncompromising visionaries, whatever their vision,
are restrained by law, limited and shared power, and moderating virtues. Humility and
charity are unfashionable but not outdated virtues for public managers plying public
power for public purpose. Years ago, Stephen K. Bailey (1964, p. 235) specified three
“essential mental attitudes” in public service, including recognition of “the moral ambiguity of all men and of all public policies,” “the contextual forces which condition
moral priorities in the public service,” and “the paradoxes of procedure.” By adopting
(or resigning ourselves to) impartiality and open-mindedness, we can draw on the philosophical traditions to inform ethical judgment but not replace it. Ambiguity is the price
of flexibility, and responsibility is the price of reason.
Case: A Matter of Convenience
Here is the problem. Both you, a senior manager, and your newly hired assistant, a
newcomer to the county, commute separately every day from a suburb not too far
from the airport; the major highway runs past it. This evening you will be detained unexpectedly at an important meeting called by your boss, the commissioner. As luck
would have it, you have promised to pick up your spouse at the airport tonight. The
arrival was scheduled deliberately to coincide with the office’s regular closing time. Do
you ask your assistant to pick up your spouse?
This case highlights incongruent obligations, conflicting loyalties, clashing values—
the stuff of ethical dilemmas. But it is purposefully small stuff, with personal convenience an underlying issue. Practicing on low stakes, the decision maker echoes the
daily choices that sum to a habit of ethical behavior. Many ethical dilemmas are part
of daily routine.
Finding Solid Ground 139

Do you ask your assistant to pick up your spouse?
Check the responses you agree with:
No, because
1. It is coercive to request personal favors from subordinates.
2. The employee may expect a job-related favor in return.
3. The assistant is not a friend, so a personal favor is out of order.
4. Your prior promise to your spouse means you cannot attend the meeting.
Yes, because
1. The assistant is passing right by the airport, it is no big deal, and you would do
it for someone else.
2. You made clear that it is voluntary and purely personal.
3. The problem is job-related.
4. You are in a jam, and it is not your fault.
The familiar context in this case shows how different modes of ethical reasoning
lead to different resolutions.
Examine the no responses.
1 = apply rule derived from role
2 = result is critical factor
3 = apply rule derived from role
4 = rule applies (prior promise), not role
Examine the yes responses.
1 = nonreflective, commonsense response
2 = mix rule and result
3 = irresponsible—abdicates to organization
4 = irresponsible—substitutes excuse for explanation
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
Would your obligations or preferred responses change if
1. The assistant volunteers to help?
2. A routine obligation such as day care is substituted?
3. A houseguest is substituted for your spouse?
4. The assistant is a friend?
Why? What is the reasoning that guides your response?
140 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

141
Using a decision-making model that is open to contending viewpoints and values,
we show in this chapter how managers can tool up for fact finding, accommodating, and using selective trade-offs that lead to informed, principled choices. With
thinking anchored in moral principles and values, the manager now is asked to do
three things: (1) take a harm-averse stand, (2) admit that collective action is bound
to hurt someone in some way, and (3) reconcile steps 1 and 2. Using tools for deciding what counts, the manager reconciles the responsibility to avoid doing harm with
collective action and selective action. Central guidelines developed throughout the
book are synthesized in this chapter for ready reference. Using a checklist, an application melds models and tools together to resolve a case on friendship and impartiality. The chapter concludes with a device for taking personal soundings on ethical
responsibility and a case for exercising ethical reasoning.
Ethics must not be reserved for experts or philosophers. If practitioners do not
practice it and if decision makers ignore it, then public service and the public are in
real trouble. For managers, ethics is only ethics when they are doing it. Public managers must be equipped to do what they cannot afford to eliminate and cannot legitimately delegate.
Question: What does a public manager do when a weighty problem refuses to
disappear and routine solutions do not work satisfactorily? Answer: Mull it over,
seek advice and information, apply specialized knowledge and analytic techniques,
CHAPTER SIX
RESOLVING ETHICAL DILEMMAS
Strategies and Tactics for Managers
Y

and reason it out. The same is true for ethical problems. Ethical reasoning is a form
of specialized problem solving. Its methods provide tools for making choices, and
equipment is standard on all models. The package includes public service values, a
systematic perspective, fact-finding and screening tools, and feedback devices and assessment tools. Of course, like all crafts, public service depends on the qualities of the
craftsperson wielding the tools; fine equipment works best in the hands of someone
with personal virtue, professional courage, and a decisive turn of mind.
Decision-Making Models
The three models discussed in this chapter expose managers to different ways of thinking through ethical problems. Because they help clarify a manager’s cognitive reasoning process, they are useful for reconstructing and then polishing one’s own rational
model. They also offer the manager some elbowroom to make an individual choice.
We now know that linear models of rational decision making based on a calculus
of costs, benefits, probabilities, and risks do not describe the way human beings
make decisions. Research in cognitive psychology such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky’s Prospect Theory (1979) undermines the applicability of the rational-actor model
of decision making under conditions of uncertainty (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky,
1982). The research suggests that, instead of analytic processing and cognitive operations, decision making is a matter of determining categories and matching patterns, which helps explain the “powerful impact of contextual factors on decision
making.” “Risk taking, time discounting, and interpersonal decision making . . . are
much more a function of how people construe situations than of how they evaluate
and weigh attributes” (Lowenstein, 2001, pp. 500–501, notes omitted). It seems that a
choice heuristic that favors improvement over decline kicks in, along with decision
biases toward seeking or avoiding risk that very much depend on decision makers’
understanding of the situation. All this suggests that decision makers draw on their experience and expertise first “to figure out what kind of situation they are in and then
adopt choice rules that seem appropriate for that situation” (Lowenstein, 2001, p. 503).
Further research needs to be done that applies relatively new developments
in cognitive psychology to the context of public service and that relates risk of gain
or loss to the likelihood and size of benefit (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; Fischhoff,
Lichtenstein, Slovic, Derby, and Keeney, 1981; Green, Kahneman, and Kunreuther,
1994; Green, Jacowitz, Kahneman, and McFadden, 1998; Kahneman and Lovallo,
1993; and Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky, 1982). Our understanding of ethical
reasoning and anticorruption systems may be well served by incorporating, for example, the idea of “anchoring,” that is, using a reference point.
142 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

[T]he concept of a reference point, an innovation central to recent models of decision making under uncertainty, can also be applied to intertemporal choice….
[T]he reference point reflects a simple insight: people evaluate the outcomes of
gambles as gains or losses, or departures from some psychologically relevant point
of reference, rather than as final levels of wealth (Loewenstein, 1988, p. 200).
The best problem-solving method is the one the decision maker uses. Ethical
analysis is not menu-driven, like computer software: if this, then that—then hit the
key. There is no mechanical procedure, no automatic scheme, no standardized bubble sheet of correct responses to ethical dilemmas.
Instead, choices, nuances, and fine-tuning favor individual tailoring. A manager
might initially select among the analytic frameworks discussed here on grounds of practicality, theoretical appeal, or situational fit. Some managers may wish to try several
models if the problem is truly momentous. The choice among models turns on the
manager’s assessment of suitability and affinity. Is it appropriate? Satisfying? Does it
square with time, resources, inclination, and circumstance?
Our preference for merging the three models is shown in the application that follows. A compound method has it all; that is its strength and weakness. On the one
hand, some managers reject testing decisions against several standards because, having
selected a preferred ethical stance, they object to a combination (recall the discussion
in Chapter Five about appealing to consensus). On the other hand, the genuine flexibility and built-in expansiveness may attract other decision makers who are not put
off by complexity, factual and intellectual demands, or the time required. A composite may be best reserved for the truly exceptional dilemma.
An analytic framework lets the decision maker break down a problem into manageable parts in order to examine them, then re-synthesize them and make better
decisions. Sorting out and selecting among ethical claims—for what, to whom, and
why—are central tasks in ethical analysis. The ethical values and principles at risk
and the decision’s consequences are figured in. Some decision-making models
(including Nash’s, which we discuss later) explicitly wed duties and outcomes; some
models diverge over an accent on results for affected parties. Still others, not shown
here, emphasize personal morality (Denhardt, 1988, for example).
Calling on Integrity and Imagination
Terry Cooper (1990) tells us that the ethical process means examining and ranking
what is important (values) and general rules for guiding action (principles) in a given
decision. Accepting the emotional component of people’s decision making, Cooper
sets two goals for the ethical manager. The first is to maintain a sense of integrity and
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 143

avoid an “ethical hangover” when a decision incongruent with our self-image begets
anguish (p. 24). The implication is that most of us would like to look in the mirror and
see someone we can respect. (Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts progression in the opposite direction.)
Cooper’s second goal is stretching “the moral imagination” (p. 22; see also Chapter Seven). A series of steps generates alternative solutions through serial reasoning
from a results-based perspective.
1. Specify all conceivable alternatives.
2. Match probable positive and negative consequences with each alternative.
3. Identify principles related to each alternative.
4. Rank principles or values at stake and justify priorities as if to someone else or
publicly.
With choices generated, the task now is to select among them. Working on the assumption that public service role obligations are accepted, the decision-making method
can be summarized in four steps (Cooper, 1990):
1. Review the facts and get what you need to know.
2. Understand roles and values, both your own inclinations and imposed obligations.
3. Consider all possible options and possible results.
4. Anticipate how you would feel about it and explain your decision.
The fourth step, in part, parallels the publicity tests suggested at the conclusion
of Chapter Three. According to Cooper (p. 24), “Resolution is reached when we discover an alternative that satisfies our need to have sound reasons for our conduct
and our need to feel satisfied with the decision.”
Accommodating Duties and Results
Laura Nash proposes twelve questions that are grounded in the two broad philosophical traditions discussed in Chapter Five but that are expressed concretely and
designed for practical business decisions. Substitute agency for corporation in the fourth
question and add legislative body to the tenth, and public sector applications become
apparent.
144 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
Questions reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review. “Ethics without the Sermon” by
Laura L. Nash (Nov.-Dec., 1981). Copyright © 1981 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College. All rights reserved.

1. Have you defined the problem accurately?
2. How would you define the problem if you stood on the other side of the fence?
3. How did this situation occur in the first place?
4. To whom and to what do you give your loyalty as a person and as a member of
the corporation?
5. What is your intention in making this decision?
6. How does this intention compare with the probable results?
7. Whom could your decision or action injure?
8. Can you discuss the problem with the affected parties before you make your
decision?
9. Are you confident that your position will be as valid over a long period of time as
it seems now?
10. Could you disclose without qualm your decision or action to your boss, your CEO,
the board of directors, your family, society as a whole?
11. What is the symbolic potential of your action if understood? If misunderstood?
12. Under what conditions would you allow exceptions to your stand?
Nash’s method combines major (simplified) traditions in formal moral reasoning to explore the ethical content of workaday decisions in organizational settings and
in language meaningful to a manager. Loyalty conflict (question 4) “is a workable way
of smoking out the ethics of a situation and of discovering the absolute values inherent in it” (1981, p. 84), and disclosure or scrutiny (question 10) “is a way of sounding
those submarine depths of conscience and of searching out loyalties” (p. 86). Nash
sees the symbolic message as being aimed at domestic consumption within the organization and for external communication with the public. Questions 9, 10, and 12 test
decisions against change. As in several cases in this book, changing selected circumstances clarifies reasoning, may alter the decision maker’s anchor or reference point,
and reveals critical factors in making moral judgments. These three questions are
especially suggestive from the standpoint of the public interest and public service.
On the job, when demands prohibit delay, a mental checklist is a useful device for filtering and organizing information quickly. A checklist modeled on Nash’s framework is
given in Exhibit 6.1, with an abbreviated version, designed for easy recall, shown in Figure 6.1. Together they represent a useful and inclusive method for making ethical decisions. The elementary standard—know the law—from Chapter Four is the starting point.
Decisions are made with the heart and the mind but sometimes rejected in the pit
of the stomach. The visceral test—Can I live with this?—serves as a final check, a precaution with the force of feelings behind it. The question taps into anticipated consequences and the likelihood of follow-through. Then it remains to monitor and
evaluate the decision as it is implemented.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 145

Questions for the Manager
The abbreviated version of the decision-making model shown in Figure 6.1 combines the inclusiveness of Nash’s model with pointed questions from Michael Rion’s
The Responsible Manager (1996). Rion builds a framework for practical decisions by business managers under severe time pressures. His construct poses six questions.
1. Why is this bothering me? Is it really an issue? Am I genuinely perplexed, or am
I afraid to do what I know is right?
2. Who else matters? Who are the stakeholders [affected interests, individuals, or
groups] who may be affected by my decisions?
146 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 6.1. DECISION-MAKING CHECKLIST.
1. Facts (including law)
2. Empathy and inclusion
3. Underlying causes and precedents
4. Stakeholders and responsibilities
5. Motives and objectives
6. Possible results and rationality
7. Potential harm (stakeholders)
8. Participation
9. Long-term timeframe and anticipated change
10. Disclosure and publicity
11. Appearance and communication
12. Universality and consistency
FIGURE 6.1. ABBREVIATED DECISION-MAKING MODEL.
Engage in fact finding
Make accommodations
Use selectivity/Make trade-offs
Make judgment (informed, reflective choice)
Take decisive action
Monitor and evaluate result
Reprinted by permission of Michael Rion. The Responsible Manager. Practical Strategies for Ethical
Decision Making. West Hartford, Conn.: Resources for Ethics and Management, 1996, pp. 13–14;
original emphasis deleted.

3. Is it my problem? Have I caused the problem or has someone else? How far should
I go in resolving the issue?
4. What is the ethical concern—legal obligation, fairness, promise keeping, honesty, doing good, avoiding harm?
5. What do others think? Can I learn from those who disagree with my judgment?
6. Am I being true to myself ? What kind of person or company [or agency] would
do what I am contemplating? Could I share my decision “in good conscience” with
my family? With colleagues? With public officials?
The first question highlights the difference between a real ethical dilemma and
the courage to follow through on ethical obligations. It is especially handy for shortcircuiting evasive waffling used to postpone unpleasant or costly action. In Rion’s
approach, ethics is not just a rational process, although it is a deliberative one. Because
they have to live with the outcomes, managers should be comfortable with them.
The third question needs to be distinguished from the excuse that “it’s not my job”
or from the argument that no one is responsible for collective decisions in a public
agency. This question adds an element of reasonable selectivity to the proposition in
Chapter Four: “We cannot hide behind our supervisor or our desk to escape responsibility.” A public manager wantonly doing good works would soon burn out or exceed
both legal authority and the budget. The question now is how to opt reasonably and
selectively for responsibility.
Opting for Responsibility
Recall the old story about a government employee who complains to the teacher
that someone at school is stealing his child’s pencils. The father explains that it is the
principle that bothers him, not the pencils—he gets all the pencils he needs at the office! Of course, behavior is not always this transparent, but it does seem easier to pin
down, without qualification or queasiness, someone else’s responsibility than one’s own.
When it comes to tough calls, it may also be easier to get bogged down in nuances and
definitions as a way of bypassing decision making. At any rate, responsibility is not
as difficult to define as to exercise.
An earlier discussion organized ethical claims according to roles from which they
stem and depicted them, for simplicity’s sake, as five separate clusters (see Figure 1.1).
By extending that image, responsibilities can be visualized along a vector that runs
from the informal, personal, and self-imposed responsibility to the formal, public, and
externally imposed obligation. In actuality, roles are interrelated; they interact, overlap, and sometimes conflict, blotting out or magnifying segments of other multifaceted clusters. The result is a profusion of dos and don’ts, not all of which can be acted
on simultaneously.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 147

Daily events activate multiple responsibilities; they create dilemmas and spark the
need for selectivity when a manager cannot meet all responsibilities at the same time.
From harassment, racial bias, or preferential treatment to “managing romance at
the office” (Exhibit 6.2), the public manager is embroiled in human drama, the law,
agency pressures, and core values such as fairness and trust. The many responses from
readers to the case concluding this chapter reflect the reality and controversy sparked
by these multiple responsibilities.
The decision-making model we adopt affects the responsibilities we accept and
the way we choose among them when choice is necessary. Decision makers must use
some sort of framework to sort and accept ethical claims, with the framework acting
as a decision-making model. Our adopted model cues and sorts claims (Are they legitimate? Are they compelling?) and keys our choices among them. Figure 6.2 illustrates this idea in one clean thrust.
Avoid Doing Harm
In many models, the number one concern is how people are affected (leading to stakeholder analysis, discussed in Chapter Seven). A typical starting point is accepting the
minimum prescription to avoid harming others. “Customarily, ethics in public administration means the obligation to avoid injury” (Stewart, 1984, p. 19). To avoid doing
harm or inflicting injury is crucial for Rion, Nash, and others. It tops unobjectionable
lists of commonsense moral values and rules (Goodpaster, 1984, p. 4) and, rendered as
caring, is among the values around which there is general consensus (Guy, 1990, p. 14).
It is a stringent standard under ordinary circumstances and even more so when regulatory and redistributive effects guarantee that people are helped and hurt differentially.
The harm-averse stand is so important in public service that we add it to the ranks
of basic guides to action. Exhibit 6.2 shows these essentials of ethical performance in
public service. They serve as general guides by which to order competing ethical claims.
148 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 6.2. DOING PUBLIC SERVICE.
Principles
1. Obey and implement the law (Chapter Two).
2. Serve the public interest (Chapter Three).
3. Avoid doing harm (Chapter Six).
Action Guides
1. Take individual responsibility for decisions and behavior (Chapter Four).
No escaping responsibility by
hiding behind the boss or the desk,
hiding behind subordinates,
hiding behind ignorance.
2. Take responsibility for what is done and how it is done (Chapter Four).
3. Treat incompetence as abuse of office (Chapter Four).

Although the dictum of doing no harm deeply influences ethical reasoning and
action, an ethical and pragmatic regard for competing claims forces us to moderate
it through selectivity and trade-offs, as discussed in the next chapter. Selectivity calls
for ranking the ethical claims on the manager as a way of establishing priorities.
Rank Roles
In some instances, a manager may prefer to set priorities according to the source of the
claim and the operative roles (see Exhibit 1.2). To do this, the decision maker selects
one ruling cluster and sidesteps or downplays others. (This is behind the argument about
citizen versus official dissent in Chapter Two.) Although this works well for fundamental obligations in public service, other applications may produce crude oversimplifications that lead to the Morozov-like deformations described in Chapter One.
The potential damage to important values and ethical claims can be minimized
by making several checks. Anticipate followthrough by inquiring, “Can I live with this?”
Apply the acid test of prospective publicity and ask what kind of person would do this
and whether you want to be and be known as that kind of person. (See Chapter Three
and the memorandum exercise in the Afterword.)
Rank Responsibilities
Given the actual prospect of exceeding legal authority, budget, energy, credibility, and
more, what do you do when you can’t do it all? When avoiding harm is at issue, a useful approach to setting priorities and making trade-offs draws on (1) the type of ethical claim and (2) taking responsibility for one’s actions. The lower the claim on the list,
the more appropriate is a principled no. Ranked in order of diminishing strictness, ethical claims are shown in Exhibit 6.3.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 149
FIGURE 6.2. DECISION MAKERS USE A FRAMEWORK
TO SORT AND ACCEPT ETHICAL CLAIMS.
Doonesbury By Garry Trudeau
DOONESBURY ©1988 G.B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights
reserved.

Public service’s posture of avoiding harm begets an obligation to correct direct or
indirect problems we create. In thinking about the effects of actions or decisions, the
ethical manager applies the rule of reason rather than conjecture but is obligated to
examine reasonably foreseeable consequences and disclose analytic and informational
limitations undermining certainty.
A third and less rigorous claim moves the decision maker from the realm of obligation to responsibility and states it positively: to help. This line of reasoning is by no
means unique to public service; many religions teach, first, not to do evil and, second,
to cultivate good.
Charity, the fourth ethical claim, is the least stringent. It is voluntary, self-generated,
and dictated by time, energy, and personal inclination. Although doing charitable deeds
is commendable, it is not necessarily ethical to do them at public expense or through
public office.
Thoughtfulness propels managers to distinguish charity from the obligation to
do good (or beneficence, mentioned in Chapter Five). Doing good is defined by statutory mission for government and public purpose for nonprofits. It is especially
important in public management to recognize the dual principles: “do no harm” and
“beneficence.” Sometimes they must be balanced against each other. (Note that
beneficence is not on the list in Exhibit 6.3 but figures strongly in Exhibit 2.4 as
effectiveness.)
Use the Threshold Test
What about a problem a manager did not cause? Usually, this is the most challenging dilemma a manager faces. Apply a threshold test: the more that each of the following four factors applies, the more punch behind the obligation (Rion, 1996, pp.
64–65; Stewart, 1984, p. 21). As shown in Exhibit 6.4, a principled yes emerges from considering as many factors as possible.
150 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 6.3. RANK RESPONSIBILITIES.
When you must make a trade-off, think about this:
Given the very real prospect of having to exceed legal authority, budget, energy, credibility,
and more, what do you do when you can’t do it all?
The lower the claim on the list that follows, the more appropriate is a principled no:
Avoid harm, the most stringent and the negative obligation
Remedy or relief for problems we provoke
Affirmative help for problems others cause
Voluntary charity, the least stringent, doing good works

These factors elaborate on the commonsense yardsticks of proximity, saliency, and
gravity that are used in Chapter Four to discriminate among top management’s responsibilities. The multifaceted notion of proximity can be broken down further by distinguishing among physical access, reporting lines, structure of authority, and cognizance.
Although the threshold test is most commonly applied when immediate physical
danger is threatened, it easily extends to injury of any sort, from material loss to severe violation of basic ethical values or principles. It is especially relevant to sorting
out self-generated ethical claims. Although not everyone would agree that “[t]hese
conditions provide a warrant to inject personal judgments” (Dobel, 1990, p. 360), they
do promote vulnerability and dependency as critical factors in assessing ethical responsibility. At minimum, they should trigger earnest reflection.
Ranking responsibilities and applying the threshold test reveal the dilemmas in
the case at the end of this chapter. They also explain our emphasis on a future generations test. With neither voice nor vote to participate or to protest irreparable harm, future generations are the most dependent stakeholders of all, and public officials are
their only institutional trustees.
Realistically, because the point of all this is ethical action, time constraints and urgency are part of a manager’s calculation of priorities, even—or especially—ethical ones.
Of course, managers can fine-tune any assessment technique by refining or adding
criteria by which responsibilities are selected and ranked. Some possibilities are mandated
mission and legislative intent, cost, reversibility, and future effects and beneficiaries.
Application
With the help of the foregoing tools, we can use an amalgam of the three approaches
(from Cooper, Nash, and Rion) to resolve a perplexing case. Picture the scene: as
personnel director, you learn at a top-level staff meeting that the municipality’s
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 151
EXHIBIT 6.4. USE THRESHOLD TEST.
If you’re dealing with problems others cause, consider this:
A principled yes emerges from considering as many factors as possible. The four listed are the most
pertinent.
1. Vulnerability: potential injury, risk to affected party
2. Proximity: know or should know, access, authority, competence, span of control
3. Capability: can help without excessive risk, danger, liability
4. Dependency: no place else to turn, weak or needy with few options or advocates, and low
probability of alternative remedies or services

retrenchment plan calls for reorganization and cuts in managerial staff. The tentative
blueprint has the city’s Department of Community Services absorbing the small elderly
services unit, whose program director, a close friend of your family, is slated for
termination. The city manager, whose judgment you respect, mentions the program
director’s poor performance and, as the meeting adjourns, reminds everyone that
the discussion is confidential as usual. As you leave, you remember that your friend is
about to make a substantial down payment on a new home. How would you handle this?
Reviewing the decision-making checklist shown in Exhibit 6.1 is a good beginning. By putting ourselves in the personnel director’s role, we can use the checklist to
elicit acute considerations.
1. Facts. Does the city manager know about the imminent down payment? (No)
Is the city manager aware of the friendship? (Yes) Is your friend aware of prospective termination? (No) Are you sure your friend depends on her municipal salary to
finance housing? (Yes)
Is information confidential just because the city manager says so? Is a strictly legalistic view right or an excuse? You strike a middle ground by asking yourself, “Is this
privileged information, known to me through my job but not known generally?” (Yes)
Confidential information, oral or written, generally is that which is not currently a
matter of public record or public knowledge.
Does your jurisdiction prohibit using public office for anyone’s personal gain and
divulging confidential information? (Perhaps) But either way, you know confidentiality is a widely accepted administrative value because federal and many states’ laws and
many nonprofits’ standards forbid the use of confidential information.
2. Empathy. How would you feel if financial ruin threatened you? Can you put
yourself in the city manager’s shoes? How important is confidentiality in your job? How
are other people in the community affected by your helping or not helping your friend?
3. Causes. Thinking about causes helps you define the problem and solutions. Your
friend brought her termination on herself through poor performance but not the retrenchment’s coinciding with the new house. Therefore, the problem is not keeping
the job but avoiding financial disaster.
4. Stakeholders. Friendship does make ethical claims on you, but the difficult part
of public service is that personal friendship is rejected as a legitimate basis of action.
It is nontransferable from the personal to the public realm. (See Dobel, 2001, on friendship and public leaders.) You must weigh responsibilities and obligations to all affected
parties, including these: the city manager, who unknowingly put you in a difficult position; your family friend; yourself, spouse, and family; the municipal organization, and
residents and taxpayers.
5. Objectives. The city manager’s motives are not clear, but because he did not know
about the down payment, because confidentiality is standard procedure at these staff
152 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

meetings, and because you trust his judgment, you assume he intends to act for the
best. You even may feel that he knowingly put you on the spot and ought to do something about it. The obligation to prevent injury emerges from checklist items 2 and
3, but what about your objective? Are you acting to protect a friend through special
treatment?
6. Possible results. What happens if your friend loses her job and cannot make
the mortgage payments? How can you face her accusation of betrayal? What happens
if she learns about the retrenchment plan from you, does not buy the house, but
then does not lose her job? If you were to betray a trust for friendship’s sake and
your friend knows you have other friends, too, can she ever trust you again? Can you
be effective in your job without the city manager’s trust? What if everyone disclosed
confidential information on whim? Can government function if public trust takes second place to employee needs? To personal friendship?
7. Potential harm. Your friend faces financial harm. The city manager’s trust is at
issue. You also realize that the organization is at risk. Do you want to work in an organization that would allow something like this to happen to an employee, even one
being fired? Does the city deserve an administration like this? You decide something
should be done to prevent injury.
8. Participation; 11. Appearance. Because of the friendship, you conclude it would be
best for communication to come from someone else. Given the fact-finding in Exhibit
6.1, you begin to think about bringing the city manager into the picture.
9. Change; 10. Disclosure. You do not see these items as directly applicable to the
problem you face.
12. Universality and consistency. At this point you skip to checklist item 12 in Exhibit
6.1 because you realize that you happen to have specific information that warrants
consideration on behalf of anyone in a precarious situation, not just your friend. Your
intention is not to use privileged information from public office solely to protect a friend.
Next, you turn to assess the options stimulated by your thinking:
1. Do nothing, say nothing.
2. Tell your spouse, who is not bound by confidentiality.
3. Tell your friend immediately and directly.
4. Inform the city manager of your friend’s impending down payment.
5. Say nothing, but be prepared to help your friend financially.
6. Casually hint to your friend about impending shake-ups.
7. Leak the retrenchment plan to the media.
8. Tell your friend and other municipal employees that budget cuts mean that a shakeup is imminent and suggest that they avoid new commitments at this time.
9. Say nothing, and help your friend get another job when the time comes.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 153

Can you stand by and do nothing? Is this your problem? The obligation to keep
confidentiality (involving legal compliance, loyalty, and trust) clashes with another
top-ranking obligation: to refrain from doing harm. Although you are not directly causing the problem, inaction or silence could result in serious injury. Therefore, your obligation is reduced but still compelling. You may remember the story about George
Washington refusing to help a job-seeking friend: “As George Washington, I would do
anything in my power for you. As President, I can do nothing” (Bailey, 1964, p. 241).
You feel that his obligation of affirmative help was lighter than the one you face, which
is the obligation to avoid doing harm.
Pragmatism affects your choice among alternatives. Given your municipal salary,
the remedy or relief of supporting your friend’s new home is not realistic; financing
your own mortgage is hard enough each month, and soon both families would be
insolvent. Helping in the job hunt does not mean omitting the friendship or poor performance appraisal from a reference, but you know of many publicly advertised openings, and your expertise can really help a friend here.
You can think of no way to sidestep the conflict. Embroiling your spouse unties
no ethical knots and is itself unethical. Even a hint or two to your friend (“cutbacks in
towns across the region counsel postponing life choices”) abides by the letter more than
the spirit of the obligation. Even worse, ignoring other employees possibly in comparable positions results in favored treatment for a friend. Leaking the story as an
unidentified source means breaking confidence on a grand scale, plus trying to escape
personal responsibility. A general tip-off to employees personally or through the media
still breaks confidence, stimulates gossip, and would cause anxiety and distress. Inflicting
minor injury on many, including the innocent (those with good job performances),
to protect a friend from more serious harm makes you uncomfortable. (See the fourth
scenario in Exhibit I.2.)
Using the threshold test, you determine that there is a need or problem, you do
know something, and you are capable of helping but at either some professional or
some personal cost. However, you are not the last resort, and this realization, along
with considerations of participation and appearance, lead you to speak with the city
manager. You request that he inform your friend and the others targeted in the
retrenchment plan.
Now comes the hard part. Assume that the city manager, whose judgment you
respect, declines to make the retrenchment plan public, citing potential employee
demoralization, as well as the need to avoid giving advance notice; affected agencies
could then undercut the plan by soliciting citizen opposition. He explains that the decision is still tentative, and he does not feel that widespread employee stress is a reasonable price for your friend’s financial security. He also refuses to give your friend
special treatment. Empathically, you reconsider obligations and options from the city
manager’s perspective.
154 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

If you still believe that his response fails to meet the ethical claims that are emerging from your analysis, and you genuinely believe that anyone should be told, not
just your friend, then you decide to go farther. You try to persuade the city manager
and explain your ethical posture. Your task is to convince him that the information
should be disclosed to those at severe risk; the city has a responsibility to employees,
too. You point to the prescriptions of your professional code and argue that information deeply affecting people ought to be made public or at least available to directly
affected parties, especially when withholding it causes serious harm.
If that fails, you acknowledge that the city manager’s ethical preference or lapse
does not absolve you of the responsibility that you have already determined is yours.
You then reassess capability in terms of excessive risk to yourself (job, integrity, family,
friendship, professional identity) and the values and principles associated with all participants, including your good friend, the municipal organization, city residents, the
profession, and others.
Presuming an authentic assumption of ethical responsibility in this case, you decide
that legal compliance and avoidance of a conflict of interest represented by respecting
privileged information are preeminent obligations in public service. Your professional
code reinforces your commitment to treat confidential information as privileged and
given in trust. You decide to say nothing, to help your friend in her job search, and to
initiate an outplacement program for all municipal employees. (This last idea illustrates
inventive resolution—the moral imagination at work—as discussed in Chapter Seven.)
You conclude by asking, “Can I live with this?” You test the emotional components
of your decision and assess the likelihood that you will follow through. To find out, you
decide to let the decision sit for a time, but you feel pushed by the pace of events. You
audit your decision by testing it against the mirror test for integrity, the publicity test for
accountability and appearance, and the visceral test for implementation and authenticity, as shown
in Exhibit 3.8.
Your personal anguish is sincere, and you ask yourself, “Am I right?” Insofar as
you attempted to use reasoned, unbiased judgment in an informed, systematic way,
yes. Does everyone agree with your resolution? No. That is why this dilemma recurs
with different faces and different choices at all levels of public service.
Accepting Responsibility (Self-Testing)
Given the principle of individual ethical claims, accepting and selecting responsibilities are critical to a public service built on accountability. Moving from the abstract
idea to the concrete heightens the noncognitive aspects of decision making. Can
you live with this? Take responsibility for it? And the consequences? This applies the
visceral test and makes tangible an abstract or general decision.
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 155

The symbolic template shown in Exhibit 3.8 can be laid over decisions as a selftesting device. A streamlined version is shown in Exhibit 6.5. We are not recommending that it be adopted as a public communication or official routine by an agency
or office. Rather, public managers can scan the ethical soundness of their decisions
against their willingness to sign—as if for the public record—the ethics responsibility statement.
No Closure
The exercise in Exhibit 6.6 asks you to put it all together. Is this all there is? Of course
not. But this book is for public managers, who are not and do not want to be philosophers or theologians. Managers prefer other pursuits, which is easy to understand and
respect. Just turn on a faucet, cross a bridge, or buy a home.
156 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 6.5. ETHICS RESPONSIBILITY STATEMENT.
(Not intended for agency adoption)
I take personal responsibility for making this recommendation or decision in the public
interest, with consideration given to future generations.
_______________________ _______________________
(signed) (date)
I am prepared to explain this recommendation or decision publicly, to the press, and
to my agency, service recipients, and collaborators (if a public-private partnership, interjurisdictional project, or government-nonprofit project).
_______________________ _______________________
(signed) (date)
I take personal responsibility for making this recommendation or decision in an ethical
manner.
_______________________ _______________________
(signed) (date)

Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 157
EXHIBIT 6.6. TEST ETHICAL DECISIONS.
Impelled by severe financial straits, the municipal council agonizes and by majority vote stops funding the community alliance that runs the homeless shelter. You are sincerely distressed on three
counts: (1) the homeless have nowhere else to turn; (2) you believe you are in public service to help
people, not hurt them, and (3) the administration publicly is committed to being responsive to community projects like the shelter. As a public leader, it is your job to see that council decisions are implemented, but you think this one is a disgrace.
How should you handle this?
Mirror Test for Publicity/Mama Test Visceral Test for
Integrity for Accountability, Implementation,
Appearance Authenticity
What kind of person Do I want to read about Am I willing and likely
do I admire? this in the newspaper? to follow through?
Want to be? Tell my family? Can I live with this?
WHY? Ethical reasoning. What values or principles are at stake? What claims? (Claims include
roles, values and virtues, principles and duties, and affected parties and interests.)
Try accommodating all concerns in a creative proposal. What resolution produces the best mix? If
you can’t do it all, aim at minimizing damage to competing claims and responsibilities.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Do you take public responsibility for this decision?
Signed ___________________________
Date _______________

Why not adopt a few authoritative rules and settle the problems once and for all?
Because simplistic rules are no solution in our complicated world and are not the point
anyway. Judgment and action are. Not everything can or should be reduced to a snappy
slogan on a bumper sticker or a twenty-second sound bite. The polar extreme of hairsplitting and quibbling over exquisite niceties does not help managers either. Remember Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass? Tweedledee says, “Contrariwise . . . if it
was, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
After thousands of years of discussion and tons of paper, closure is improbable—
and impossibly arrogant. Then, too, anyone promising the last word on the subject rejects the challenging future anticipated for public service.
Case: A Late Night Surprise
Dennis, the city manager of a financially strapped municipality, is working uncharacteristically late at night. The offices are empty and quiet as he is leaving. He notices a
sliver of light coming from the door of the new budget director, Susan. He decides
to stop in and praise her for her excellent report in which she discovered errors that
will save the city millions of dollars, projecting for the first time in many years a budget surplus. As he approaches her office, he can see through the few inches the door
is open that she is in a passionate embrace with Gary, the assistant city manager.
Employment policy strictly forbids dating between employees, threatening dismissal
to those who do.
Dennis’s code of ethics requires him to enforce this policy, yet at the same time
he does not want to lose either or both of his valuable employees. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to bring in someone else with their experience and credentials for the amount of money the city is able to pay. What should Dennis do? Should
he report Susan and Gary, in accordance with policy? Should he overlook the situation, believing the city will be best served in the long run? Should he speak to each of
them and threaten to tell if they don’t end the relationship?
Readers’ Responses
The city manager, Dennis, “should look outside of the current policy box and analyze
all of his alternatives. If legislating morality worked there would be no need for vice
squads. In my opinion, you should not come between two people who are in love or
are falling in love even if they happen to be public officials. Instead, if he feels he needs
158 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
Reprinted with revision by permission of the American Society for Public Administration. Case by
Carole L. Jurkiewiez. PA Times, “Ethics Moment” column, edited by Don Menzel, Mar. 1998.
Follow-up material, Apr. and Aug. 1998. Internet [http://www3.niu.edu/~tp0dcm/aspa/ethicsec/
moments/moments.htm]. Based on an actual case.

to do something about Susan and Gary, he should work to change the policy prohibiting dating between employees. Is an embrace in a public office after hours in the
bowels of a government building considered dating or is dating seen as an open affair in public? Either way, who cares? The ethical thing to do is to have the guts to eliminate a staid and outdated policy. Ethics is a matter of judgment about doing the right
thing and then having the guts to take responsibility for your actions and standing behind your decisions.”
“The assistant city manager and finance director are key members of the city’s executive management team. They and the city council set the tone for city employees
and the public’s perception of what behavior standards are acceptable for the
organization.”
“The city manager must, at a minimum, notify the assistant and the finance director in
writing that the behavior will cease immediately and result in termination if it occurs
again. The notice and counseling should focus on the employees’ excellent work records
and [their] value to the city. But their responsibility for setting behavior standards takes
priority over their administrative competencies.”
“It is too easy for the city manager to overlook behavior by the executive
team that is not tolerated for line employees. Being ‘valuable’ to the organization
should not be a license to deviate from behavior standards. If anything, they should
be held to a higher level since they set the standard for other employees and send a
message to the employees about what is acceptable. The manager needs to think
about what type of message he wants to send down the line!”
“The manager’s alternative in this case is to officially authorize everyone to play ‘Bob
and Carol, Ted and Alice’.”
Managing Romance in the Office
Dennis did not speak to them directly. He used the next staff meeting (with Susan and
Gary in attendance) as an opportunity to discuss the policy and introduced a hypothetical situation for discussion that closely mirrored the one he was in. After discussion about alternative approaches to handling the situation, the staff agreed that they
would tell if in the same position. Business went on as usual, and he never encountered Susan and Gary in a romantic embrace again. He doesn’t know if they understood the veiled warning he was trying to give them or they simply ended the
relationship. He’s generally happy about the outcome.
Reader’s Response
“This solution . . . has several problems. First, the leveling of discipline (warnings) upon
the whole to reach the few may be a diplomatic and perhaps innovative solution, but
it may open up the manager to unexpected consequences and organizational
resentment, thereby impacting the agency’s morale. ‘It occurs to me that the age-old
management tool of bringing the offenders to task, given the existence of the rule
Resolving Ethical Dilemmas 159

forbidding dating, would be to present his hypothetical case in private to the
offenders.’
“Second, honesty or the fear of confronting issues head on may be problematic
in this case. Using my approach leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind about appropriate behaviors and would have involved as few people as possible in resolving a disciplinary issue.
“Regardless of which approach might be taken, consider what might happen to
employee morale should the following also have occurred: the city manager was not
the only late-night worker to observe the passionate embrace, and the word gets
around about the romance [and] neither of the top managers are fired.”
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. What should Dennis do? What should Dennis think about?
2. Try using the checklist in Exhibit 6.1 and decision-making model in Figure 6.1 to
work through this case and evaluate the proposed alternatives.
160 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

161
I
n this chapter, stakeholder analysis operationalizes open-minded reasoning. A diagnostic tool helps answer the question of who counts and what counts. Because
they are significant players in ethical dilemmas, ethical managers count as well. Principled discrimination in responding to ethical offenses equips managers to discount
trivialities and survive professionally with their integrity intact. A case calling for stakeholder analysis concludes the chapter.
Ethical analysis is all about ambiguity and confusion; that is what the word dilemma
implies. Stakeholder analysis is a method of viewing a scenario from the potential victims’ perspectives, for taking the empathic leap to public interest without sacrificing
too much or too many.
Stakeholder analysis has a duty-based core, although at first glance it may appear
wholly and solely focused on results. The underlying reasoning draws on both of
the philosophical perspectives discussed in Chapter Five, but results do play a leading
role in the analysis. A manager, acting on the principles of reciprocity in human relations and respect for the other person, searches for some way to bring practice in
line with principle. This often demands creative leadership and moral imagination.
The task, then, is to specify who and what is threatened by adverse repercussions in
order to lighten or relieve them. (Admittedly, it may be used self-servingly to predict
likely response or possible opposition; this conjures up suspicion about mixing pragmatic and ethical rationales.)
CHAPTER SEVEN
UNDERSTANDING WHO
AND WHAT MATTERS
Stakeholder Analysis
Y

Deciding Who Matters
Many factors, many actors, and many effects thicken the plot. Stakeholder analysis is
a tool for identifying and sorting them out. Likely as not, the stakes are numerous, complicated, and important.
Ethical managers exercise reasonable selectivity among responsibilities and choose
their battles in a principled way. The principle proposed in Chapter Six of abstaining
from doing harm is moderated by the need for collective action that actually may inflict some injury. The task of ethical analysis now shifts to pinning down the potential injury and victim. Although more is involved than a simple calculation of net good
over harm, public service requires one to act in the public interest, and general harm
bars action. However, decisions rarely reduce neatly into no-harm/go choices. Instead,
particular groups, regions, sectors, individuals, interests, or values are vulnerable to
someone’s good idea or good intentions, as the case at the end of this chapter dramatically illustrates.
Self-interested resistance is the crux of the not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) attitude, which can be summarized this way: “Yes, we need a new recycling facility, but
don’t put it near my property.” NIMBY rejects solutions that sacrifice one locale or
group to a common good more broadly enjoyed. NIMBY and similar attitudes are
compelling reasons for examining basic assumptions (What would happen were there
no backyard?) and innovatively redesigning alternatives.
Because collective action in an interdependent world is bound to hurt someone’s pocketbook, sensitivities, surroundings, values, or principles, collective problem
solving is possible only if we allow for the possibility of someone getting hurt in some
fashion and to some degree. Collective or government action is possible only through
a combination of sacrifice (often involuntary), relief or compensation, and trade-off.
This very trade-off allows for acting in the public interest and distributing costs and
benefits differently to different segments of the public.
Need for an Expansive Reach
To serve the public interest, public managers extend their analytic reach to encompass
as many and as much as needed to dismantle bogus barriers imposed on public problem solving by limited viewpoints and biased perceptions. How? Often through expertise, experience, and reflection, as well as very important dialogue with the public, officials,
and peers. Logically, then, there may be no a priori exclusion of a class of others. Only
broad inclusion can begin to satisfy the injunction, pursue the public interest.
Figure 7.1 transforms Figure 1.4 to highlight the expansive reach demanded of
public managers. Notice how Figure 7.1 scrupulously preserves the impermeable
boundary between personal roles and public roles. The point of the boundary is
162 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

twofold: (1) to stress the imperative of using public office for the public interest and
(2) to remind us how we are so strongly attached and give such high priority to our
personal perspectives and attachments. Pursuing a public rather than a personal
agenda, ethical managers expansively reach out in order not to allow bias in reasoning to blur their view or partiality in treatment sneak into their behavior.
The Need to Define “We”
Stakeholder analysis helps decision makers define the we in “We, the people” (from the
preamble to the U.S. Constitution) as broadly as possible. Stakeholder analysis is a
method of specifying who and what is affected, not a search for interest groups couched
in the rhetoric of ethics. It asks, “Who else matters?” (Rion, 1990, p. 46). Three categories provide an answer (Rion, 1990, pp. 43–55). The point is to be as inclusive as possible and consider the long and short terms. Affected stakeholders include the following:
1. Internal: The organization or agency, including mission, superiors, employees, and
the decision maker
Understanding Who and What Matters 163
FIGURE 7.1. EXPANSIVE REACH OF PUBLIC SERVICE.
Graphic courtesy of Brian Baird, doctoral student in engineering at the University of Connecticut and research
assistant in the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
Personal, Family,
Community
Public
Service
Professional,
Work ID
Agency, Job
Jurisdiction,
Citizen
Humanity,
Sustainability,
Legacy (11 pt)
Inclusion
Reach Priority

2. External and direct: Clients and suppliers, lawmakers, taxpayers, and community
residents and businesses
3. External and indirect: Those keyed to general interests, spillovers, and the long term,
including citizens and society, other jurisdictions, the private sector, and future generations
Analysts will surely disagree about particular classifications, but that is not as
important as including all affected parties. Stakeholder analysis can also assist decision
makers in working through controversial environmental problems. The link between
environmental concerns and ethics is in extending our reach to future generations,
as Chapter Three argues. Here they enter the calculus as external, indirect stakeholders. Where environmental degradation is concerned, future generations are
both highly dependent and highly vulnerable. Also bear in mind the three levels of
ethical effects: the decision maker or individuals affected, the organization or policy,
and the system or society. By changing the level of abstraction, stakeholder categories
can account for all three levels.
Ranking Obligations to Stakeholders
Once affected parties and potential adverse effects (who is being hurt and how much)
are identified, the next step is to rank the weight of obligation to each. A simple but
unworkable method is to choose one of the three categories and base priorities on it.
That makes a sham out of the exercise, leaves out too many stakeholders, and treats
all stakes the same.
A more useful alternative is to rank the stakes—the values associated with
interests—and to come up with a composite gauge of adverse impact. This is the first
step in Exhibit 7.1. Using a stakeholder diagnostic along the lines of the one presented
in Exhibit 7.1, the decision maker can assign scores to selected factors. The stakeholder
diagnostic is a practical tool for aiding deliberation, not a quick fix for ending it.
Although the stakeholder diagnostic shown in Exhibit 7.1 uses six equally weighted
factors in the index, the decision maker can adapt it to different ethical concerns by
varying the weight of different factors or adding new ones. For example, if the weight
assigned to the sixth factor strikes you as double-counting (tipping the scales, as it were),
then delete it and substitute another factor chosen on ethical grounds. The decision maker
or manager selects the factors and assigns the values. For example, a high score on policy impact (the fifth factor in the sample diagnostic) suggests injury for trivial results
and explicitly factors in utility gauged by aggregated effects. Although duty-oriented
purists may drop it from the calculation, some analysts would consider tolerating
any harm at all for only material, nontrivial reasons.
164 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Understanding Who and What Matters 165
EXHIBIT 7.1. STAKEHOLDER DIAGNOSTIC.
Category (check one) Description of Stake
□ Internal ________________________________________
□ External and direct ________________________________________
□ External and indirect ________________________________________
Step 1. Score each factor.
High = 3
Medium = 2
Low = 1
None = 0
The higher the score, the less acceptable the decision for that stakeholder.
Factors Score
Dependency on agency—inaccessible alternative services _____
Dependency—improbable relief or remedy from harm/injury _____
Vulnerability to decision—likelihood or risk of potential harm/injury _____
Vulnerability—gravity (versus triviality) of effect _____
Scope—broad policy impact (versus negligible) _____
Risk to fundamental ethical value, duty, or principle _____
Add column for total score:
Step 2.
Repeat the scoring for each of the stakeholders to allow comparisons among them.
Next, add all stakeholders’ scores together for a measure of the overall potential.
A decision that causes severe permanent harm or injury receives a high score.
Step 3. Action
A high score across the board should prompt managers to reject the proposal outright
(#1, below).
A high score for some stakeholders coupled with a low score for others may prompt managers to
recommend alternatives or targeted relief (#2, below).
1. Manager recommends obligatory action or relief ? □ Yes □ No
2. Score triggers manager’s considering alternative action or relief ? □ Yes □ No

The second step is to repeat the scoring for each of the stakeholders, in order to
allow comparisons among them. The higher the score—at or approaching 18—the
less acceptable the decision for that stakeholder. Adding all the scores together furnishes an aggregate gauge of the overall potential harm. A decision that causes severe,
permanent harm to the dependent (service recipients) or vulnerable (ill, poor) and
damage to crucial values receives a high score. A high score across-the-board should
prompt managers to reject the proposal outright. The intention here is to provoke
rethinking, as well as some reflecting on the meaning of public interest.
A score of 18 for individual stakeholders in the sample diagnostic could trigger
thinking about modification, mitigation, remedy, or relief. A high score for some stakeholders, coupled with a low score for others, may prompt managers to recommend
alternatives or targeted relief. Although this is surely a burden, the effort could restrain
action at deviant points on the continuum shown in Chapter One. By way of precedent, there are monetary compensation, job retraining, outplacement programs,
affirmative action, and programs for reducing health and safety risks to employees.
Individual responsibility, truth telling, and publicity combine into an obligation
to accept willingly the responsibility for one’s actions. Add to this the obligation to
modify behavior if the results are harmful. Consequently, feedback is important to
building in the capacity to monitor and modify. The willingness to listen is a component of ethical decision making.
Appetite Curbs
Two problems cause indigestion if stakeholder analysis is swallowed whole in a single gulp. One is a matter of concepts and principles of justice, such as distribution, redistribution, compensation, and others the case concluding Chapter One touches on.
The notion of compensation is too often reduced to financial payoffs. We should know
better; even the ancient idea of lex salica (a sixth-century penal code also including
some civil law acts) allows for payment or atonement (Pollock-Byrne, 1989, p. 47). The
ethical (and political) ramifications of buying off the injured party or buying citizen
cooperation are all too obvious. Is it too harsh to wonder whether what is being bought
off sometimes is the decision maker’s guilty conscience? Duty-based reasoning argues
that some things or people should not be bought; the price is never right.
For those with an eye on results, reducing harm via compensation raises the specter
of discriminatory, class-based problem solving disingenuously rationalized on ethical
grounds. Because the price of a rich injured party is higher than a poor one’s, economical implementation of ethically justified solutions targets the poor. If public service sincerely values social equity, why should poor neighborhoods, or poor countries
for that matter, get the solutions to society’s problems (prisons, nuclear waste dumps,
166 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

and so on)? Because they are poor? Weak? What level of economic distress transforms
compensation into coercion? An opposing sentiment clarifies this line of argument. If
the value of efficiency prevails in tax policy, assuming the diminishing marginal utility of money, do we really have an ethical rationale for taxing the rich?
The second problem is a problem only if one objects to a results-based, somewhat
utilitarian view that condones, although under constrained circumstances, the involuntary sacrifice of individuals, their interests, or values to some greater good. This is, of
course, a problem with all collective action that parcels out costs and benefits to
different members and in different degree. A primitive duty-based critique may protest
that the trade-off means using another person, and any price for human dignity is
ethically intolerable. This kind of moral absolutism freezes government and other
public organizations into immobility.
Amplifying Standard Analysis
Stakeholder analysis is a powerful analytic tool. With appropriate research and inclusive
participation, authentic empathy replaces patronizing paternalism or self-interested
projection. It can be an effective counterbalance to elitist planning and arrogant policymaking that imperiously assign pros and cons and define the public interest expertly
but autonomously. Duty-based reasoning can use stakeholder analysis as a net to capture the affected principles and values. Results-based thinking can use it to tally and
trade off the effects of a decision (or of indecision).
Stakeholder analysis is also a powerful decision-making tool. Although not speaking of stakeholder analysis itself, Thomas C. Schelling (1981, p. 37) explains how hard
decision making is:
I have often been glad that I wasn’t in charge. It is easy enough to see plainly that
there is too much inequality (or illiteracy, or ill health, or injustice) and to help to
reduce it, knowing that despite all efforts too much will remain. But if it were up to
me to decide how much inequality is not much, or how much injustice, or how much
disregard for the elderly or for future generations, I’d need more than a sense of
direction.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Probing devices such as stakeholder analysis correct for some analytic distortions
and omissions in cost-benefit analysis and other analytic techniques by adding ethical
dimensions of action, inaction, and delay. (The case at the end of this chapter demonstrates the potential for doing so.) Originally applied to public works by the U.S. Army
Understanding Who and What Matters 167

Corps of Engineers in the pioneering days of American public administration, costbenefit analysis now is relatively refined but still ethically lopsided. The technique garnered new clout in the privatization initiatives and deregulatory push of the 1980s. (In
1981, President Reagan issued Executive Order 12291 [46 CFR 13,193], according
to which major rules proposed by executive agencies are required to undergo costbenefit scrutiny.)
Public policy analysis and regulatory review routinely use cost-benefit analysis
to examine decisions in which lives, health, safety, and quality of life are expressed in
dollars. One issue is the elastic nature of the value put on human life; broadly disparate dollar values are assigned by different federal agencies. Analytic limitations are
exposed in regulations governing environmental impact statements, as well as the arguments and counterarguments that surface in “Right at Ground Zero”—the case
in Chapter One. As a reminder: “The translation of all good things into dollars and
the devaluation of the future are inconsistent with the way many people view the
world” (Ackerman and Heinzerling, 2002, p. 1562). Stakeholder analysis encourages
decision makers to broaden their worldview.
Moral Imagination
Another way of expanding reach that works well in conjunction with stakeholder
analysis is exercising the moral imagination to break out of a mind-set, strip off the
blinders, weigh the anchor. In the discussion of decision-making models in Chapter
Six, we note that decision makers first categorize a situation and then adopt rules for
making choices that fit the selected category. To use your moral imagination means to
change the “mental model” context and devise another perspective to creatively resolve a dilemma or break an impasse.
Consider the training exercise shown in Figure 7.2. Finding a solution depends
on going outside the unreal boundaries we ourselves superimpose on the problem.
In fact, there is no square, and we can solve the problem only by breaking out of the
self-imposed analytic limits. Similarly, it has been argued in a business context that
most managers are moral and public-spirited, but missing the developed moral imagination needed to change their mind-set (Werhane, 1999).
Exhibit 7.2 suggests a way to break out of the box with an eye on the ethical aspects of the problem and the ethical dimensions of the solution. This checklist merges
four core ethical principles and directs attention to those with a stake in the decision
or outcome, such as the town, taxpayers, voters, residents, elected officials, colleagues
in the office, and professional associates. Using the list stimulates creative leadership
by calling up the moral imagination in order to redefine the problem, as ethical leaders try to satisfy, or at least touch base with, as many ethical principles and values as
possible.
168 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

According to Exhibit 7.2, moral, democratic, public leadership offers ethical compromise and values principled judgment. This kind of leadership is responsive, open,
and accountable. It mixes and harmonizes different, rightful claims, instead of shutting out people and their concerns. The option of fixing single-mindedly on one’s personal preferences often means great cost or harm to others.
The notion of living according to ethical standards is tied up with the notion of
defending the way one is living, of giving a reason for it, or justifying it . . . the justification must be of a certain kind…. Self-interested acts must be shown to be
compatible with more broadly based ethical principles if they are to be ethically
defensible, for the notion of ethics carries with it something bigger than the individual. If I am to defend my conduct on ethical grounds, I cannot point only to the
benefits it brings me. I must address myself to a larger audience.
From ancient times, philosophers and moralists have expressed the idea that
ethical conduct is acceptable from a point of view that is somehow universal (Singer,
1979, p. 10).
Is it sermonizing to suggest that self-righteousness is a public service vice (Lewis and
Catron, 1996)? Because public officials and employees are temporary stewards of public
authority, arrogance is out of order. Some degree of humility encourages self-restraint,
especially when we admit the possibility of human error. Yet the leader’s ethical concerns also count, or personal integrity no longer does. The result: ethical leadership proposes principled, creative solutions when rival claims threaten ethical gridlock.
Understanding Who and What Matters 169
FIGURE 7.2. CONNECT THE DOTS.
Connect the dots using four straight lines,
without lifting your pencil from the paper.

The Personal Stake
Public managers do not need stakeholder analysis to tell them that they are affected
parties, too. Integrity, reputation, financial security, and career prospects dictate a genuine and legitimate concern for oneself. In his influential Inside Bureaucracy, Anthony
Downs (1967, p. 53) argues that “every official acts at least partly in his own self-interest,
and some officials are motivated solely by their own self-interest.” Although personal
cares are not permitted to usurp public interest or disable impartiality, ignoring them
altogether may undermine analytic integrity and ultimately impede followthrough (as
the “price tags” in Exhibit I.2 suggest). Unless altruism is the standard in all things and
all cases, a manager can better identify and separate out personal stakes by considering them than by ignoring them. Stakeholder analysis permits a manager to own up
to self-interest and personal costs. It clarifies general issues, undercuts hypocrisy and
self-deceit, and avoids later paralysis or regrets.
Personal Qualms
Sometimes an ethical manager is the object of unethical behavior, sometimes a witness to it, or occasionally even an active party (however unwilling or accidental) in it.
The manager then is in the uncomfortable position of either tolerating his or her own
unethical conduct or that of others, or doing something about it. Here we revisit the
themes raised at the beginning of this book: What counts? What is at stake? How can
managers ensure both professional success and ethical survival?
Here again, the individual and the setting interact. The innumerable examples
of heroism and steadfast resistance to injustice in Resource A remind us that even
170 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 7.2. CREATIVELY LEAD.
Redefine the problem to satisfy as many ethical values and principles as possible. Instead of stopping at doing as little harm as possible (the usual minimum duty), a public manager with moral imagination seeks to reconcile and execute four time-honored ethical principles and harmonize duties
and values:
1. Reciprocity signals respect for human dignity and rights and to avoid doing harm; the Golden
Rule is a familiar example.
2. Reversibility (or empathy) calls for seeing oneself as subject or victim, trading places, or walking in someone else’s shoes.
3. Utility (or net good results, however defined) urges concern for the number of people affected
and how deeply, in both the long and short term.
4. Universality and consistency block arbitrary, haphazard, or unscrupulous behavior in favor of
impartiality, fairness, and predictability.

passive acceptance or inaction is a choice, although not necessarily an ethically neutral
one. Of course, they remind us as well of the personal risk and potential cost. Assuming that we work without blinders on, the choice is among eight general options:
1. Denying the problem 5. Notifying a supervisor
2. Being hypocritical 6. Working for change
3. Conducting sabotage 7. Blowing the whistle
4. Electing disqualification (recusal) 8. Resigning
The fact is, none of the options is fully satisfactory for figuring out which way to turn.
Filtering Offenses
Denying the problem is probably used as often as any other single option, but denial
is self-deceit. It works nicely for petty conveniences and immaterial human error (we
forget that he put that pen in his pocket). The idea that ethical offense is a matter of
degree, of gradations, is the point of the exercise given in Exhibit 7.3. Managers routinely sort misdeeds by discounting for imputed motive, intent, impact, and widespread
agreement (in the agency or community) about wrongdoing and other factors.
Selectivity—choosing your battles in a principled way—does not change the ethics of the
violation but does affect the response (reaction, remedy, penalty).
Where do you draw the line? Judith N. Shklar (1984, p. 8) observes, “Most of us
may intuitively agree about right and wrong, but we also, and far more significantly,
differ enormously in the ways in which we rank the virtues and the vices.” What is
the difference between pocketing a pen and taking home a PC? The dollar value? Only
in part; the smaller infractions have a huge aggregate impact. Similarly, is the number
of pages duplicated on the office machine the issue, or is it the principle of personal
use of public property? Are effects measured as one-shot, cumulative, or aggregate,
and does the result affect a manager’s response?
Reasonable selectivity runs the risk of appearing to be arbitrary enforcement of
standards or preferential treatment of individuals. Problems arise precisely because
it is so hard to specify decision-making criteria in advance. Yet these criteria are important precisely when the manager is picking and choosing.
To think that everyone makes mistakes or has a price does not entail equating
all offenses. A working proposition is that the more unethical we judge a behavior to be, the less
likely we are to practice it or tolerate others doing it. For example, many people would agree
that endangering a child’s life is far more offensive than lining one’s pocket. The problem is that seeing ethical offense as a matter of degree may carry a high emotional
price tag when trivialities descend into transgressions.
Understanding Who and What Matters 171

172 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 7.3. DRAWING THE LINE.
Given the actual prospect of exceeding legal authority, budget, energy, credibility, and more, what
do you do when you can’t do it all? The objective here is to polish principled thinking about the ethical dimensions of public leadership and to take personal responsibility for everyday practices.
Even when upstanding people agree on right versus wrong, they may weigh
ethical claims differently and sort offenses by discounting for: the hat one
wears and place in the organization; imputed motive, intent, and likely impact, and norms, habits, and customs in the community. When response,
remedy, or penalty turns on your assessment of degree or gradations of
ethical offense, a key to keeping personal integrity intact is to draw the line
in a principled way.
Working proposition: the more unethical we judge a behavior to be, the less
willing we are to practice it or to tolerate it when others do it.
Please do each step quickly, spontaneously, using common sense and gut feel.
Step #1. Call it as you see it. Tease out ethical facets of behavior by classifying practices.
A = highly unethical C = not especially wrong
B = moderately unethical D = not at all wrong
Public Scrutiny
__ 1. To counteract an untrue charge, accuse the media of cynically distorting reality for political purposes.
__ 2. In response to a scandal, prove that blame actually lies with your predecessor’s lax management and inattentive leadership.
__ 3. In a serious policy dispute, threaten to disclose an opponent’s real personal indiscretions.
__ 4. At a meeting with a supportive reporter, put an unreleased document on your desk and
leave the office momentarily.
__ 5. Claim public support without any factual basis.
__ 6. Prepare a news release supporting the mayor’s claims with inventive statistics.
__ 7. Although you have some unannounced information, tell an unsympathetic reporter that
you don’t know when asked about some shenanigans in City Hall.
__ 8. On a council member’s suggestion, build a case for dismissing a capable employee whose
media disclosures embarrassed the jurisdiction.
__ 9. Take public credit for someone else’s idea.
__10. Create an air of acute crisis to dramatize your own policy position.
__11. Cover for a well-meaning colleague’s mistake.
__12. Propose canceling a popular program if a low-income program is targeted for cuts.
__13. Delay announcing the bad news to avoid distorting the election.
__14. ____________________________________________________________
(a practice you identify)

Understanding Who and What Matters 173
Some people see ethics as a toggle switch—on or off, right or wrong—and refuse to consider
any mediating factors or pragmatic issues in an assessment or reaction.
Do you agree? Did you select only A and D categories? □ Yes □ No
Step #2. Look only at your A choices.
Star the three you consider the most serious wrongs.
Then double-star the single most serious offense.
Why are your starred items so offensive? A line may be drawn at a grave offense that
purposefully causes harm to innocent parties indulges conflict of interest
fails to remedy a problem one directly caused fails to help weak or needy
nullifies accountability injures or neglects the public interest
(through deception or irresponsibility)
your view: your view:
Step #3. In your experience, are any of your A and B choices common practice? Circle these.
As a public manager committed to the highest ethical standards and integrity,
What is your responsibility
for starred practices?
For circled practices?
Discussion
The first step in “Drawing the Line” asks you to go down the list of actions and write the letter that
you think best describes each action. The choices run from A (highly unethical) to D (not at all
wrong); B and C provide some wiggle room. For example, the fifth entry reads: “Claim public support without any factual basis.” Because, in fact, this is lying, many people would assign it an A as
highly unethical or B as moderately unethical. Step 1 is to write your choice in the space next to the
fifth action.
In numerous professional training and classroom settings, relatively few people assign one letter to all the behaviors. Rather, we see an inclination to make distinctions. Now the question is, How?
This takes you to the second step, where we revisit the list of actions to look only at the A
choices. Star the three that you consider the most serious wrongs. Then select from among these
three the single most serious offense and give it two stars.
Now examine the starred items to see what makes certain actions so offensive. Often a line is
drawn when behavior has serious results or ignores important duties. Also a person’s motivation
comes into play. (See Exhibit I.2.) Here are the six boundaries that we have found to be the most
often-cited reasons for giving an action two stars. Representing the common ethical standards used
to filter action and modulate response, these six are critical boundaries for ethical public leaders.
Let us take a closer look at some of the choices. The eighth entry frequently rates a star or two
because it (1) seems to purposefully cause harm to innocent parties, (2) fails all the audit tools for
testing ethical decisions in Exhibits 3.8 and 6.7, (3) neglects correcting the problem, and (4) raises
15_96756
One risk is that by looking the other way too much and too long, we end up teetering precariously on that infamous slippery slope—the gradual numbing of ethical
discrimination. Watergate figure Jeb Stuart Magruder described his slide down that
slope, along which ethical judgment about right and wrong is lost. In his words, “It’s
a question of slippage. I sort of slipped right into it. Each act you take leads you to the
next act, and eventually you end up with a Watergate” (quoted in Terkel, 1973, p. 15).
Magruder was not the only one to have lost a sense of right and wrong. At
Watergate hearings in 1973, Senator Herman Talmadge asked John Ehrlichman, a
senior White House aide, “If the president could authorize a covert break-in, you don’t
know exactly where that power would be limited. You don’t think it could include murder or other crimes beyond covert break-ins, do you?” Ehrlichman replied, “I don’t
know where the line is, Senator” (quoted in Moyers, 1988, p. 94). “No man ever became extremely wicked all at once,” wrote Juvenal in the second century. Thomas
Paine, the U.S. Revolutionary War pamphleteer, observed, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right.” At some indeterminate point unknowable in advance, we can lose altogether the capacity to make
moral judgments. Or act upon them.
Deception
Michael Walzer argues on behalf of accepting necessary lapses for public purposes as
part of the job. “Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him.
If he were a moral man and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were a
174 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
questions about an organization in which loyalty to the organization outguns loyalty to the public
and is rewarded over competence. What kind of an organization is being built here?
It is reassuring to note that many (many!) elected officials in numerous forums have awarded
the thirteenth entry two stars as the most offensive behavior. This action not only hurts the innocent
opposition candidate and fails to help the voters, it also prevents accountability and informed citizen
participation. The third entry is seen as complicated, neither an easy A nor an easy D. It highlights the difference between truth and candor.
Some of us may hesitate because a personal indiscretion may not be related to the official
position or public policy. (See the third scenario in Exhibit I.2.)
Other issues: number 4 is a breach of the confidentiality the public leader promises to keep;
number 9 is theft, of intellectual property but theft nonetheless; numbers 5 and 6 are lying, and
numbers 10 and 12 imply some intimidation or threat, which is hardly an ethical use of one’s power.
What is at stake in number 11? Does the practice you wrote in for the fourteenth entry breach one
of the six boundaries?
As for the third and last step, when a practice is common, the question becomes, What is my
responsibility? This question is central to ethics, professionalism, and citizenship in a democracy.
Exhibit is heavily adapted by permission of American Management Association. Derived from
W. A. Ruch and J. W. Newstrom, “How Unethical Are We?” Supervisory Management, 1975, 20, 16–21.

politician and nothing else, he would pretend they were clean” (1973, p. 168). Walzer’s
words apply to politicians, but his reasoning extends to public managers. (For counterviews on deception, see Sissela Bok’s Lying, 1978.) This kind of reasoning is used to
justify sting and covert operations as authorized forms of lying and deception.
A second option—being hypocritical—is denial on a public level. It is designed
to deceive. It sometimes degrades into slurs against opponents. Pretense, often justified by loyalty to clients or colleagues, induces cover-ups as, for example, in Watergate
or the “blue code of silence” in some police departments. By definition, hypocrisy is
terminal for ethical integrity. In the seventeenth century, La Rochefoucauld said,
“Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue.”
Sabotage is also a public lie but one often undertaken in the name of ethical principle. It is contrary, however, to ethical values such as truth telling and loyalty and to
administrative principles such as legal compliance and accountability. The contradictions are so intense that behind sabotage there may be a disgruntled employee indulging in personal retaliation.
Going Through Channels
Disqualification (or recusal, in formal terminology) lets a biased decision maker off the
hook by keeping the job and the interest that presents a conflict. Blind trusts and
negotiated agreements are other forms of excusing oneself, but from the other end
of the conflict. Requiring procedures for recognition, disclosure, and substitution, disqualification is essential, unless public service recruits automatons unconnected to family or community.
From experience as an elected official in a small town, one of us (Lewis) knows
that in small, stable communities or company towns, where everyone is acquainted
with each other or connected to an interest, sidestepping conflict through strict disqualification criteria means that nothing ever gets done and government decision
making is crippled. Of course, interwoven relationships may also arise in large
jurisdictions.
From the outside, it is hard to differentiate the option of working for change within
the organization from self-serving compromise. It may also be hard from the inside.
Magruder pointed out that the hired hand or aide tends to go along. “It’s very difficult to set your own standard and continue in the power structure. I always felt I could
do more by staying in the system. Maybe that’s just the way of satisfying my
conscience” (quoted in Terkel, 1973, p. 15). This may be just the time to hold up a
mirror and review Chapter Five’s ten reasons why ethical arguments are so difficult to
assess accurately.
It may also be the time to think of the story of General Harold K. Johnson, the
Vietnam-era army chief of staff. As a prisoner of the Japanese, a survivor of the
Bataan Death March in World War II, and a commander during the Korean War,
Understanding Who and What Matters 175

General Johnson’s physical courage cannot be disputed. Colonel Harry G. Summers
Jr. (1989, p. xviii) tells how, during the Vietnam War, Johnson went to tell the president
[that] the United States had no strategy worth the name in Vietnam, that all the
principles of war were being violated, and that American soldiers were being killed
needlessly. On the way there, however, he thought better of it and convinced himself that he could do more by staying on than he could by resigning. “And now,” he
said, “I will go to my death with that lapse in moral courage.”
Formerly holding a chair in military research at the Army War College, retired
colonel and journalist Summers (p. xvii) concludes, “Everyone knows that taking a
moral and ethical stand may have disastrous consequences for one’s career ambitions.
But General Johnson’s comments are testimony that the consequences of not taking
such a stand may be far worse.”
Going to one’s supervisor, another option, also presents problems. Although it is
true that federal and many state and local standards obligate disclosure of fraud, waste,
or abuse, it is also true that these rules run counter to our indoctrination as team players, starting with Little League, 4-H, and scouting. Sometimes disclosure is even called
ratting—a term no more complimentary than snitch. A humane and human manager,
making allowances for trifles and petty errors, lapses into denial on occasion (see entry
11 in Exhibit 7.4). Nonetheless and despite personal discomfort, a public manager has
a responsibility to the agency and the public that preempts individual loyalty.
Blowing the Whistle
“Blowing the whistle” means going outside routine channels. It means making an endrun play by using special reporting channels (for example, ombudsman, hotline, inspector general) or even going to the media. We prefer Alan Campbell’s definition: “a popular
shorthand label for any disclosure of legal violations, mismanagement, a gross waste of
funds, an abuse of authority, or a danger to public health and safety, whether the disclosure is made within or without the chain of command” (quoted in Bowman, 1980, p. 13).
Whistle-blowing is not a casual choice. It is imperative that everyone—the organization and the individual—see whistle-blowing as a last resort. There is simply too much
evidence of personal pain and retribution by peers or superiors in public agencies
and corporate life for any other view of whistle-blowing. It continues to rank as “one
of the most threatening forms of organizational dissent” (Jos, Tompkins, and Hays,
1989, p. 552), and managers who elect this option are advised to prepare for criticism, ridicule, and ostracism. A good illustration is what Sherron Watkins, the whistleblower at Enron, says of getting another corporate position: “In terms of the bigger
corporations, I have had people talk to me about various things, and then the door gets
176 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

slammed. When it comes down to the final decision, there’s probably one or two people who say: ‘Are y’all crazy? She’s a whistle-blower’” (Solomon, 2004, unpaginated).
The firing of Jennifer Long, who testified at hearings before the Finance Committee in
September 1997 that focused on accusations that taxpayers were abused by the Internal Revenue Service, was only halted by congressional intervention (Johnston, 1999).
Nevertheless, whistle-blowing is done (Johnson, 2003).
Of course, there are formal protections in many jurisdictions; federal employees
theoretically are protected against reprisals for making complaint; many state and local
employees are similarly protected. The other side of the coin is protecting the alleged wrongdoer against the unscrupulous or mistaken who would damage a reputation and career anonymously and at low cost (and in contrast to civil disobedience).
Sometimes the protections work. Yet personal costs, factual disputes, impugned
motives, and ruined careers are permanent fixtures. They are evident in a whistleblowing case over Alaskan land claims from the Taft administration, as recounted in
an early casebook in public administration (Stein, 1952). Despite today’s formal protections, recounted repercussions belie an automatic victory for truth and justice. To
this add the anguish over self-image and identity when a loyal team player with strong
institutional ties breaks ranks—with no guarantee of effectiveness.
Because of the risk potential for the organization and individual on many levels,
the whistle-blowing option demands rigorous procedural protections for both the complainant and the accused. Otherwise, whistle-blowing is subject to abuse in personal
vendetta, partisan conflict, or policy dispute and looms as an administrative scourge.
All in all, whistle-blowing is suitable only after the facts are verified, the soul is searched,
and administrative channels are exhausted. Before reaching for the whistle, managers
are advised to answer the six questions posed in Exhibit 7.4.
Are you ready to accept the consequences if you are right but fail to act? The
adage, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women]
to do nothing,” synopsizes the results of everyone’s silence. Taking action means taking responsibility and showing courage.
Resignation
When personal integrity is, in fact, compromised (and each manager must make this
decision personally), the resignation option separates public service from forced servitude. But before making a rash decision, later regretted, a manager can secure time
for deliberation by submitting privately to a self-audit. Redraw the maps in Figure 1.6,
and verify the mismatch between “acceptable” and “actual” diamond shapes. If the
distortion is either intolerable or unalterable from your office, or both, do what you
have to do. An ethical career professional puts the emphasis on the first and third words.
There is a quiet heroism in that.
Understanding Who and What Matters 177

Case: Valor, Compliance, and Compassion
The deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in the United States, which occurred on
the morning of April 19, 1995, has special significance for public administrators
because the target was government employees, working in the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building. Fully 60 percent of the 168 fatalities and 40 percent of the 647 injured
were federal and state government employees in Oklahoma City, the state capital and
twenty-ninth most populous U.S. city. Words and numbers inadequately depict the
tragic human toll of this unnatural disaster and its intense effect on many lives.
The long, dangerous, and frustrating rescue operation generated significant and
complex ethical issues, such as an emphasis on body count as a proxy measure of an
incident’s significance and the preeminence of the privacy of survivors and victims’
families over other values. When it comes to emergency management, Waugh and Hy
(1990, p. 1) point out,
One of the more telling applications of the fundamental values of a society can
be found in how that society responds to risk, particularly risk that may result in
major losses of human life and/or property. How society prepares for and invests
178 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 7.4. BEFORE YOU BLOW.
Given the high risk and no guarantee of effectiveness, when should a loyal team player, with strong
organization ties, break ranks? Whistle-blowing is suitable only after
Facts are verified.
The soul is searched.
Organizational channels are exhausted.
Before reaching for the whistle, ask
1. Is the violation serious enough to warrant the risk to self and to the organization?
2. Are you prepared for this action to become known and for heroism to mutate into betrayal?
3. Are you sure of your facts? Are you sure you are right?
4. Are you sure that superiors or colleagues are not trying to correct the situation?
5. Is your motive purely in the public interest?
6. Are you ready to accept the consequences if you are wrong?
Six yes answers signal ethical leaders to do the right thing.
Case is excerpted and revised by permission of Public Personnel Management. C. W. Lewis, M. J.
Tenzer, and T. Harrison. “The Heroic Response to Terror: The Case of Oklahoma City.” Public
Personnel Management, 1999, 28(4), 617–635.

in programs to prevent or lessen the effects of such disasters demonstrates the
values placed on safety and security, the capacity of its political and administrative structures, the dominant political and economic interests in the decision
making process, and the technical expertise that can be brought to bear.
As Peter May (1985, p. 46) notes, emergency management is “a function of values
(what ought to be done) and of capability (what can be done).”
Early in the rescue, emergency responders confronted a profound ethical dilemma that
pitted valor against obedience and personal compassion against professional duty; disinterested expertise serving the public interest vied with the urgency of immediate,
individual need. Eighty-six minutes after the blast, all personnel were ordered directly and repeatedly to evacuate the Murrah Building and immediate area because
a possible secondary explosive device was spotted; rescue operations resumed after
54 minutes.
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. Who are the stakeholders in this case? The answer to this helps answer another question: Should firefighters and police officers follow orders, evacuate, and thereby safeguard the operation, or remain with and try to rescue victims?
There is no easy answer to be found in manuals or codes of professional conduct.
Standard emergency response procedures emphasize the safety of responders as the
first concern, in order to protect the organizational capacity to pursue the rescue
(Clark, 1998). The assistant fire chief articulated the managerial perspective: “The decision to pull our people was made quickly. In truth, there was no choice to make. The
first rule for those responding to an emergency is not to become victims themselves”
(Hansen, 1995, p. 18).
2. Is this rule sound on ethical grounds? Note that orders and standard procedures
notwithstanding, emergency personnel in the field are expected to exercise discretion
within the bounds of law, professional norms, and reason. The police department’s
emergency planning coordinator notes, “The guidance is general in nature, not all encompassing, and its applicability should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the
first responders” (Clark, 1998).
Fire chief Gary Marrs applied a decision rule of timeliness during the evacuation:
where rescuers were close to removing the victim, he urged speed; where the rescue
appeared likely to take some time, he ordered the rescuers to evacuate, even against
their wishes. “Although moved by their professionalism and willingness to stay,
we were not going to take such a risk” (Oklahoma City, 1996, p. 131). Of his own
Understanding Who and What Matters 179

response, Marrs says, “I wanted to stay, but I also knew my duty.” He asks, “What was a
supervisor to do? Can you allow your people to stay and be subjected to the risk. . . ?
Or, do you make them leave?”
3. Can answers be formulated that meet ethical and practical concerns? Marrs notes,
“You really tried not to hear the cries for help, begging us not to leave, coming from
behind us” and concludes, “Some of the things I witnessed during the first hours of
the incident were predicated on the duty we felt toward the people we serve—not on
what we were being prompted to do in our hearts. Duty had to override emotion in
an operation such as this” (Oklahoma City, 1996, p. 131).
4. Do you agree? Why? A clash of core values created a profound ethical dilemma.
An officer who left a victim explains, “I have been a police officer for twelve years, and
I always follow orders, but leaving that young woman under those conditions is the
biggest regret I’ve had. Given another opportunity, that is one order I would disobey”
(Ross and Myers, 1996, p. 75).
Three other officers made a different decision; they remained with victims despite
the personal risk and successfully brought them to safety. (Others also remained in the
area or at nearby sites, despite the evacuation order [Knight, 1998, p. 59].) The question arises whether the officers who remained and rescued two women actually disobeyed orders. The evacuation order was broadcast on radios and public address
systems, passed by messengers and word-of-mouth, but no one in the chain of command directly ordered them to desist and evacuate. The issue, then, is less one of
disobeying a direct order than failing to comply with standard emergency rescue
procedure.
Hansen (1995, p. 19) writes, “We later learned that some of those rescuers opted
to stay with the injured and ride out the threat. We didn’t reprimand any of them for
their decision. We felt it was one of those few times in life where there wasn’t a right
or wrong choice. Whatever each rescuer personally chose to do given each specific
situation was the right thing to do.”
5. Do you agree with Hansen? Why? He adds, “The rescuers who saw . . . [the
victims’] faces caught glimpses of pure terror, and those expressions are something
they will carry with them for the rest of their lives” (Hansen, 1995, pp. 19–20).
In May 1996, the Oklahoma City Police Department (OCPD) for the first time in
its history awarded its highest service award, the Police Medal of Honor, to the three
who remained with victims for their courage and voluntary assumption of personal
risk. According to the OCPD procedures manual (procedure 164.50), “this medal is
awarded to an OCPD officer who voluntarily distinguishes himself-herself conspicuously by gallantry and extraordinary heroism. The act must be in excess of normal demands and of such a nature that the officer was fully aware of the imminent threat
to their [sic] personal safety and acted above and beyond the call of duty at the risk of
their life.”
6. Would you have awarded these medals? Why? Did success play a role here? What
would be a reasonable organizational response, had their rescue efforts failed or a secondary device put them among the casualties?
180 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

The organization’s awarding medals to rescue workers whose valorous deeds, in
effect, meant deviating from basic emergency rescue procedure exemplifies the value
conflict. The OCPD chose to acclaim heroism on an individual level that is deemed
unsuitable on an organizational or policy level. The awards indicate that the professional standards expected of emergency workers can—and should—conflict with the
emotions aroused in the immediate context of rescue operations. Because courageous
action—beyond the call of duty and at grave personal risk—meant disregarding standard emergency rescue procedure but was rewarded with the highest organizational
honor, emergency personnel are left with no clear operational and ethical guidelines
for the future. Although ethics is not simply about rules, ethical management should
provide some direction.
Understanding Who and What Matters 181

PART THREE
ETHICS AND THE
ORGANIZATION
Y

185
Part Three moves from the individual to the workaday organizational level and examines ethics in the agency. This chapter compares governmental standards of
conduct (often referred to as ethics codes) and model statutes by type, function, and
provisions. The chapter also offers a benchmark for current practices, a forecast of
likely developments, and adaptable innovations. Highlighted provisions run from the
typical to the exceptional and include conflict of interest, financial disclosure, the appearance of impropriety, post—employment curbs, and blanket coverage. After recommending guidelines for developing a viable code and managing it effectively, the
chapter ends with a case study on the guidance offered by standards of conduct.
Since Hammurabi, Moses, and Hippocrates, we have operated on the theory that
it is easier to do the right thing when we know what the right thing is. As a result, codifying standards of conduct has become a popular way to clarify at least minimum expectations about acceptable behavior. In the United States, Postmaster General Amos
Kendall developed the earliest code for government in the nineteenth century (see
Exhibit 8.1.). Codes are now being adopted, refined, or strengthened in jurisdictions
all over the country and in many parts of the world.
Dialogue over the years has produced prototypical arguments for and against codes.
Rigorously implemented codes are coercive and spawn more red tape; they reduce managers’ maneuverability and restrict practical options. An unenforced code symbolizes
a weak message—just a piece of paper scribbled over with platitudes. In fact, the disturbing picture painted by Donald Menzel (1997) shows ethics commissions possibly
CHAPTER EIGHT
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING CODES
Y

contributing to public cynicism. Codes alter the course from aspiration to asphyxiation, from ethics to obedience; they substitute rules for reasoning. But must we rely on
mysteries, guiding behavior by unspoken, axiomatic norms?
The controversy spawns four general choices. First, we can adopt intricate rules
with interpretations, advisory opinions, and complex enforcement mechanisms and
protections. Alternatively, we can elect blanket prohibitions that are simple to understand and apply but inflexible and difficult to live with. Third, we can adopt fundamental principles as a way of allowing public employees to aspire to higher standards
and base enforcement on these broad expectations. Or, finally, we can select no explicit
rules, no categorical prohibitions; we can choose to articulate no standards. Figure 8.1
mirrors these choices.
186 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 8.1. CODE FOR U.S. POSTAL WORKERS, 1829.
Issued by Postmaster General Amos Kendall
I. Every clerk will be in his room, ready to commence business, at nine o’clock A.M., and will
apply himself with diligence to the public service until three o’clock P.M.
II. Every clerk will hold himself in readiness to discharge any duty which may be required of
him in office hours or out, in no case where by laboring a short time after office hours an
account can be closed or a citizen released from attendance at this city, must he refrain from
continuing his labors after three o’clock.
III. Newspapers or books must not be read in the office unless connected directly with the business in hand, nor must conversation be held with visitors or loungers except upon business
which they may have with the office.
IV. Gambling, drunkenness, and irregular and immoral habits will subject any clerk to instant
removal.
V. The acceptance of any present or gratuity by any clerk from any person who has business
with the office, or suffering such acceptance by any member of his family, will subject any
clerk to instant removal.
VI. The disclosure to any person out of the office of any investigation going on, or any facts ascertained in the office, affecting the reputation of any citizen, is strictly prohibited without
leave of the Auditor.
VII. No person will be employed as a clerk in this office who is engaged in other business. Except
the attention which the families of clerks require, it is expected that all their time, thoughts,
and energies will be devoted to the public service.
VIII. Strict economy will be required in the use of the public stationery or other property. No
clerk will take paper, quills, or anything else belonging to the government from the office for
use of himself, family, or friends.
Source: White, 1954, pp. 434–435.

Designing and Implementing Codes 187
FIGURE 8.1. DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO
STANDARDS OF CONDUCT.
NON SEQUITUR ©1999 & 2002 Wiley Miller. Dist. By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted
with permission. All rights reserved.
By permission of Johnny Hart and Creators Syndicate, Inc.

As they more and more often choose the first option, many governments today
seem to respond to the questions, If not cure-alls, then what good are codes? What
can they do? with a simple answer. Ethics codes do less than everything and more
than nothing. Proposing the first codification of federal conflict-of-interest statutes,
President Kennedy outlined the pros and cons of ethics codes in his message to
Congress on April 27, 1961.
The ultimate answer to ethical problems in government is honest people in a good
ethical environment. No web of statute or regulation, however intricately conceived, can hope to deal with the myriad possible challenges to a man’s integrity or
his devotion to the public interest.
Nevertheless formal regulation is required—regulation which can lay down
clear guidelines of policy, punish venality and double-dealing, and set a general
ethical tone for the conduct of public business….
Criminal statutes and presidential orders, no matter how carefully conceived
or meticulously drafted, cannot hope to deal effectively with every problem of ethical behavior or conflict of interest. Problems arise in infinite variation. They often
involve subtle and difficult judgments…. And even the best of statutes or regulations will fail of their purpose if they are not vigorously and wisely administered.
Experience in federal, state, and local governments has proven him correct on
every count. Some current samples (see www.stateandfed.com/weekly_updates/
email_4_42.htm) illustrate the potential, complexity, loopholes, and even perverse outcomes of writing and implementing standards of conduct. They also illustrate the variability in standards among the more than 86,000 government units in the United
States. Formal standards, legal sanctions, public expectations, and acceptable
administrative behavior vary significantly across the country.
1. A top San Francisco public works official, under an ethics investigation by
the city attorney, is receiving some highly unusual help—a fundraiser organized by
members of the Board of Supervisors to pay his legal bills. He came under scrutiny
after nine street sweepers for a city-funded nonprofit organization said he had pressured them to vote and distribute campaign literature in the mayoral election campaign. Investigators also are reviewing complaints that he misappropriated city funds
to benefit the nonprofit, where he was executive director for six years before being appointed to the public works department (“Supervisors Plan to Aid S.F. Official,” 2004).
2. In November 2003, the Illinois legislature revised the state’s ethics laws to require that all units of local government, including cities, counties, and school districts,
adopt regulations to conform to the new rules. The law spells out clear restrictions
on political activities of public employees and also regulates the receiving of gifts by
188 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

public officials and employees. The chairperson of Quincy’s ethics commission said
the commission would do whatever is necessary to make sure the city’s ethics ordinance, adopted in 1999, complies with the new state law (“City Must Comply with
New Ethics Law,” 2004).
3. A New Britain, Connecticut, alderman wants to toughen local ethics rules to
bar former city officials and employees from immediately working for city vendors
once they leave their municipal posts. Under the proposal, former city officials or employees who had a hand in city contracts cannot immediately go to work for the contracted companies once they leave public service but would have to wait at least one
year to begin work with such companies if their departure comes less than a year after
the signing of the city contract (“New Ethics Rule Sought,” 2004).
4. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a member of the city council proposed an ethics
policy to address inappropriate behavior by council members who berate city officials
or police officers. Although a code of ethics exists, the council has no way of enforcing
it. This would put “teeth” into the code (“Council Ethics Policy Proposed,” 2003, p. B1).
5. The New York State Ethics Commission has moved to electronic filing of
financial disclosure forms. “Last year, almost 9,500 individuals filed. …When academic filers at the State University of New York filed . . . 73% chose to e-file….
Whether one files electronically or uses the paper form, the statements are due
May 15” (“Popularity of Electronic Filing Saves State Resources,” 2004, p. 1).
6. A 2002 Informal Advisory Opinion from the OGE responded to an ethics official’s
request for guidance as to whether an administrative law judge (ALJ) is permitted to
use the title of Judge or ALJ on personal stationery or in personal activity. “Two sections of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch
(Standards of Conduct) are applicable to your question. . . . If an employee used his
official title in a personal letter to his sister, it would not violate these provisions. However, if an employee were to use his title in a letter to a local police department challenging a traffic ticket, it might well appear that the employee was using his public
office for private gain. . . . Because of this inability to predict all possible circumstances,
we advised in a 1994 letter to an ALJ at your agency that he should not use the title
U.S. Administrative Law Judge on his personal stationery” (U.S. Office of Government Ethics, 2002, unpaginated).
Given the variability, why bother with what is going on in other jurisdictions and
professions, when keeping up-to-date locally is hard enough? One reason is that practices elsewhere provide benchmarks against which to compare current local practices—
a way to take a sounding and to gauge future direction. Learning from others’ mistakes
is more efficient than repeating them. Permutations among states, localities, and nonprofit agencies represent adaptable innovations in a domestic version of technology
transfer.
Designing and Implementing Codes 189

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vast majority of states, large U.S.
cities, and all Canadian provinces had adopted codes of conduct, and there are hundreds of ethics programs in countries throughout the world. One of the first steps in
writing codes is scanning other jurisdictions for ideas about standards and procedures.
In 1990, Alaska did it, and the year before, Los Angeles did it. The Council on
Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) compiles a state-by-state catalogue annually—
The Ethics Update (Freel, 2003). National public interest organizations are proposing
model statutes, while professional associations, research institutes, and national consulting groups contribute to the inter-jurisdictional give-and-take.
In a recent survey, 90 percent of government employees reported operating under
written ethics codes (Ethics Resource Center, 2003a). Although codes can also be found
at every government level throughout the United States—federal, state, municipal,
and county—their applicability varies widely. Some codes cover all three branches of
government; some apply only to the executive branch. Some codes apply only to
civil servants (executive, legislative, and judicial), but others extend to anyone working
for the government, including part-time employees.
Before moving inside government codes and processes, public managers may wish
to glimpse them from the other side. What is serving on a commission like? Professor
Sarah P. Morehouse recounts her experiences as chairperson of an ethics commission
in a New England town (Lewis, 1986, p. 45):
Being on the commission means having to rack your brain for solutions to problems
very, very real to the participants and the answers aren’t easy . . . and both sides
think they are so right. Here we are, sitting in judgment and the answers are painful
to come by. This is an area of conflict and questions where everybody wins because
of the nature of the questions raised and publicity surrounding them. Also, I think
this is some the gutsiest stuff you can do.
J. Patrick Dobel, who chaired the ethics board in King County, Washington, reflected on the importance of such institutions when he wrote, “Public integrity also needs
strong institutional support. …Those of us who have human scale integrity need the
sustained support of people and institutions in order for it to flourish” (Dobel, 1999,
p. 220).
There also is a broad difference between commissions (usually individuals on commissions are appointed through a political process) and an agency responsible for ethics
code interpretation and enforcement. For example, the states of Wisconsin and New
Jersey have ethics agencies with a single appointed head and a professional staff. At
the federal level, the executive branch’s agency, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics
(OGE) has only one political appointee, but Congress has two different committees
made up of a partisan balance of members and a small professional staff. Individual
190 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

states and local jurisdictions in the United States display a rich variety of standards of
conduct and ethics institutions (as shown in Exhibit 8.3, later in the chapter). So do
standards and systems in other countries.
Code Objectives and Types
Codes have a variety of objectives. Some are designed to clarify the minimal standards
expected of public servants within a government. Often these minimal standards are
formalized in law or regulation. Violation of these codes can be criminally, civilly, or
administratively punishable, depending on the scope of the offense. A violation
of criminal ethics codes can result in significant time in jail (for example, a violation of
the federal conflict of interest statute can result in up to five years in prison); administrative violations might be punishable by forcing an employee to take time off without pay. For many critics of these kinds of codes, they are at best deterrents of the most
terrible forms of behavior, and at worst they encourage bad behavior that is not clearly
“outlawed” in the code. For these critics, the purpose of a code should not be describing the minimal but rather should focus public employees on the highest forms of
public service. These two different objectives result in very different types of codes:
ideas about training and notions of enforcement.
Implementation of Codes
Codes have long been associated with three general but realistic objectives: (1) to encourage high standards of behavior, (2) to increase public confidence, and (3) to assist in decision making (Zimmerman, 1976). Different objectives lead to different
models. Legislated codes provide legal penalties and protections as necessary and effective constraints on official power, public authority, and the potential for abuse of
administrative discretion. Administrative standards and procedures assist decision making and managers by providing an operational framework tied to workaday realities.
“Managers need to know what is regarded as acceptable and what is not. Can an
organization afford to have its members trying to guess what its standards are?”
(Bowman, 1981, p. 61).
In a nationwide survey, ASPA members asserted that “properly designed codes of
ethics have a crucial role in fostering integrity in agencies” (Bowman and Williams,
1997, p. 522). Clear ethical standards actually give public employees more workplace self-rule by ensuring that they know the standards to which they will be held accountable. This limits the pressures supervisors and political leaders can put on public
employees to act in ways contrary to the code and limits an agency or department’s
Designing and Implementing Codes 191

vulnerability to charges of corruption. (By way of illustration, see “The Contract” in
Chapter Four.)
A credo (for example, the Athenian pledge, the federal Code of Ethics for Government Service, or the ASPA code) is both aspirational and inspirational—more a
positive statement and pledge of commitment than a list of dos and don’ts. A combined approach encompasses sanctioned aspirations (shoulds), minimum standards
(shalls), and prohibitions (shall nots). The American Bar Association’s Model Rules
of Professional Conduct (which replaced its Code of Professional Responsibility in
2003) is a composite, with three parts: (1) canons, stating the norms or general standards, (2) ethical considerations, stating aspirational principles, and (3) disciplinary
rules, which are mandatory minimum rules of conduct. The International City
Manager’s Association goes beyond these elements with a strict investigative and enforcement mechanism for both its members and the cities that would hire them.
A productive starting point is realistic managerial objectives: the internal, direct
clients are the ethical managers and employees; the purpose is to assist them in ethical
behavior and decision making. Judith Lichtenberg (1996, pp. 13–27) persuasively argues
that codified standards can have an impact both on behavior and decision making:
• Codes of ethics can increase the likelihood that people will behave in certain ways,
partly by bringing to consciousness the character of their actions, partly by attaching
sanctions to noncompliance.
• Furthermore, the existence or validity of a code of ethics never constitutes a decisive, nonrebuttable reason to act. As in the case of law, it provides at most a strong
prima facie reason to act, rebuttable by conscientious objection.
• Codes of ethics, like laws, can also fulfill the function of publicly expressing a group’s
commitment to some moral standard.
Codes have been used to identify a range of unacceptable behaviors in an agency,
but often this is not enough. The best public codes focus on prohibited conduct and
a clear set of values to guide public servants to principled behavior.
In the 1980s, with the advent of state codes in the United States, one state-local
report predicted that code, disclosure, commission, and penalties “will improve the
moral climate and contribute to the prevention of corruption in government in the future” (quoted in Common Cause, 1989b, p. 6). However, it is naïve to assume that the
best ethics code can influence all behavior and eliminate corruption. Ethics codes do
not prevent conflicts of interest. These are inherent in public service (see Chapter One).
If duly enforced, codes give guidance on avoiding some transgressions, working out
some problems, and detecting violations. Codes also contribute to professional identity, which in turn encourages individuals to ascribe to higher standards. Jeremy Plant
(2003, unpaginated) writes,
192 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Professionalism affects standards of conduct in many ways. Professionals share a
common identity, which is based not just on shared knowledge but also shared
norms and values. They interact on a regular and lasting basis, often through associations that represent their interests and serve as a forum to share knowledge, insights, and experience. Professionals often are guided and governed by codes of
ethics that apply general norms of right and wrong behavior to the work context.
Some professional managers in public service may not think of their role in
public administration as their profession but rather see themselves as, for example,
lawyers, engineers, or planners. Codes are often an excellent vehicle to get professional
buy-in by people who come to public management as their second profession.
No code will turn willful crooks into law-abiding public servants. Consider the
words of T. S. Eliot, in Choruses from The Rock (VI, lines 021–023):
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
Although the limited research suggests that code enforcement affects the amount
of misconduct an employee observes (Ethics Resource Center, 2003a), it is foolish if
not downright dangerous to even think that a code will deter all corruption. In regard
to overhauling the Senate’s code, Senator Adlai Stevenson of Illinois once remarked,
“If there are culprits in our midst, they are unlikely to be deterred by ethics codes”
(U.S. Senate, 1980, p. 137). In its report, To Serve with Honor, a presidential commission
studying ethics law reform in 1989 observed:
Laws and rules can never be fully descriptive of what an ethical person should do.
They can simply establish minimal standards of conduct. Possible variations in
conduct are infinite, virtually impossible to describe and proscribe by statute. Compulsion by law is the most expensive way to make people behave (President’s
Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform, 1989, p. 1).
Exhibit 8.2 shows what it takes for a code to be manageable, realistic, and useful.
Workable codes speak directly to public managers and employees and draw on their active involvement in development and enforcement. Too often, codes are written exclusively by attorneys who may write in technical legal language, try to account for the
majority of contingencies, and are tied exclusively to a legal context. Effective codes usually are written in partnership with legal expertise but recognize that a purely legalistic
code will at best be confusing and at worst ignored. The best codes actively involve
employees in their development and implementation (Ethics Resource Center, 2003a).
Designing and Implementing Codes 193

194 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 8.2. WORKABLE AND EFFECTIVE
STANDARDS OF CONDUCT.
Build on five critical elements:
1. Reasonable, comprehensible objectives
2. Affirmative values to guide action
3. Coherent set of understandable standards, including dos and don’ts
4. Set of enforceable, meaningful sanctions
5. Procedural safeguards
Depend on general processes and effective mechanisms:
1. Enforcement procedures: disclosure, impartial commission; investigation, audit
2. Protections for all concerned: grievance and appeal procedures, help-lines, hotlines,
whistle-blowers’ protections
3. Meaningful sanctions and penalties: recusal, administrative intervention, noncriminal civil
or administrative penalties
4. Agency implementation: orientation, training, evaluation and outside dissemination,
self-governance
Commonly cover some or all major categories:
1. Fundamental, understandable prohibitions (conflict of interest, abuse of office)
2. Financial disclosure
3. Appearance-of-impropriety standards
4. Impartial commission or agency (with investigatory or advisory authority)
5. Supplementary restrictions (outside income, postemployment)
6. Criminal sanctions and administrative penalties
7. Procedural protections for complainant and employee
Speak to the public manager:
1. Clarity
• Do I understand the standards?
2. Simplicity
• Do I remember the standards?
3. Ties to administrative realities in the organization
• Are the standards meaningful to my work?
4. Active employee involvement in development and implementation
• Are the standards meaningful to me?
Demand sound management:
1. Show hard evidence—top management’s ongoing, serious commitment to standards and to
implementation.
2. Show the flag—immediate superiors’ and line managers’ integration of ethical concerns
into the routine work environment.
3. Link ethical concerns and behavior with career path and with the agency’s reward structure.
4. Safeguard against arbitrary or selective enforcement, favoritism, or abuse.
5. Communicate standards and expectations publicly and repeatedly to employees, vendors,
clients, the media, and others.

Codes are best written in the spirit of Alexander Hamilton’s comment about
the newly proposed Constitution: “I never expected a perfect document from imperfect men.” At best, a code is a mechanism for communicating and enforcing
minimal standards (at least conflict of interest) and highlighting commitment to
them. It has long been recognized that, to convey standards, codes should be “simple and straightforward, and should focus on the affirmative values that must guide
public servants in the exercise of their responsibilities” (Volcker Commission, 1989,
p. 14).
Overzealous codes, or situations in which agencies try to “out ethics each other”
can create administrative gridlock and ultimately make the code ineffective (Gilman
and Denhardt, 2002).
Creative administrators, confronted with a code of conduct with pages (and more
pages!) of rules, may develop a code or value statement that complements (rather than
complicates) the legal structure. It can be tailored to the particular organizational
challenges confronting the agency and elicit support by involving agency staff in its
development.
On the other side of the argument (Mackenzie, 2002), there are three negatives
to consider when implementing standards of conduct. First, in a study of the New
York City Police Department, Anecharico and Jacobs (1996) argue that ethics rules
spawned by an aggressive interpretation of a code resulted in managerial stagnation.
The rules had become so limiting that senior police officials found it easier to do nothing than to try and figure out what they could do. Second, the code may be implemented by an office subject to less-than-effective oversight and unfettered authority
exercised when interpreting and implementing codes of conduct can lead to grotesque
abuses of the administrative process and political power.
Third, commissions can become hostage to partisan disputes. The classic case is
the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1997, the committee fined former Speaker Newt Gingrich $300,000 for using
charitable funds for political purposes. Since that date, the committee has taken only
five actions through early 2004 (“Groups Seek 2 Probes by House Ethics Panel,” 2004,
p. A11.) Typically, if a Democratic member suggested that someone (usually of the
other party) be investigated, the general response was for a Republican representative
to say if you are going to investigate Member X then we will insist on investigating
Democratic Member Y. And if a Republican suggested it, the Democrats would respond in kind. Under this kind of perverse blackmail, it is almost impossible for an
ethics commission to be effective.
Even the best code will not substitute for good government or good people.
Sissela Bok (1978, p. 250) cautions that “codes must be but the starting point for a broad
inquiry into the ethical quandaries at work.” Unfortunately, most public agencies do
Designing and Implementing Codes 195

not expend the effort to use codes as the beginning of an ongoing ethical dialogue
that makes raising ethical questions in the normal course of business an everyday
occurrence.
Current Practices in the States
When the first edition of this book was written, only about one dozen states had
“something comprehensive enough to be called a state code of ethics” (Weimer, 1990,
p. 2). Today a comprehensive code of ethics is almost a given, with forty-six states
having ethics commissions (see Exhibit 8.3) and over fifty individual governmental authorities (counties and cities) having independent codes of ethics. In addition, there
are often separate codes and systems of implementation for the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches (Freel, 2003).
Thirty-two states require some form of financial disclosure (Freel, 2003). Ideally,
a financial disclosure system should reveal potential conflicts or other ethics issues,
be reviewed in a timely manner, and prevent the public servant from accidentally
violating an ethics law or regulation. By preventing infractions, these systems serve
to reinforce the confidence of citizens in their governmental institutions. In practice,
the ideal is seldom met. Many disclosures go unexamined because of limited staff
in the ethics office or are not looked at until the employee is suspected of misconduct.
Disclosure varies widely, as do the details required, who must file, availability to the
public, and use.
In addition, over fifty cities and counties require some type of financial disclosure
from their public employees (Freel, 2003). States are far more likely to ask for financial disclosure reports from their executive branch employees, both elected and civil
service, than from their legislators. The number formally required to file varies from
150,000 in Pennsylvania to 30,000 in Alabama and Florida and 6 in Arizona; some
states focus in on senior-level officials, but others include a broad array of filers (Freel,
2003). The COGEL, the National Municipal League, and Common Cause have long
called for a commission’s jurisdiction to extend to elected or appointed officials and
employees in all government branches; actual practices vary among the states.
Diversity best describes the overall pattern of state ethics laws and practices. (Variability and experimentation in public service ethics are good examples of federalism
as a “laboratory of innovation.”) Coverage, jurisdiction, organization, and specific prohibitions vary from state to state. COGEL data for the past decade and more reveal
only a few standard practices. For example, twenty-six states have jurisdiction over
appointed officials and state employees.
States differ markedly in enforcement mechanisms and procedural protections as
well. Except for Idaho, Mississippi, and Virginia, state ethics offices are authorized to
196 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

issue advisory opinions, declaratory rulings, or interpretive statements. This function
allows for variability and adaptability and is vital if either the code or administrative
structure is complicated. As proactive protection for the ethical manager, before-thefact advice helps the individual find a path through what can be a confusing labyrinth.
In practice, advice directly supports the code’s core: the conflict-of-interest rules.
The “scandal trigger” is apparent from initiation dates. Only four state codes predate 1973; nineteen states adopted codes in response to Watergate between 1973 and
1979; and the rest adopted codes during the following twenty-five years. Most federal
ethics legislation—the creation of the Office of Government Ethics, Inspectors General,
Independent Counsels, and the Office of Special Counsel (for whistle-blowers)—were
all passed in 1978 as a direct response to Watergate. As a matter of fact, scandal still
prompts efforts to tighten standards of conduct; this response often leads to a haphazard array of prohibitions dictated by history rather than by principle. Often, too, the
goal is to let the public know that ethics is on the front burner. Scandal and political pressure may also trigger efforts to change the administrative framework (Fillo, 2003).
Conflict of Interest
To ensure that the public interest is pursued by creating barriers to personal interest,
prohibiting conflict of interest is logically fundamental to codes at every level of government (see Exhibit 8.3 and Chapter Three). Beyond this, little uniformity appears
across jurisdictions.
The COGEL and the National Municipal League generally restrict conflict to the
financial or economic. Often conflicts include personal issues (such as dating or sexual relationships), family issues (for example, nepotism), and even friendship (contracts,
procurements). They are all treated under the title “financial interests,” but getting a
boyfriend or spouse a job seems to significantly stretch the typical understanding of
financial interest.
In 2003, the OECD adopted an even broader perspective in its guidelines on conflicts of interest in the public sector for all of its member countries. Representatives
for all of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and
New Zealand agreed to abide by these standards. This agreement defines a conflict of
interest as a “conflict between the public duty and the private interests of a public official, in which the public official has private capacity interests which could improperly influence the performance of their official duties and responsibilities.”
The OECD (2003, p. 16) emphasizes the need to focus on four core principles
when developing rules and strategies to prevent conflicts of interest:
1. Serving the Public Interest
2. Supporting Transparency and Scrutiny
Designing and Implementing Codes 197

3. Promoting Individual Responsibility and Personal Example
4. Engendering an Organisational Culture which is intolerant of conflicts of interest
Other definitions may include nepotism, soliciting sexual favors from subordinates, and releases of confidential information. More expansive formulations extend
conflict to “social and political relationships and transactions which may compromise
or give the appearance of compromising their [public servants’] objectivity, independence
or honesty” ( Josephson Institute, 1990, p. vii, emphasis added).
Many public officials rail against the concept of the appearance of conflicts of interest as either unfair or impossible to determine. Yet in reality, an appearance of a
conflict of interest can do as much harm as an actual conflict of interest and has been
enforced in courts of law. An official of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) was accused of being a slumlord and was fired by the agency. A
federal court in the 1980s upheld the dismissal, despite the official’s defense that he
bought the properties to fix them up, because even the appearance of an official of
HUD as a slumlord undermined the confidence of citizens in the impartiality of the
government (Stark, 1997; see “Appearance of Impropriety” later in this chapter).
Russell Williams correctly points out that conflicts of interest have been the most intractable challenge to an independent civil service since it was conceived in the late
nineteenth century. Laws have been enacted, as well as administrative regulations, but
any situation in which a public servant seems to place “self-interest ahead of public
interest” is fraught with peril (Williams, 2002, unpaginated).
Financial Disclosure
A conventional way of encouraging compliance with conflict-of-interest prohibitions,
financial disclosure is “the linchpin of government ethics laws” (Weimer, 1990, p. 2).
Disclosure encourages employees’ attention to conflict prohibitions and potential, uses
scrutiny mechanisms for prevention and enforcement, and allows for corrective action
against violations. One state ethics commission’s executive director noted that “filers
are reminded of what their financial interests are and of the need to avoid affecting
them by their official acts” (Lewis, 1986, p. 17). At the first Global Forum Against
Corruption (with participants from ninety countries; see Resource A) in 1999, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer commented that as much as he hated filling
out the required annual financial disclosure form, it was the single best way he knew
to remind him of his ethical obligations and vulnerabilities.
Although disclosure does symbolize a commitment to fundamental standards, its
utility as an enforcement mechanism indicates that someone has to read, verify, investigate, and act on the reports. Common Cause (1989b, p. 40) argues that filing alone is
“not enough. To be effective, financial disclosure must be public.” Common Cause’s position (p. 8) is clear-cut: “In short, public disclosure forces the law to be taken seriously.”
198 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

With the majority of states requiring some type of financial disclosure and federal service featuring two types, the many variations on the specifics come as no surprise. Numerous states require local officials to file. Sample forms, often readily
available from local and neighboring ethics agencies and on-line, are provocative reading and are sometimes eye-openers for transition teams and new recruits.
Different administrative positions may have different disclosure requirements,
keyed to salary or discretionary authority. For example, federal public disclosure is
much more detailed than confidential reporting. In Pennsylvania, state, county, and
local elected and appointed officials and public employees must file a disclosure with
the state. New York State’s Ethics in Government Act of 1987 requires employees who
earn less than a specified salary or hold “nonpolicymaking” positions to submit a limited disclosure form.
Information subject to disclosure varies from specific dollar amounts to narrow
or broad categories of either dollar amounts or holdings. For example, the disclosure
system for the executive branch of the federal government has two distinct programs:
(1) public disclosure and (2) confidential disclosure. Public disclosure is required of the
most senior executive branch officials (political, civil service, and military) and requires
identification of values in seven different dollar ranges. The confidential program
requires only identification of assets, income, financial transactions, liabilities such as
personal and bank loans, gifts from nonfamily sources, and reimbursements for travel
and other activities. Disclosure is usually limited to immediate family and dependents,
and neither states nor the federal government require reporting beyond this traditional
circle of personal relationships (Weimer, 1990, p. 10; Freel, 2003). Definitions in model
statutes from the National Municipal League, Common Cause, and COGEL are
broader, to some extent allowing for mixed, blended, and unorthodox domestic
arrangements.
There is no strong empirical evidence that the prospect of financial disclosure has
led people to avoid or resign from public service, but the allegation has been part of
the discussion for some time (Neely, 1984). Although careful crafting is needed to balance privacy and disclosure, burden and benefit (and later the evident contraction of
public servants’ privacy is discussed), the balance overall tips toward disclosure. “Virtually all state courts have upheld the constitutionality of financial disclosure” (Weimer,
1990, p. 15).
Appearance of Impropriety
The “appearance” standard is central to the federal approach. The media often apply
it, irrespective of a jurisdiction’s formal principles; appearance is not a universally
adopted and legally enforceable norm. COGEL’s draft model statute adopts it, as do
many professional codes, including the American Bar Association’s well-known Canon
9. Common Cause’s and the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers’ codes do
Designing and Implementing Codes 199

not. Los Angeles, Chicago, and Buffalo expressly require avoiding the appearance of
impropriety.
The irony is that an appearance of impropriety can be as damaging as an actual conflict of interest. Appearances potentially undermine the confidence of citizens
in democratic institutions. Many public servants, as well as elected officials, will argue
that such standards are unfair. Former California Senator Alan Cranston, who was
reprimanded in the savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s, claimed that no one knew
what was in his heart, and he was the only one who could judge his actions. Taking
exception to this, Dennis Thompson notes, “Because appearances are often the only
window that citizens have on official conduct, rejecting the appearance standard is
tantamount to denying democratic accountability” (Thompson, 1993, p. 376).
Avoiding the appearance of unethical conduct is a codified standard in many
jurisdictions, including half of the states, as shown in Exhibit 8.3. The standard is
written into the federal code for executive branch employees (Executive Order 12764,
issued in 1989). Nonetheless, definitional lapses make a legally enforceable appearance
standard problematic at best. Given the variations in legal provisions and state practices, the most definitive conclusion is that the jury is still out on appearance as an
enforceable standard suitable for public service codes. However, the “appearance standard is still grounded in political values and is an expression of democratic accountability. The basis of appearance is the notion that civic employees are servants of the
public, and therefore must do everything in their power to assure citizens that government officials are working for the public good” (Gilman, 2002, p. 19).
200 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 8.3. STATE ETHICS STANDARDS, 2003.
Appearance of Whistle- Conflict of
State Commission Impropriety Blowing Bribery Interest
Alabama Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Alaska Yes Yes No No Yes
Arkansas Yes No No Yes Yes
Arizona Yes No No No Yes
California Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Colorado Yes Yes No No Yes
Connecticut Yes No No Yes Yes
Delaware Yes Yes No No Yes
Florida Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Georgia Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Hawaii Yes No No No Yes

Designing and Implementing Codes 201
Appearance of Whistle- Conflict of
State Commission Impropriety Blowing Bribery Interest
Idaho Yes No No Yes Yes
Illinois Yes No No Yes Yes
Indiana Yes No No Yes Yes
Iowa Yes Yes No No Yes
Kansas Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Kentucky Yes Yes No No Yes
Louisiana Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Maine Yes Yes No No No
Maryland Yes No No Yes Yes
Massachusetts Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Michigan Yes No No Yes Yes
Minnesota Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Mississippi Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Missouri Yes No No No Yes
Montana Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Nebraska Yes No No No No
New Hampshire Yes Yes No No Yes
Nevada Yes Yes No Yes Yes
New Jersey Yes Yes No No Yes
New Mexico Yes No No No No
New York Yes Yes No Yes Yes
North Carolina Yes No No No No
North Dakota1 No No No No No
Ohio Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Oklahoma Yes No No No Yes
Oregon1 No No No No Yes
Pennsylvania Yes No No Yes Yes
Rhode Island Yes Yes No No Yes
South Carolina Yes No No Yes Yes
South Dakota1 No No No No No
Tennessee Yes No Yes No Yes
Texas Yes No No No Yes
Utah1 No Yes No Yes Yes
Vermont Yes Yes No No Yes
Virginia Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Washington Yes Yes No Yes Yes
West Virginia Yes No No Yes Yes
Wisconsin Yes Yes No No Yes
Wyoming Yes No No Yes Yes
District of Columbia Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Note: 1 No ethics commission found on-line. Cited provisions for Utah are in general ethics code.
Data were gleaned from an Internet search conducted in February, 2003, of standards of conduct
only; they exclude criminal statutes and specialized codes such as those for judges or teachers.

Revolving Door
More and more state governments prohibit the lobbying of former agencies on matters in which the official or employee was personally and substantially involved.
Such restrictions must be defined narrowly so as not to discourage highly qualified
professionals from entering government service, infringe on the constitutional rights
of present state officials, or prevent the flow of communication and understanding
between the public and private sector (Weimer, 1990, p. 2).
The complexity of the federal “revolving-door” statute (18 U.S.C. 207) is such
that the OGE spent more than a decade promulgating regulations. Employees leaving federal service must distinguish between regulations on seeking and negotiating
employment and on post-employment. A senior OGE administrator explained in May
2004 that most agencies require senior officials to have exit briefings on ethics, and
ethics offices spend more and more time counseling former federal officials.
From the public’s point of view, eliminating the revolving-door problem should
be clear-cut. The U.S. political system encourages people to both enter and leave government with the idea that this encourages cross-fertilization and participation. Therefore, the problem is not the revolving door as such but individuals taking illicit
advantage of their public positions when they leave the government. The question
really is, How do we restrict this activity without preventing people from earning a
living after they leave public service?
Other Common Elements
Other common provisions place permanent bans on disclosing privileged information
or information not generally available to the public. Other elements may include an
ethical commitment to the following: not discriminating on the basis of race, gender,
disability, and more; limiting the acceptance of gifts (even from relatives and friends);
avoiding preferential treatment to individuals or organizations; not making unauthorized commitments on behalf of the government; limiting outside employment; and
protecting and preserving government resources. Standards may extend to off-duty
activities undertaken in a nonofficial capacity, as suggested in Exhibit 8.4. Finally, many
codes stipulate an obligation to report ethical misconduct to appropriate authorities.
Value of Ethics Training
One of the keys to a successful ethics program is effective, regular communication and
training, which is needed to clarify expectations and provide guidance. Effective training must go beyond simply repeating rules. Public managers must have a sense of
202 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

the rules but also need a solid understanding of the principles underlying them. It is
one thing to memorize the rule that one cannot accept a gift worth over $20, but it is
quite another to understand the principle of not using public office for private gain.
How does one effectively train public administrators in ethical behavior? Because
most government ethics programs have been created without input from the public
administration community and ethicists and designed to meet the mandated mission,
the programs typically emphasize compliance and “training to the rule.” By contrast, Leigh Grosenick (1995–96) argues for a values- or principle-based approach,
with compliance-based elements tied to fundamental principles and, therefore, more
likely to be remembered in an actual ethical crisis. Others may argue for some combination (Knouse and Giacalone, 1996).
Ethics training is not a once-in-a-lifetime inoculation. It is perishable. People forget,
change jobs, get promoted, and face different ethics challenges. And regulations and
laws change. For these reasons, regular ethics training is a key systemic component. In
responding to this dynamic, many ethics programs have moved beyond the classroom
or on-line training (for example, Maryland) to a variety of innovative approaches. Among
these are plays or vignettes, with agency officials as the actors. Creative video games or
simulations are also used in training, such as the U.S. Department of Justice’s Quandaries
game (see Resource B). The Web site of the Comprehensive Ethics Training Compendium
[http://www.aspanet.org/ethicscommunity/compendium] is a useful resource.
Designing and Implementing Codes 203
EXHIBIT 8.4. ETHICS, DUTY, AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
Should a citizen who serves as a member of a municipal planning commission speak out publicly
against a developer planning a subdivision before the planning commission has deliberated on the
matter? Here’s the case. You decide.
In a letter to the editor in the local newspaper, Planning Commissioner Jones urged the
local school board to oppose a planned subdivision that, in his opinion, would result in
significant and uncompensated costs to the school district and the community at large.
The developer complained to the mayor that Commissioner Jones should be removed
from the planning commission inasmuch as he had demonstrated that he was no longer
unbiased and impartial with regard to the situation. The mayor agreed, stating that Commissioner Jones should let the facts sway his opinion, not personal judgment.
Commissioner Jones responded by saying that he did not sign the letter as a member
of the planning commission. Rather, he had signed it as a citizen and was merely exercising his opinion as granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Did citizen/Commissioner Jones cross over the ethical line? Or was his behavior above reproach?
Reprinted with revision by permission of the American Society for Public Administration. Anonymous author. Originally published in PA Times, “Ethics Moment” column, edited by Don Menzel,
Sept. 2002. Internet [http://www3.niu.edu/~tp0dcm1/aspa/ethicsec/moments/moments.htm].

Unfortunately, very little has been done to evaluate the training’s impact. For
the most part, programs start from the assumption that training works by osmosis, that
is, simply by exposure to ideas. When evaluation is done, it generally focuses on the
quality of instruction and materials. Little or nothing is available to answer questions about whether agency training of civil servants results in a better understanding
of their ethical obligations or even the ethics rules. More important, the field has yet
to assess the gold standard of ethics training: Does it have an impact on behavior? In
a review of the literature on best practices in the public and private sectors, we have
found no attempt to answer this basic empirical question.
A survey of the perceptions of graduates of four master’s of public administration
programs suggests that ethics courses in MPA programs influence behavior. Good ethics
courses provide students with an awareness of ethics issues they might confront, as well
as cultivate an attitude of ethical obligation in pursuing a career in public service
(Menzel, 1997). This research is obviously limited because it only deals with perception
without trying to correlate aggregate data. Admittedly, developing the latter is challenging, but it will be essential to evaluating the outcomes of ethics programs.
In a 1999 study of graduates from thirteen top-ranking schools of public policy and
administration, maintaining ethical standards ranks first among the skills considered important for success in government. When queried about the importance at each level of
maintaining ethical standards, 81 percent of respondents said it is the most important
characteristic at the federal level. Similarly, 75 percent said it is the most important characteristic at the state level; at the local level, 84 percent expressed the same sentiment. In
the private and nonprofit sectors, 81 percent said it is the most important skill in the private sector, while 89 percent of respondents said it is the most important skill in the nonprofit sector. Graduates also responded that they felt the biggest mismatch between what
they were taught and what skills they considered they needed for success was in learning how to maintain ethical standards (Light, 1999, p. 100, Table 4–1; Resource A).
Another perception-based measure of training’s effect on behavior is the reduced
pressure to commit misconduct in organizations with the essential elements of an ethics
program. ERC’s study (2003a) suggests a relationship between more comprehensive
ethics programs and lower amounts of perceived pressure to commit misconduct
among employees in large business organizations (more than five hundred employees).
Respondents reported a decrease in pressure if the employer had all four elements:
(1) written ethics standards, (2) ethics training, (3) a dedicated ethics office, and
(4) means or mechanisms to report misconduct. If one had only written standards,
then almost one in four (23 percent) employees felt pressure to commit misconduct. If
all four elements were in place, the perceived pressure dropped to 7 percent (Ethics
Resource Center, 2003a, p. 37). The study also notes a strong relationship between
empirically identifiable behaviors by leaders and supervisors and a significant reduction in pressure to commit misconduct.
204 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Coming Attractions
In the evolutionary, adaptive system described earlier, today’s innovation gives us a
glimpse of tomorrow’s standard practice. One development is the use of forward, multiyear, protected funding in several jurisdictions to insulate the ethics commission from
political pressure, executive or legislative retaliation, and budgetary vagaries. Another
emerging practice is seeking and sometimes getting direct subpoena powers for ethics
commissions. An area to watch in the states is inclusive coverage of all jurisdictions
and all branches of government statewide. Post-employment restrictions and treatment of part-time, contractual, and volunteer government officials and employees are
volatile issues in which developments only hint at an emerging consensus.
There are signs of other things to come. Consider the wisdom of shaping financial disclosure to contemporary lifestyles and responsibilities associated with dual-career
couples, blended families, adult guardianships, adult children living in a household, and
life partners. In addition, the Internet has created the challenge of how to account for
and correctly report activities, such as day trading. The increase in number, status, and
influence of legislative staff members in state governments suggests that extending or
adopting code provisions may mark a future phase. In states such as Connecticut and
Minnesota, the state code is a term and condition of employment by virtue of its incorporation into union contracts.
Two areas of growth at the state level are in lobbying registration and regulating
the ethics of local jurisdictions. The registration of lobbyists can present a problem for
civil servants, as well as those in the nonprofit sector. For civil servants in a number
of states, care must be taken in terms of interactions with lobbyists, even (especially?)
those who are old friends. Knowing who is registered is the civil servants’ obligation in
many states. Then, too, civil servants unintentionally can become lobbyists when, for
example, they are elected president of their homeowners associations. For nonprofits
seeking state funds or access, it is very easy to slip into the role of “lobbyist,” as defined
by state laws. Arguably, Wisconsin has the most aggressive state legislation in this area
(see http://www/state/wi/us/SiteMap.htm).
More and more states are setting ethics standards for local officials, whether
elected, appointed, or in civil service. These standards often are in addition to ethics
codes at the county, city, village, or town level. Ironically, in an attempt to create
minimum standards throughout the state, legislatures have often created a multilayered system that may be both confusing and poorly administered. Overly complex and
poorly administered ethics systems often send the message that ethics is trivial in that
state and that programs are designed less for substance than for window dressing.
The event horizon for ethics programs will be how to deal with contractors. Although
the number of government employees has declined somewhat over the past decade,
there has been a very large increase in the number of contractors working for
Designing and Implementing Codes 205

government agencies. The emphasis on privatizing government functions and contracting out will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of ethics programs, as the
case, “The Contract,” suggests in Chapter Four. It is now common to have government employees working with contractors or overseeing contract compliance. The government employee is covered by a host of rules, and generally there are ethics rules
governing contractors. Yet problems are being reported by inspectors general at the
federal and state level (President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, 2002), and
effective ethics programs will have to address this issue.
State agendas by and large overlook the way in which individual privacy conflicts
with the public’s right to know. In principle, this is a concern even if only the flawless
or fearless participate. Examples of intrusion and confidentiality issues include polygraph and integrity tests and medical and insurance records. If the goal is to recruit
the best (not the perfect) people into public service, then working with the media, professional associations, public interest groups, and statutory safeguards could help protect
administrators’ privacy in some carefully selected realms such as medical records,
health insurance claims, intimate family relations, and other matters traditionally private and functionally irrelevant to job performance.
Yet the reality is that the media and public interest groups often find legitimate
reasons to challenge a public servant’s privacy with the public’s right to know. This
may result from the group’s frustration about an administration’s policy agenda. As
one ethics official pointed out, “If they can’t get you on policy grounds, they will try
to get you on ethics.” For this reason, a commission or agency with effective authority
can act to protect privacy rights, as well as the public’s right to know, if it is viewed
as an independent third party in making decisions.
Model statutes are visions of the future to the extent that they are influential. Common Cause played a critical role in the early 1990s in California, West Virginia, and
Massachusetts. Core elements in its model statute for state government include prohibitions on the abuse of office for personal gain and on conflicts of interest; standards
of conduct to prevent and avoid abuse; personal financial disclosure for candidates
and high-level officials, and a strong, independent commission with investigatory
and civil enforcement powers. Common Cause’s classic contribution, A Model Ethics
Law for State Government (1989a), covers detailed disclosure, prohibitions against conflicts and procedures to avoid and prevent them, post-employment restrictions, a strong
ethics commission, and investigatory procedures that ensure due process.
Current Practices in the Cities
Standardization is no more characteristic of local than of state practices; the authority behind codes and standards varies. By way of illustration, Chicago’s ethics code
was issued by Mayor Harold Washington by executive order in 1986 and passed by
206 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

the city council in 1987. (The unanimous council vote of 49 to 0 conceals the earlier
struggles.) Provisions also vary and run the gamut from tolerant to stringent (as in Los
Angeles, for example). The 1990 draft code of the National Institute of Municipal
Law Officers—a set of model guidelines intended to be used by municipal attorneys
when they draft municipal codes—limited prohibited interests to “direct or indirect
pecuniary or material benefit.” Further, it requires disclosure of financial or personal interest in proposed municipal legislation and forbids “special consideration,
treatment or advantage to any citizen beyond that which is available to every other citizen” (National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, 1990, pp. 3, 5–6). In 1990, this formulation was considered stringent. By 2003, the renamed International Municipal Law
Association’s municipal model ethics code section had grown to incorporate forty-four
subsections and fifty-four pages. The section on conflicts of interest had become far
more complex and was supplemented with a seven-page section on definitions necessary to interpret most of the guidance (see Exhibit 8.5.).
Relying on responses from only a small fraction of the hundreds of local ethics
programs in the United States, the COGEL survey provides the most up-to-date data
available on local ethics programs in the United States (Freel, 2003). The results show
that local ethics programs vary (as do state programs). Often there are independent
programs as well for police, fire, and education. In Los Angeles the political leadership
appoints ethics commissioners for five-year terms (p. 36), while up the coast in Oakland
three commissioners are appointed by the mayor and the other four by the commission as a whole (p. 40). The city of Jacksonville has broad financial disclosure requirements and detailed gifts rules (p. 65), and Honolulu has detailed revolving-door
requirements and requires training for 2,500 “council members, managers, supervisors and board and commission members” (p. 89). The Ethics Commission for
Montgomery County, Maryland, has a full-time administrator and uses interactive
electronic financial disclosure statements (p. 147). Its close neighbor, the Ethics
Commission of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, limits one political party to four
of the seven seats and provides detailed guidance on the types of gifts that can be
accepted by public employees (p. 142).
Although municipal ethics commissions or boards vary widely in terms of structure
and authorities, there are common themes: they are structured to have representatives
Designing and Implementing Codes 207
EXHIBIT 8.5. EXCERPT FROM A MODEL MUNICIPAL CODE.
Section 9–107 (b): “No public servant shall accept or receive, directly or indirectly, from any person, including one whose identity is unknown to the public servant, any personal benefit under
circumstances in which it can reasonably be inferred that the benefit is intended to influence the
public servant in the performance or nonperformance of any official duty or as a reward for any official action of the public servant.”
Source: International Municipal Law Association, 2003, p. 9–1.12.

of the community; they invariably have a code; and they are responsible for interpreting rules and giving findings. Two decades ago, it would have been difficult to find
more than a handful of ethics programs at the municipal level. Within the next few
years, it will be difficult to find many major municipalities that do not have such a system in place.
Is statewide uniformity emerging as accepted practice for local ethics systems?
Some states blanket all officials and employees with specified standards of conduct.
The observations made earlier in this chapter about borrowing from other jurisdictions should not be mistaken for arguments in support of uniformity (and Chapter Ten
proposes adapting rules to particular administrative realities rather than touting them
as universal remedies).
The trade-off is obvious: the logic and simplicity of statewide uniformity versus a
local code tailored to local needs and conventions. National professional associations
have discovered that variable community standards can be a sticky issue. Differences
in size and complexity add other dimensions such as the size of the talent pool, readily observable and widely known behavior, and family or political connections to local
businesses receiving municipal contracts, sometimes complicated by local contracting
requirements. The case concluding Chapter Four—“The Contract”—illustrates one
variant on this theme.
Localities are treated differently in different states and in different model statutes.
Common Cause endorsed uniform standards many years ago, but the National
Municipal League did not include local jurisdictions in its 1979 model statute. Passing the 1987 Ethics in Government Act, New York’s state legislature defined conflicts of interest and required each jurisdiction, from counties to school districts, to
adopt its own code. A glance at the New York Web site (www.nysethics.com) shows
that the majority of cities and many counties have created ethics boards. On the other
coast, California’s conflict-of-interest code designates certain state, county, and city officials, along with state and local employees who are required to file annual statements
of economic interest. City officials include mayors, council members, city managers,
chief administrative officers, planning commissioners, and city attorneys.
The Massachusetts State Ethics Commission (“the primary civil enforcement
agency”) reports that the state’s conflict-of-interest law
has regulated the conduct of public officials and employees in the Bay State since
1963. The law limits what public employees may do on the job, what they may
do after hours or “on the side,” and what they may do after they leave public service and return to the private sector. It also sets the standards of conduct required
of all state, county, and municipal employees in Massachusetts, articulating the
premise that public employees owe undivided loyalty to the government they serve,
and must act in the public interest rather than for private gain (Massachusetts,
1989, p. 2).
208 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

In 2003, the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission provided 400 written opinions and provided telephone advice to more than 3,300 individuals. “The Commission reviewed 1,037 complaints in FY 2003, issued 239 private educational letters and
one public educational letter, initiated two public hearings, participated in a total of
14 hearings, four of which went to trial” (Freel, 2003, p. 161). The majority of cases
resulting in criminal or civil penalties involved municipal employees.
Federal Offices and Standards
Conflict-of-interest prohibitions are central to federal standards of conduct. Ranging from affirmative ideals to unequivocal restrictions and on to the criminal code,
these standards include the more positive, prescriptive Code of Ethics for Government
Service (P.L. 96–303) enacted in 1980; detailed proscriptions administratively adopted
by executive orders; OGE and agency regulations; and criminal conflict-of-interest
statutes in 18 U.S.C. 201–209.
Federal conflict-of-interest statutes date from the Civil War, but the principle can
be traced formally to 1789 when an Act to Establish the Treasury Department (I Stat. 12,
1789) created the very first domestic federal agency and prohibited conflict of interest
(and promised a financial reward for whistle-blowers). Section 8 of the act states that “no
person appointed to any office instituted by this act shall directly or indirectly be concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce.” The many federal statutes were first codified in 1962 and, except for post-employment provisions, have
not been amended substantially since then. The general prohibition on conflict of interest is found in 18 U.S.C. Section 208. The Ethics Reform Act of November 30, 1989,
revised this section by adding civil prosecution and injunctions to criminal prosecution.
Broader and more stringent standards have been adopted administratively. There
are the executive orders, including Lyndon Johnson’s 11222 (1965) and George H. W.
Bush’s 12674 (1989) and 12731 (1990), with the latter adding limits on outside earned
income. Issuing supplementary rules and procedures, the OGE promulgates implementing regulations jointly with agencies. These reckon with agency particulars, including organic act limitations, statutory gift acceptance authority, procurement,
human subject research, or other functional specialties. Executive Order 12731,
Section 301(a), directs agency heads to augment the OGE regulations with “regulations of special applicability to the particular functions and activities of that agency.”
U.S. Office of Government Ethics
The OGE was initially created in the federal Office of Personnel Management by the
Ethics in Government Act of 1978, then given separate agency status a decade later.
The 1988 reauthorization act defines the OGE’s mission as “overall direction of
Designing and Implementing Codes 209

executive branch policies relating to preventing conflicts of interest on the part of
officers and employees of any executive agency.” A small agency with a budget to
match, the OGE is vulnerable as a discretionary domestic component of the federal
budget.
Since 1989, the executive order in force has required the OGE to promulgate regulations establishing a “single, comprehensive and clear set of executive branch standards of conduct” (Executive Order 12674 specifies that they be “objective, reasonable,
and enforceable”). The seriousness of this charge is shown in the OGE’s swift response;
it published interim regulations in the Federal Register (Jan. 18, 1990) to standardize rules
and correct deficiencies in agency ethics programs. The OGE’s tasks extend beyond
regulatory authority to include financial disclosure, education and training, guidance
and interpretation (U.S. Office of Government Ethics, 1990b), enforcement, and evaluation of conflict-of-interest laws. Its regulatory reach touches every executive employee in federal service (including the uniformed military) and every agency.
Compliance and the Ethics Industry
Although compliance may appear to be a growth industry in the nation’s capital, the
evidence for that is contradictory. Agency budgets belie the growth prediction. Executive Order 12674 states that agencies should have separate budget line items when
“practical,” and the 1990 order repeats the directive. Unfortunately, the U.S. Office
of Management and Budget has decreed that this is impractical, and no federal agency
has tried to exercise this authority since 1991.
Staffing is another story. In 1990, in ninety-nine agencies that account for almost
five million employees, there were only 125 full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees working in the ethics function, but thousands were involved part-time (U.S. Office of
Government Ethics, 1990a, p. 22). An OGE official calculates that by March 2003,
these numbers had increased to 500 full-time employees working in ethics and almost
8,000 part-time employees.
Some staff members are Designated Agency Ethics Officers (DAEOs) who are responsible for the advisory aspects relating to federal standards. The DAEO’s “primary
duties are to provide training and counseling to agency employees on conflict of interest matters and to review financial disclosure statements” (General Accounting
Office, 1987, p. 7). (Congress purposely separated the advisory from the enforcement function for fear that a merger would deter employees from asking advice.)
The inspectors general in every major federal agency do investigations and audits when
wrongdoing is suspected. Whistle-blowers are protected by the Office of Special Counsel. Prosecution is handled by regional U.S. Attorneys, unless politically charged issues
shunt prosecution to the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice. Administrative actions, from time off without pay to dismissal, are handled by an agency’s
210 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

General Counsel, with some oversight by the Merit System Protections Board. Add to
this, special oversight activities such as procurement, special internal agency committees, the General Accounting Office, and congressional committee hearings.
Whether in a growth phase or holding pattern, compliance already ranks as big
business in the executive branch. With administrative and criminal standards and numerous agencies and offices involved in oversight, reporting, investigation, prosecution,
and other activities, the overlap and complexity is impressive, even for Washington.
The compliance clamor is at a predictably high decibel level. Over the past several years, the OGE has discovered that it is difficult to break out of a compliance
mode and shift to a more advisory and counseling stance through guidebooks and
media. (See the list of pamphlets and resources available at http://www.usoge.gov.)
The most influential stakeholders are attorneys in OGE, the executive branch, and
Congress who are trained to think and write in a highly technical manner. Unfortunately, the most important stakeholders—federal employees—are not necessarily well
served by the fixation on compliance and insistence on detail and legalese. For example, two of the key concepts to federal ethics regulation are “particular matter” and
“specific party.” Neither of these is defined easily, and the definitional task is made
even more daunting for federal employees by the refinements in dozens of the more
than one thousand informal advisory opinions OGE has published since 1979.
Enforcement
The many investigatory authorities further complicate the ethics aspect of life in federal service. The General Accounting Office (1987) summarized the following three
general routes to enforcement, meaning investigation of alleged violations of conflictof-interest standards.
Agency enforcement: “The investigation . . . is primarily the responsibility of the Inspectors General. Also, allegations the DAEOs receive . . . are to be forwarded to
the IG. The IG investigations may result in the case being referred to the Department of Justice for further investigation and possible prosecution or forwarded to
others within the agency for possible administrative action (e.g., a reprimand or
dismissal in cases involving current employees)” (General Accounting Office, 1987,
p. 7). No uniform, formal referral process has developed in federal agencies (Office
of Government Ethics, 1990a, pp. 23–24), and cases may be referred to one of the
ninety-four U.S. attorneys’ offices (General Accounting Office, 1987, pp. 8–9).
Prosecutorial enforcement: “The process by which the Public Integrity Section [of the Justice Department] and the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigate and prosecute a conflict
of interest case is . . . the same as any other criminal investigation or prosecution.
Designing and Implementing Codes 211

Cases that are prosecuted . . . are sometimes resolved by a finding or admission of
guilt under other criminal statutes, such as those prohibiting false or fraudulent claims
(18 U.S.C. 287), false or fraudulent statements (18 U.S.C. 1001), and perjury (18
U.S.C. 1621–1623). [T]he final test of protective merit in a conflict of interest case is
the likelihood of obtaining a felony conviction” (General Accounting Office, 1987,
pp. 10–11).
Agency administrative actions: Disciplinary actions for violations of noncriminal standards include termination, suspension, restitution, reassignment, reprimand, admonishment, recusal, and divestiture. Taking administrative action does not preclude
criminal sanctions, and IGs review each action. “The IGs said they commonly refer
cases that are declined by justice to the employee’s bureau-level supervisor for administrative action” (General Accounting Office, 1987, p. 12). In 1989, about onequarter of the over two thousand adverse actions on standards violations dealt with
misuse of government vehicles and other property, while less than 2 percent related
to conflicting financial interest and less than 3 percent to conflicting outside action
(U.S. Office of Government Ethics, 1990a, p. 27).
Financial Disclosure
The Monitoring and Compliance Division of the OGE collects and reviews (in coordination with the home agency) approximately 1,000 of the most senior officials who
file the public Executive Personnel Financial Disclosure Report, the SF 278. Another
20,000 or so disclosures are filed and reviewed in agencies for all senior officials, who
file disclosure forms when they enter government service annually and when they leave
federal service. The U.S. Senate usually does not hold a hearing to consent to a
prospective nominee until the OGE reviews his or her disclosure form, agreements
are made to eliminate all problems, and the director of OGE certifies the form. OGE
must then ensure compliance with ethics agreements usually within ninety days of the
person’s taking office. This drives an impressive transition-period workload for the unit,
which reviews something on the order of 1,000 disclosures during a presidential transition. In 1999, one of the last years of the Clinton administration, OGE reviewed
271 nominees and certified them to the Senate (U.S. Office of Government Ethics,
2000, p. 7).
The approximately five thousand annual filers of public disclosures include
the president and vice president, and officers and employees who are members of the
Senior Executive Service. High-level political, managerial, supervisory, and policy positions and the entire career Senior Executive Service file disclosures are available
for public review. Others are military ranks at pay grade 0–7 or above (general officers), administrative law judges, most inspectors general, employees designated by the
212 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

OGE, selected senior postal service officers and the OGE’s director, and agency
DAEOs. The almost perfect compliance rate remains relatively constant.
Initiated by executive order in 1965, confidential disclosure is required from more
than 200,000 employees each year. While the number of federal employees has decreased
over the past decade, the number of confidential filers has increased as a percentage of
the federal workforce. The driving force behind this is the contracting out of federal functions. This requires larger numbers of procurement and contracting officers, who generally file confidential disclosure statements. In March 2003, a senior OGE official noted
that the number of confidential disclosure filers reached a peak of 270,000 in 2000. (The
confidential statements do not require dollar amounts but otherwise have the same
categories as the public disclosure system.) The confidential reports may lead to actions such as divestiture, disqualification, reassignment, letters, waivers, or warnings.
Managing the Code
An effective code demands a developmental process. It starts with a conflict-of-interest
prohibition, defines what else is imperative in the community, moves on to enforcement,
and finally shifts to more subtle aspects of implementation, such as training and beforethe-fact advice. From beginning to end, the process is more like individualized programming for a broad application than buying off-the-shelf software for a particular
task. (Managers who have survived the installation of a new computer system may
appreciate the analogy.)
Ready-made standards and model provisions possibly suit more populous or complex jurisdictions. For smaller jurisdictions, some specific concerns include the need
for and reasonableness of the appearance-of-impropriety prohibition, detailed public
financial disclosure as a meaningful way of implementing conflict-of-interest prohibitions, nepotism and dual-employment restrictions, and investment limitations. And
this list could go on. Taking size and diversity into account would contribute sensible
and tenable standards and also acknowledge the variety that characterizes American
public organizations and governmental structures.
Codes of conduct should be crafted from a rich empirical base, understandable in
the climate of the particular agency, making sense to those to whom they apply—
down-to-earth, realistic. They should not appear as commandments from on high,
generalized statements of good intentions, [or] lofty aspirations incapable of specific
human responses. They need to be fashioned out of the everyday work life, become
integral parts of staff development activities; a support to effective performance, not
a burden. The goal is to underscore that standards of honesty go hand in hand with
those of efficiency and competence (Robert C. Wood, quoted in Cox, 1988, p. 10).
Designing and Implementing Codes 213

Even with a code and a nonpartisan commission in place, most of the work remains to integrate the code’s standards into the agency’s way of doing business, its culture, and its style. Codes do make a difference, but only if they are well managed. In
a recent survey with more than 60,000 respondents, the ERC (2003c) found that
perceived pressure among employees to violate ethics standards is often symptomatic of deeper organizational problems and related risks. When pressures to violate standards are present, they generally reflect two main employee beliefs: (1)
bosses and/or organizations require such behavior and or (2) they will be viewed
negatively or suffer related job consequences if they don’t give in to this pressure.
Both of these beliefs reflect problems within the work environment such as ineffective ethical supervision and leadership. Although it is natural for organizations to
push their employees toward greater productivity, leaders and supervisors must also
be clear that such improvements cannot come at the expense of the organization’s
ethical standards.
In addition to executive example and leadership, serious implementation throughout the agency is vital. For a code to be operative, fair, and meaningful, it must be related to the organization’s management and incentives. Ideally, the code should speak
directly to the public manager, as shown in Exhibit 8.2. These concerns translate into
the five general guidelines for managing the agency’s code, as specified in the exhibit.
Ethics for Nonprofits
A variety of scandals, heightened public scrutiny, the threat of increased regulation
and oversight, and the realization of the need for donor confidence fuel the move
among nonprofits toward clearly articulated and broadly understood standards of conduct. The American Red Cross adopted detailed additional ethics standards as a result of the issues described in Chapter Three; the U.S. Olympic Committee’s
experience is laid out in Chapter Ten. The United Way of America developed a strong
ethics regime because of a scandal in the 1990s. From the local Little League team
and Boy Scouts to the county orchestra and local hospital, nonprofit organizations face
issues with significant ethical content. Part of the response is to adopt codes of conduct and develop ethics programs.
But what kind of code? How detailed? How legalistic? And for what purpose—
encouraging ethical behavior, preserving funding, avoiding increased regulation, or
some combination? The answer to this last question speaks to another: Who is the
audience—donors, general public, legislative leaders? How are nonprofits to make standards clear and understandable, give before-the-fact advice, and go about enforcement?
214 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Nonprofit organizations confront many of the same problems that government
agencies do. However, the majority are small organizations without the staff or resources
to create effective ethics codes and full-blown programs on their own. The
INDEPENDENT SECTOR is one of several professional organizations that help nonprofits build ethics codes and transparency systems. The consensus for nonprofits today is
that standards of conduct are needed; they are the right thing to do; and, in many cases,
professionally mandated and legally required. (See Resource B for other resources.)
Need for Well-Designed Programs
With standards of conduct at every level of government in the United States, there
are wide variations on what codes state, how they are implemented, how they are
communicated, and how they are enforced. From an administrative point of view, the
effectiveness of the code is directly related to the institutions that are responsible for
it. Many codes in the United States serve little more purpose than as wallpaper; others are dynamic, living frameworks essential to the mission of the agency. Since the
first edition of this book, the number and complexity of these systems has grown exponentially.
It is important to recognize that a good ethics system is not a substitute for a good
ethics code. The latter should be clear and should express the fundamental values of
public service. It should provide more than “don’ts” by providing a clear vision of the
value and purpose of public service.
It is also important to admit that a good code is no substitute for a good system.
When ethics programs are implemented poorly, they may do more damage than good.
Public employees may see the rules and principles as trivial and irrelevant. Well-designed
and well-managed programs provide an ethical foundation that keeps public servants
out of trouble and reinforces citizens’ faith in their governmental institutions.
Case: Private Gain or Public Victim?
The Law Enforcement Oath of Honor of the International Association of Chiefs
of Police (undated) states, “On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my
integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold
myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always uphold the constitution, my community, and the agency I serve.” According to the Montgomery
County Police Department (undated), Charles A. Moose is a member.
In the fall of 2002, an unknown sniper or snipers terrorized the Washington D.C. area,
randomly killing people no matter their age, race, or gender. A person was killed
Designing and Implementing Codes 215

mowing the lawn, a child shot on the way to school, a bus driver gunned down in the
door of his bus, a woman shot through the head as she put packages in the trunk of
her car, and an elderly man shot dead as he pumped gas into his car. The investigations drew in police from two states, over a dozen counties, the District of Columbia,
and several federal police authorities. After the first week, police officials determined
that they had to co-ordinate their own activities and needed a single voice to speak
for the investigation. This would help squelch rumors and implement a strategy to use
the media to help track down leads and provide accurate information. The decision
was made to make Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose the spokesperson for the investigation. His calm persona and professionalism captured the national
media, and Chief Moose became a common feature on national and international television for more than a month.
Chief Moose was hailed for his steady hand with the media and the public; he was
viewed as the one individual responsible for coordinating the massive and successful
law enforcement effort. John Lee Malvo and John Allen Mohammed were captured in
the early morning of October 24, 2002, after remarkable police work that linked events
in the states of Washington and Alabama to the horror that was occurring in the
D.C. area. The men were accused of killing ten people and critically injuring three others, and were subsequently tried and found guilty.
Moose signed a deal with Dutton Publishing Company of New York in January
2003 to write a book about the manhunt. The chief also received more than $4,000
for an open movie contract about his experiences. Moose said money was a motivating factor in the decision to sign the deals. “If it helps me and my family with the
law school bills my wife has . . . it’s my good fortune” (Mosk, 2003c, B1). The chief
negotiated the book and movie deals before he sought permission from his supervisor or from the ethics commission for any of the outside employment work he had
pursued (and for which he was compensated), as required by law and specifically
referenced in his employment agreement.
Montgomery County ethics officials soon began questioning whether it was appropriate for the nationally known lawman to profit personally from the investigation
he helped lead. The ethics commission met on March 3 to hear Moose’s requests for
outside employment, including a possible waiver from stringent ethics laws that restrict
county employees from profiting from their public work. The panel also was asked to
consider whether it was proper for Moose to sell his story to a Hollywood television production company and to launch a consulting firm with his wife to market the chief’s
skills as a motivational speaker and his expertise in team-building, crisis management,
and conflict resolution. The chief described the book as a “once-in-a-lifetime” chance
to taste the rewards of fame.
The commission scheduled another meeting to decide the issues. According to
the commission’s chairperson, Elizabeth K. Kellar (2004), “All of this would have been
kept confidential (required by law), except for Chief Moose’s decision to talk about it
with the media.”
216 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Hired after the chief requested a waiver, the chief’s attorney argued that forbidding people to write books raises serious constitutional issues, and public officials do
not give up the right to free speech when they enter public service. In addition, hearing about Chief Moose’s experience would provide a real public benefit. The attorney
also argued that the ethics rules were designed to prevent bribery or undue influence over legislation, which is not the case with Moose’s book.
With the limelight comes opportunity, as well as the spotlight of increased public scrutiny. Capitalizing on new-found fame “‘can easily overwhelm a person,’ said
Vivian Weil, head of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Center for the Study of Ethics
in the Professions. ‘You can understand someone being unsettled by it and even failing to pass it by the ethics board,’ Weil said. ‘To have clouded judgment—you can easily imagine that’” (Associated Press, 2003, unpaginated). According to John Kleinig,
director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics, Chief Moose is not the first police
chief to write books on major crimes or their memoirs. “But that can lead to conflicts
of interest. Those can include too much outside work that distracts a chief from his
police job, a book or speech that reveals confidential information, or the appearance
that a chief is cashing in on a tragedy. . . . He must be aware that others have had
problems and that he could find himself in a bit of difficulty. . . . It’s probably in his
interest that it is reviewed.” Kleinig notes, “It’s like the guy who wins the lottery and
suddenly finds he’s the subject of enormous amounts of attention and pressures” (Associated Press, 2003).
The powerful, popular, and elected Montgomery County Executive, Doug
Duncan, weighed in on behalf of permitting Moose to write his book. Duncan vowed
to ask the county council to grant the chief a special exemption from the ethics rules,
should the commission attempt to derail his book. Duncan argued that, if Chief Moose
were turned down, he would only resign and find a job elsewhere. Duncan urged the
members to grant Moose a waiver so that the county could retain this exemplary public servant.
On March 20, just before Moose was called to active duty in the Air National
Guard, the five-member ethics commission issued a six-page ruling arguing that
Moose’s for-profit ventures would violate “bedrock principles” of county ethics law.
The commission ruled:
It is not in the best interest of the County to allow its employees to “trade on”
their government activities for private gain in such a direct and immediate fashion. Such conduct leads citizens to question whether public employees are discharging their duties in the public interest or in furtherance of some private
interest. This diminishes citizens’ faith in their public servants and erodes their
trust in [c]ounty government.
In the commission members’ view, “These principles are at the core of the prohibition against using the prestige of one’s office for private gain.” The ruling added
Designing and Implementing Codes 217

that neither Moose nor Duncan, who had asked the commission to make an exception for the chief, “has convinced the commission that this situation is a good platform to begin waiving those principles.” A waiver now “could lead to undesirable
behavior” in the future, the panel said, such as employees “jockeying for position”
during high-profile incidents in hopes of winning fame and fortune.
His attorney protested the “flawed” decision and said he was astonished. “They
concede that the county executive has decided that this is in the best interest of the
county. But these five unelected members of this commission say, ‘No, we know
better’” (Mosk, 2003b, B1).
In late April, in a significant turnaround from its past positions, the Washington
Post’s editors argued that in this balancing test they would come down on “the side
of more speech in this case.” But, they continued, he should not be allowed to write
for the “wrong reasons,” namely his poor salary as compared to other police chiefs.
This created a double standard when it came to other police officers on the force. The
solution, according to the newspaper’s editors, was for the commission to “reexamine its earlier ruling barring police officers from accepting honorariums to speak about
the sniper case.” In October 2003, the Washington Post printed five long excerpts from
Moose’s book.
Charles Moose resigned as Chief of the Montgomery County Police on June 18,
2003, rather than comply with the ethics commission’s ruling. The settlement agreement that he negotiated with Montgomery County when he resigned required
that he return movie compensation to the county that he had accepted prior to seeking permission or a waiver and that he dismiss his lawsuit against the commission.
The commission agreed that (absent any breach of confidentiality) it would not
take any action to restrain Moose’s book, movie, or speaking opportunities after he
resigned.
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. Most public codes forbid using public office for private gain. Is this the core problem here? What do you consider in arriving at your answer?
2. Should the value of free speech override ethics rules for public officials? Why?
There is a long history of government employees’ freedom of speech being
restricted for reasons of “compelling government interest.” Federal employees’
participation in partisan activities has been restricted since 1939 under the Federal
Hatch Act (5 U.S.C. §§ 7321–7326), amended to expand employees’ rights in
1993. See the U.S. Office of Special Council at http://www.osc.gov. For some
218 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

important court cases on limitations and liberties of government employees, see
Wild v. United States Dep’t of Housing & Urban Dev., 692 F.2d 1129, 1132–34
(7th Cir. 1982) and Van Ee v. EPA, 202 F.3d 296 (D.C. Cir. 2000).
3. Did Chief Moose do anything unethical by pursuing the book and movie contracts
before seeking a waiver of the county’s standards? Why?
4. Did Chief Moose do anything unethical by seeking a waiver of the county’s
standards? Why?
5. Did Chief Moose do anything unethical by resigning in order to fulfill the book
contract? Why?
6. As a member of the ethics commission, would you have granted Chief Moose a
waiver? Why?
Designing and Implementing Codes 219

220
CHAPTER NINE
BROADENING THE HORIZON
Y
What can professional public managers learn from the global movement in public service ethics? Even a quick peek at the international scene might seem
irrelevant to public managers busy with pressing problems close at home. Yet ethics
systems and expectations are driven not only by internal domestic pressures but by
external factors as well. A glance at colleagues in other administrative settings may
help us better understand and appreciate our own. We can learn a lot about what is
on our own horizon and what is bound to fail and fade away. Common problems may
yield to new and innovative solutions if they are viewed from beyond a strictly
parochial perspective. A look around at the global context is an efficient way to push
back boundaries and a useful way to trigger the moral imagination.
Ethical challenges confront managers in public service around the globe, as the
exhibits in this chapter, ground-breaking publications (such as Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development, 2000b), and the chronology in Resource
A show. Whatever the categories on a roster of other nations and other cultures—
high or low on corruption scales, developed or transitional, presidential and parliamentary democracies or authoritarian regimes, market- or non-market-based
economies, large or small by size or population—we have this much in common.1
Whether this fact is reassuring or of concern depends on one’s worldview, but surely
in today’s interdependent world, this worldview must extend beyond national borders.
We also share ethical challenges with our predecessors, as Resource A indicates.
Ethical issues have haunted democracies throughout history. This was certainly true

for the ancient Athenian democracy and the Roman republic. It was also true for countries such as revolutionary France and, about a century later, Victorian Great Britain.
The United States faced ethical issues from its very beginning, including George
Washington’s first administration (Gilman, 1995).
It is not that democracies are more prone to or accepting of corruption than any
other form of government. Rather, democracies are more transparent, with more
institutions gathering and independently reporting information. Dictatorships,
authoritarian regimes, and nonconstitutional monarchies may be corrupt, but much
is concealed, and unpleasant things may happen to those who tell about them.
Because the challenges are often wrapped up in government scandals but the
responses may vary, it is important to distinguish anticorruption efforts from integrity
programs. These are often linked, yet they begin from very different premises. Relying on prosecution, investigations, and audits, anticorruption systems begin with the
assumption that corruption is caused by immoral individuals in government, with the
bad apples in a good system, if you will (Huberts, 2003). Logically then, systems of this
sort are designed to punish and so deter administrators by fear of punishment. However, integrity systems are preventative and assume that the vast majority of public
administrators want to do the right thing if they have effective guidance and a clear
set of values to emulate. Today, most developed democracies rely on both.
Globally, democratic and many other societies recognize that there must be an institutional fabric to protect and promote the integrity of governmental systems. Unfortunately, ethics processes in most countries have developed in an incremental and
fragmented fashion. One agency may adopt a code of conduct, or a small proportion
of the public workforce may be in merit-based personnel systems. The United States,
for example, reacted to the Watergate scandal, in part, by creating the OGE in 1978.
Over the past quarter of a century, many countries throughout the world have
begun to create administrative structures to anticipate and prevent ethical lapses (see
Resource B). Governments as diverse as those in Great Britain, Hong Kong,
Norway, and South Africa have developed ethics programs that are as robust as they
are different. The international and multinational organizations advocating ethics programs as part of government reform include the United Nations, Organization of
American States, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the
World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank,
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union and
the Council of Europe, among others. Nongovernmental organizations such as
Transparency International (TI) participate as well. They share in common the argument that effective anticorruption systems are critical for democratic development
(Seligson, 2001) and reform and that their systems’ success requires dynamic prevention elements, or integrity programs. The U.N.’s Anti-Corruption Convention, adopted
by the General Assembly in October 2003, speaks of “the principles of proper
Broadening the Horizon 221

management of public affairs and public property, fairness, responsibility and equality
before the law and the need to safeguard integrity and to foster a culture of rejection
of corruption.”
Why has ethics in public service become an international movement, and why so
recently? First, many public leaders and senior managers realized that the piecemeal, reactive approach was not effective. Second, many multinational organizations responsible for grants and loans learned that the lack of integrity was reducing their effectiveness.
To illustrate, in the 1990s the World Bank reversed its policy of not meddling in recipients’ internal affairs and refocused on corruption as a major inhibitor of development
around the world. Others concur: “Fair and reliable public services inspire public trust
and create a favorable environment for businesses, thus contributing to well-functioning
markets and economic growth” (Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development, 2000a, p. 1). Third, many countries’ leaders realize that punishment without prevention is not enough. No matter how effective law enforcement is, the publicity
around corrupt officials undermines citizens’ confidence in their governments. Increasing global interdependencies, technological advances, management reform, and other
factors also spurred the movement on (Cooper and Yoder, 2002, pp. 334–335, 345).
First Efforts: National Initiatives
With the creation of the Office of Government Ethics in 1978, the United States
stepped forward as one of the leaders in institutionalizing ethics systems in the public sector. This legislation did not come easily. For almost a century, the United States
had a potpourri of overlapping laws and regulations, with no clear enforcement mechanisms.2 At the same time, the U.S. House and Senate created ethics committees to
oversee members’ activities.
Almost simultaneously, Hong Kong created the Independent Commission Against
Corruption (ICAC), with major prevention activities and so much power that it has
been called the fourth branch of government. When unification occurred with China
in 1997, the government decided to maintain the ICAC because of its recognized success in promoting integrity and combating corruption. During the same period, the
state of New South Wales in Australia was creating a commission to deal with both
corruption and integrity.
Canada and Great Britain soon followed, each with models very different from
both the U.S. model and each other. Canada’s prime minister created the Office of
the Ethics Counsellor to provide advice and counsel to cabinet officials, while maintaining general ethics guidance for the public service through the Treasury Board and
the Public Service Integrity Office. The British, by contrast, created the Committee
on Standards of Public Life, with the responsibility to provide general guidance on
ethics policy to the government and civil service of Great Britain.
222 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

By the mid-1990s, many countries had some type of ethics institution. The list includes those mentioned earlier, as well as Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand,
Uganda, the Philippines, Norway, Lithuania, Namibia, Chile, France, and others. It
is obvious that their power and their success vary widely, and there have been obvious
failures. Nonetheless, almost all have some sort of code of conduct, transparency
system, accountability program, training, and advisory power. Yet each has distinctive
elements. For example, New Zealand has an office in the public service commission,
but Uganda has an independent head. Chile emphasizes the transparency of procurements and contracts; South Africa emphasizes financial disclosure for senior ministers. In Norway, ethics is one of the standards for promotion to a senior position in
public service; in Lithuania, it is one of the standards for being hired in the first place.
The U.S. Code of Conduct for federal officials is more than seventy pages long; Great
Britain relies on the seven general principles shown in Exhibit 9.1.
Broadening the Horizon 223
EXHIBIT 9.1. GREAT BRITAIN’S SEVEN PRINCIPLES
OF PUBLIC LIFE, 2001.
The Committee has set out “Seven Principles of Public Life” which it believes should apply to all
in the public service. These are:
Selflessness
Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in
order to gain financial or other benefits for themselves, their family or their friends.
Integrity
Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside
individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official
duties.
Objectivity
In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make choices on merit.
Accountability
Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must
submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.
Openness
Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they
take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider
public interest clearly demands.
Honesty
Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties
and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.
Leadership
Holders of public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.
Source: Great Britain’s Committee on Standards in Public Life, established Oct. 1994
[http://www.public-standards.gov.uk].

First Efforts: Multinational Organizations
The chronology in Resource A testifies to the fact that a number of major efforts have
been undertaken at the global level since the mid-1990s. “The central thrusts of the
international efforts . . . appear to be accountability, regulatory structures, and monitoring processes to prevent corruption and provide ‘transparency’” (Cooper and Yoder,
2002, p. 344). In 1996, the Organization of American States (OAS) promulgated the
first multinational anticorruption treaty that explicitly requires effective ethics measures. In Article III, titled “Preventative Measures,” the member states commit, among
other things, to standards of conduct, ethics systems, transparency systems, training,
and whistle-blower protection (see Exhibit 9.2). Although the OAS has made some
progress, including establishing a standing committee to evaluate the effectiveness of
these programs, there is still considerable effort required to ensure that every country in the Americas meets these standards.
In the mid-1990s, the OECD began researching the kinds of ethics programs institutionalized in different countries and determining which of these were best practices for the public service. The result is some of the best comparative research available
on the how and why of effective ethics programs. In 1997, it created its first Ethics
Checklist for the public service. Designed as a benchmarking effort for member and
nonmember countries, this was the first systematic attempt to look at program effectiveness (see Exhibit 9.3).
These two efforts created momentum for a variety of regional agreements in
Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. The OECD engaged in several major analytical exercises to better understand how ethics programs fit into modern public management;
with the publication of Trust in Government in 2000, the OECD completed the most detailed analysis to date (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
2000b). The United States sponsored the first ministerial conference with specific focus
on ethics in public service. This was followed by a commitment to meet biennially;
in 2001 it was in The Hague and in 2003 in Seoul, South Korea (see Resource A).
Many other regional forums are taking anticorruption and integrity systems seriously. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Stability Pact,
the Council of Europe, along with regional organizations in Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East, are appreciating the benefits of strong ethical foundations in public
service and exploring how to create and then maintain them.
Unfortunately, except for the OAS, very little has been done to measure program
effectiveness. It is still too soon to say definitively what is working and what is not.
One driver that might spur advances in this area is the Corruption Perceptions
Index, initiated in 1995 by TI (which was founded in 1993 by a former senior officer
at the World Bank). With a powerful influence on many anticorruption fronts, the
224 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

response to rankings has caused parliamentary governments to fall and leaders to resign. The index is a composite of surveys on perceived levels of corruption among
politicians and public officials in 133 countries (Internet Center for Corruption
Research, 2003; Resource B). Although criticized for false precision and other flaws,
Broadening the Horizon 225
EXHIBIT 9.2. ARTICLE III OF THE INTER-AMERICAN
CONVENTION AGAINST CORRUPTION.
[T]he States Parties agree to consider the applicability of measures within their own institutional
systems to create, maintain and strengthen:
1. Standards of conduct for the correct, honorable, and proper fulfillment of public functions. These
standards shall be intended to prevent conflicts of interest and mandate the proper conservation
and use of resources entrusted to government officials in the performance of their functions.
These standards shall also establish measures and systems requiring government officials to report to appropriate authorities acts of corruption in the performance of public functions. Such
measures should help preserve the public’s confidence in the integrity of public servants and government processes.
2. Mechanisms to enforce these standards of conduct.
3. Instruction to government personnel to ensure proper understanding of their responsibilities
and the ethical rules governing their activities.
4. Systems for registering the income, assets and liabilities of persons who perform public functions in certain posts as specified by law and, where appropriate, for making such registrations
public.
5. Systems of government hiring and procurement of goods and services that assure the openness, equity and efficiency of such systems.
6. Government revenue collection and control systems that deter corruption.
7. Laws that deny favorable tax treatment for any individual or corporation for expenditures made
in violation of the anticorruption laws of the States Parties.
8. Systems for protecting public servants and private citizens who, in good faith, report acts of corruption, including protection of their identities, in accordance with their Constitutions and the
basic principles of their domestic legal systems.
9. Oversight bodies with a view to implementing modern mechanisms for preventing, detecting,
punishing and eradicating corrupt acts.
10. Deterrents to the bribery of domestic and foreign government officials, such as mechanisms
to ensure that publicly held companies and other types of associations maintain books and
records which, in reasonable detail, accurately reflect the acquisition and disposition of assets,
and have sufficient internal accounting controls to enable their officers to detect corrupt acts.
11. Mechanisms to encourage participation by civil society and nongovernmental organizations in
efforts to prevent corruption.
12. The study of further preventive measures that take into account the relationship between
equitable compensation and probity in public service.
Source: Adopted by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States in 1996.
OAS [http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/followup.htm].

it is seen by some as the most innovative initiative against corruption in the past hundred years. TI, with chapters in many countries around the world, continues to be a
leader in the fight against corruption.
In late 2003, the U.N. Anti-Corruption Convention was signed in Merida,
Mexico. It tied together the various international agreements that included ethics programs into a global compact. This agreement has the potential to profoundly affect
the public and private sectors throughout the world.
Development of Consensus
One of the first international conferences solely devoted to public service ethics was
held in Washington, D.C., in 1994. The more than one hundred conference delegates
from fifty-three countries focused on both programmatic and normative concerns.
226 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 9.3. OECD’S ETHICS CHECKLIST.
Are the basic principles and standards clear?
1. What are the basic ethical values for public officials?
2. In what ways do political leaders demonstrate visible and strong commitment?
3. How do the public officials know what ethical standards are expected of them?
4. What guidance is available to help public officials apply these standards?
How is an ethical culture fostered?
5. In what ways can senior managers demonstrate leadership in ethical conduct?
6. How do the public service employment conditions encourage ethical behavior?
7. Is advice available to public officials on resolving ethical tensions and problems?
8. How are the basic ethical values communicated to public servants?
[Are] there adequate oversight and accountability?
9. What accountability mechanisms are in place within agencies, at service-wide level and external to the public service?
10. Who is responsible for overall co-ordination, oversight and promotion of ethics in the public
sector?
11. How clear are the rules and procedures for public officials to expose actual or suspected wrongdoing within the public sector? What are the procedures and sanctions . . . for wrongdoing?
12. What constitutional, administrative, civil service and/or criminal regulations are available for
disciplinary action against public servants?
13. Are investigation and prosecution mechanisms sufficiently independent and adequately
resourced?
Is the public well informed?
14. How can citizens be empowered for effective public scrutiny?
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Ethics Checklist.” Paris:
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Nov. 1997. Reproduced by permission of the OECD.

Among the many common threads was concern about the impact of scandals on public support for democracy. Governments must go beyond managing official behavior
to being transparent enough to assure citizens that their government is operating in
the public interest (Gilman and Lewis, 1996).
The delegates advocated action to enhance integrity in public service rather than
simply design systems to catch and punish wrongdoers. The consensus was that governments were better able to empower public servants to do the right thing by emphasizing core values. As one delegate put it, “[P]reventative medicine always is
preferable to surgery.”
This gathering would become a springboard for ensuing international, multinational, national, and corporate initiatives in public service ethics. “From its usual idiosyncratic, nation-specific treatment, administrative ethics was converted into a concern
to be addressed cooperatively, in part on the international level and in part with business participation” (Gilman and Lewis, 1996, p. 523). In other words, globalization,
which is often associated with private enterprise, is material to ethics and ethics programs in the public sector.
One important commonality is the core prohibition against conflict of interest.
The OECD defines it as a “conflict between the public duty and private interests of a
public official, in which the public official has private-capacity interests which could
improperly influence the performance of their official duties and responsibilities” (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2004). Also developments
in the contemporary public sector present new challenges, to which Exhibit 9.4 speaks.
A second important commonality is that, although privacy issues represent a growing arena for concern and debate in many countries, the tilt is toward contraction when
public servants are involved. In the United States and elsewhere, the use of public
financial disclosure is an obvious example of the public interest trumping the value of
public servants’ privacy. Disclosure systems are growing worldwide (Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2000b) and operate today in countries
as diverse as Argentina, South Africa, and Slovakia; some systems such as the Canadian
are confidential and not public.
A third point in common is the emphasis on transparency, referring to the general
openness of government. From procurement to contracting, from hiring personnel to
major policy decisions, the push for increased government transparency is designed
to reduce impropriety and its appearance and increase citizen access and confidence
in government. One legal example of this is the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Because governmental use and regulation of the Internet and governments’ protocols for
such use are an example of the intersection of the issues of privacy, transparency, freedom of speech, and citizen access to information and services, developments in this
arena bear watching (Negin, 2003; Bhatnagar, 2003). The very nature of the Internet
dictates an approach relying on international and public-private collaboration.
Broadening the Horizon 227

228 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 9.4. OECD ON CONFLICT OF INTEREST, 2004.
What is conflict of interest? “Conflict of interest arises from the fact that public officials have to make
decisions while accomplishing their official duties that may also affect their private interests…. Private interests that may generate a direct personal benefit to public officials have traditionally included financial interests, gifts and relationships. But business interests, secondary employment and
affiliations are increasingly becoming an issue because of increased collaboration with the private
sector.”
Key Recommendations for Managing Conflict of Interest
1. Identify relevant conflict-of-interest situations
2. Establish procedures to identify, manage and resolve conflict-of-interest situations
• Set clear rules on what is expected of public officials in dealing with conflict-of-interest situations that enable managers to find proper resolution and management.
3. Demonstrate leadership commitment
• Managers should take responsibility for the effective application of their conflict-of-interest
policy, by deciding in individual cases and monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of
the policy.
4. Create a partnership with employees: awareness, anticipation and prevention
• Ensure wide publication and understanding of the conflict-of-interest policy.
• Review ‘at-risk’ areas for potential conflict-of-interest situations.
• Identify preventive measures that deal with emergent conflict situations.
• Develop an open organisational culture where dealing with conflict-of-interest matters
can be freely raised and discussed.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Assets
Liabilities, debts
Personal relationships
Family relationships
Business interest
External activities and positions
Gifts, benefits and hospitality
Which activities and situations are identified as holding potential
for conflicts of interest for officials?
Number of countries

Contrary to popular wisdom, professional public managers around the globe share
some core values that are associated with their role and training rather than with
cultural particulars: “There are fundamental values—treated at a higher level of
abstraction—that are closely associated with democracy, market economy, and professional bureaucracy” (Gilman and Lewis, 1996, p. 518; see Chapter One and
Exhibit 9.5 on South Africa). Although it would be foolish to deny that cultural specifics
are operative and important, it is counterfactual to deny that shared ethical standards
are developing on a global scale. International compacts from at least 1864 and the
adoption of the first Geneva Convention through the U.N.’s Anti-Corruption Convention signed in 2003 (and beyond, no doubt) have spurred this development. So have
international professional contacts; note that the eleventh International Anti-Corruption
Conference (IACC) met in Seoul, Korea, in 2003 (see Resource A). “These various
regional and global declarations, agreements, and organizations can be understood as
elements in a process of socially constructing a new international reality” (Cooper and
Yoder, 2002, p. 347). Surely the Internet is pushing in this same direction.
Among the values identified as central to developing global standards are honesty,
trust, and stability (Cooper and Yoder, 2002, pp. 346–347). There is evidence of a
worldwide rejection of official bribery (Gilman and Lewis, 1996). Professionalism is
another value often cited, as in the mission statement of South Africa’s Public Service
Commission shown in Exhibit 9.5. These standards give rise to the duty for public
managers to pursue the public interest (see Chapter Three). In its recommendation
Broadening the Horizon 229
5. Enforce the conflict-of-interest policy
• Provide procedures for establishing a conflict-of-interest offence, and proportional consequences for non-compliance with conflict-of-interest policy including disciplinary sanctions.
• Develop monitoring mechanisms to detect breaches of policy and take into account any
gain or benefit that resulted from the conflict.
• Co-ordinate prevention and enforcement measures and integrate them into a coherent institutional framework.
6. Initiate a new partnership with the business and non-profit sectors
• Involve the business and non-profit sectors in elaborating and implementing the conflict-ofinterest policy for public officials.
• Anticipate potential conflict-of-interest situations when public organisations involve persons
representing businesses and the non-profit sector.
• Include safeguards against potential conflict-of-interest situations.
Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Service,” draft policy brief. Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development, June 2004. Reproduced by permission of the OECD.

for managing conflict of interest, the OECD declares, “Serving the public interest is
the fundamental mission of governments and public institutions. Citizens expect individual public officials to perform their duties with integrity, in a fair and unbiased
way” (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2003, p. 2).
According to its homepage, “The OECD groups 30 member countries sharing a
commitment to democratic government and the market economy. With active relationships with some 70 other countries, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and
civil society, it has a global reach” (emphasis in original deleted).
A Multinational View at the Citizen Level
There are relevant empirical findings at a citizen level, as well as at the institutional
and professional level:
The World Values Survey [WVS] is a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and
political change. It is conducted by a network of social scientists at leading universities all around world. The survey is performed on nationally representative samples
in almost 80 societies on all six inhabited continents. A total of four waves have
been carried since 1981 allowing accurate comparative analysis (WVS [http://
www.worldvaluessurvey.org], Introduction).
According to findings from the WVS, backing for democracy is associated
negatively with citizens’ justification of corruption” (Inglehart, 2000; see http://
wvs.isr.umich.edu/index.shtml).
230 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 9.5. SOUTH AFRICA’S PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION.
VISION
The Public Service Commission is an independent and impartial body created by the Constitution
to enhance excellence in governance within the Public Service by promoting a professional and
ethical environment and adding value to a public administration that is accountable, equitable,
efficient, effective, corrupt-free and responsive to needs of the people of South Africa.
MISSION
The Commission aims to promote the constitutionally enshrined democratic principles and values
in the Public Service by investigating, monitoring, evaluating, communicating and reporting on the
public administration; through research processes it will ensure the promoting of excellence in governance and the delivery of affordable and sustainable quality services.
Source: Public Service Commission of South Africa [http://www.psc.gov.za].

An index of corruption permissiveness based on the WVS captures “the extent to
which individuals tend to justify certain practices that can be considered corrupt”
(Moreno, 2002, p. 3). “Corruption permissiveness is, in particular, strongly and negatively correlated with support for democracy and with interpersonal trust, both of
them being important components of a democratic political culture” (p. 2). “[C]ountries that have higher levels of corruption permissiveness in the WVS tend to be those
with less corruption in the CPI” (p. 5), meaning TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index
(Moreno, 2002, pp. 1–5).
Some analysts see a shift in individuals’ values taking place. In their view,
socioeconomic development, cultural change, and democratization—with the “common theme of broadening human choice”—constitute a coherent syndrome of social
change” (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, p. 1). Clustering WVS findings along
the two dimensions of self-expression values against survival values and secular-rational values against traditional values, they identify similarities and differences and suggest a developmental trajectory.
[M]ost theories of value change converge in the notion that traditional-deferential orientations, that subordinate the individual to the community, tend to give way to growing emphasis on autonomous human choice and individual self-expression. . . . We
characterize this process as a shift from survival values to self-expression values….
Overall, high (or low) levels of individual resources, self-expression values and effective
democracy tend to go together” (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, pp. 1–2).
Among the principal values in most current Western ethical perspectives, “[a]utonomy is often thought to be a paradigmatic value in personal ethics. Being autonomous
means being true to our own principles and acting in a way which we have chosen
or which we endorse” (May, Collins-Chobanian, and Wong, 1998, p. 9). It is related
to self-respect and makes demands on society. “For autonomy to be maintained and
maximized in a population it is crucial that social institutions be designed to minimize
interference with life choices of individuals” (May, Collins-Chobanian, and Wong,
1998, p. 9).
Many non-Western ethical perspectives focus on the community and its well-being
and view the individual primarily in relationship to the community (May, CollinsChobanian, and Wong, 1998, pp. 10–13). A life is lived within a “fabric of relationships” in some traditional African, Confucian, and Buddhist perspectives. These differ
in, for example, their orientation to worldly attachments to people and things and their
passivity or acceptance versus political activism. “Like Hindu perspectives, Islamic ethics
is highly activist and interventionist,” with “highly partialist” rules for ethical conduct
depending upon gender and religious affiliation (May, Collins-Chobanian, and Wong,
1998, p. 12; see also An-Na’im, 1998).
Broadening the Horizon 231

A stress on autonomy—a value associated with Western ethics—raises the specter
of cultural bias, just as the denial of any possibility of shared values slips into another
sort of preconception or bias. Cultural relativism “denies that any independent moral
facts exist outside of a society . . . [but argues] that all moral beliefs are proper or
improper in relation to a society’s customs” (Terkel and Duval, 1999, p. 58, capitalization omitted). In response to the view that “no moral judgment can do more than
reflect the customs of the society in which it is made” (Singer, 1979, p. 5), Peter Singer
(1979, pp. 5, 11) declares,
Ethics takes a universal point of view. This does not mean that a particular ethical
judgment must be universally applicable. Circumstances alter causes. . . . What this
does mean is that in making ethics judgments we go beyond our own likes and
dislikes…. [E]thics requires us to go beyond “I” and “you” to the universal law,
the universalizable judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator or ideal
observers.
This argument underlies the expansive reach in Exhibit 7.1. A global perspective
supports the manager’s rejection of moral relativism and encourages open-minded
leadership, even vision.
On the basis of the developments described here and the research findings associated with the World Values Survey (WVS) and Kohlberg’s theory discussed in Chapter
Five, we are suggesting neither an inevitable convergence or conversion to values associated with Western cultures nor an inescapable chasm separating different peoples. What
we are suggesting is that political (democracy), social (urbanization and interdependency),
and economic (income level) variables are in play, as are roles and culture.
One final point on values may be especially important for public managers to consider. There is evidence that human happiness is linked to economic development in
a strong curvilinear way, meaning that income matters less to perceived happiness at
lower and higher income levels. “Among advanced industrial societies, there is practically no relationship between income level and subjective well being” (Inglehart, 1999,
p. 3; see also Cummins, 1995).
Modern industrial society was made possible by two key institutions: the mass production assembly line and bureaucratic organizations. These institutions made it
possible to process huge numbers of products and huge numbers of people using
centrally controlled standardized routines. They were highly effective, but they
sharply reduced individual autonomy, which takes on an increasingly high priority
in advanced industrial societies. As a result, hierarchical, centrally controlled
bureaucratic institutions are becoming less acceptable in postmodern society
(Inglehart, 1999, p. 9).
232 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

It seems that there is something more to life once it gets well beyond subsistence.
The data show this, and the citizens know it. Logically, if public managers aim at increasing perceived well-being in the community, then overall citizen satisfaction and
government effectiveness are best defined and measured in terms broader than tax
rates and cost-benefit ratios. Note, too, that for public service, individual autonomy
entails citizen empowerment.
Perhaps this discussion of the normative and structural currents and commonalities is an example of the idea: Think global, act local. But this analysis suggests that
possibly more important is the question, What do you think?
◆◆◆
The global movement shows fragmented, incremental development as the dominant
pattern of institutionalization and the pervasive understanding that effective anticorruption systems are critical for democratic development and managerial maturity. Also widespread is the recognition that the success of an ethics system requires
dynamic prevention elements, which generally translates into integrity programs. The
commonalities in these programs suggest that, globally, professionals in public service
share in common some core values that are associated with their role and training
rather than with cultural particulars. Among these values are honesty, transparency,
and professionalism. These standards give rise to the duty for public managers to pursue the public interest, to which the evident pattern of the contraction of public servants’ privacy is related. Among the relevant empirical findings at a citizen level are
a relationship between democratic attitudes and tolerance of corruption, a curvilinear relationship between income and subjective well-being, and a high value placed
on individual autonomy in postmodern societies.
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. Does culture have an impact on what public servants consider ethical? Should it?
2. Do you think that the multilateral agreements show that there are issues of ethics
in public management that cut across cultural lines? Are there shared concepts and
values you see as particularly valuable to managing public sector organizations?
3. In this global context, what do you think is the relationship between the ethics of
public servants, corruption, and citizen confidence in governmental institutions?
4. How are differences in economic condition and political system related to the
incidence and perception of corruption?
Broadening the Horizon 233

5. Given the efforts over millenia and around the globe (see Resource A) to curb corruption and bolster citizen confidence in government, why do these problems
persist?
◆◆◆
Notes
1. Although empirical evidence supports an association between level of development and
level of corruption, it also shows high levels of corruption in both rich and poorer countries (Internet Center for Corruption Research, 2003).
2. The first proposal for resolving this confusion came from a U.S. Senate subcommittee under
the leadership of Senator Paul Douglas (U.S. Senate, 1951).
234 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

235
Moving inside the organization, this final chapter focuses on organizational interaction and routine agency operations that set the organization’s ethical tone.
Here we spotlight the supervisory function as a central managerial responsibility and
advocate structuring operations and procedures to support and promote ethical behavior. Setting positive expectations through day-to-day functions contributes to an
open, positive, and ongoing conversation about the right thing to do and the right way
to do it. Laying out objections lets managers set them aside—the venture is possible,
desirable, and banks on prudential management.
The chapter examines ethical challenges facing supervisors and itemizes feasible
agency interventions through which managers daily build ethical concerns directly
into routine and expected conduct. An ethics impact statement integrates ethics
soundly and methodically into agency procedures and decisions, and agency audit
and risk-assessment tools contribute to the building of an ethical agency. Case studies in agency settings animate several of this book’s main themes.
Shaping Ethics and the Boss
In a host of ways, including modeling, the manager shapes ethical conduct and the ethical agency. Supervising employee time is an ongoing stress point and demands special
care. Workforce diversity, alternate recruitment channels, mixed administrative settings,
CHAPTER TEN
BUILDING AN ETHICAL AGENCY
Y

and collaborative relationships, as illustrated by the procurement function, figure prominently among today’s challenges.
Public managers are doers and deciders; that is the crux of their job. Bayard L.
Catron once remarked, “Ethics is first, foremost, and finally about conduct.” The upshot is that a passion for action is preferred over personal introspection, and this necessarily means dealing with other people. A public manager’s primary ethical concern is behavior
toward other people.
Service recipients or clients are especially important others today because of the
surge in social services, the injection of equity and compassion by the new public administration, and the responsiveness-as-marketing concerns associated with entrepreneurial public management. (The dictum of customer service neglects the dependency,
vulnerability, and civics aspects of many public services.) Recognizing users’ dependency on public services, a focus on clients as external, direct stakeholders is a beneficial development. In effect, it repudiates the petty tyrant exercising government
authority, the small-minded bureaucrat so aptly described by Dostoyevsky (n.d., pp.
108–109) in nineteenth-century Russia.
I was a spiteful civil servant. I was rude and took pleasure in being rude. Mind you, I
never accepted any bribes, so that I had at least to find something to compensate myself for that. Whenever people used to come to my office on some business, I snarled
at them and felt as pleased as Punch when I succeeded in making one of them really
unhappy. I nearly always did succeed. They were mostly a timid lot: what else can you
expect people who come to a government office to be? . . . All I did, as a matter of
fact, was to indulge in a little innocent fun at the expense of . . . the people who came
to my office on business, for actually I never could become a spiteful man.
(Note how he divorces the office from the person and rationalizes his behavior.)
An emphasis on clients is all to the good, but not to the exclusion of all others.
Dependency and vulnerability—factors that affect ethical responsibility—touch subordinates with a heavy hand. Because agency managers and employees are direct stakeholders in agency actions and operations, supervision’s ethical aspects must be core
concerns. Moreover, omitting ethics from the supervisory relationship implies endorsing
market exchange as the sole basis of human relations in public agencies. Given the
hours spent on the job and maintaining professional proficiency, few managers would
be willing to make this argument. Nor would they want to live with the consequences.
Ethical Modeling
By way of illustration, step into the shoes of the manager to whom the arrogant entrepreneur reports in Exhibit 10.1. Is relaxed oversight justified? What does bending
or ignoring the rules communicate to other employees? Why? And what does it say
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about the agency? Thinking this through requires appraising two supervisors—yourself and your boss—as well as subordinates.
Proposals about the ethical aspects of the supervisory function touch on managers’ and subordinates’ behavior and, for that very reason, breed wariness in some
minds. Doubts induce special care for the ethical dimensions of hierarchical relationships. A manager’s treatment of subordinates sets the tone for the organization
and models appropriate behavior to subordinates.
Public managers generally understand and accept this responsibility and know
how both formal procedures and informal personal contact help meet it. Formerly responsible for a $100 billion budget, a former undersecretary of defense for acquisition
explained to a business audience:
Often, the informal rules of acceptable behavior of an organization’s culture are
more influential in governing behavior than the formal rules…. Ethics is an important element of an organization’s culture. Therefore, ethics is the responsibility of
Building an Ethical Agency 237
EXHIBIT 10.1. ARROGANCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.
The chosen setting is sanitized as a government agency somewhere far, far away. It enjoyed nonappropriated revenue streams such as charges and fees and grants. These resources were generated
and managed by an entrepreneurial manager of high national and international stature for his work.
He worked hard—long hours, creative leadership, high energy—and sustained an impressive
track record of major successes. He brought a lot to the agency in terms of both resources and reputation, and his superiors usually left him alone to go to it. Oversight was half-hearted; accounting
and personnel controls were relaxed; and agency policies weakly enforced. It just didn’t pay to get
in this guy’s way.
Now the state manager himself was chaffing under restrictions and rules—the infamous
paperwork of government bureaucracy. Especially irksome were the procurement and subcontracting
rules that led to higher costs and delays. So he established personal accounts into which he placed
revenues from fees and grants. No one knew how much went though these accounts, but one thing
was for sure: he never used the money for personal purposes.
When the arrangements were disclosed, the organization was seriously embarrassed; the manager’s sub-unit lay in ruins; and the fate of the public manager and his career testifies to the fact
that self-destruction is an ugly thing. Success leads to relaxed reins in an organization and to an individual’s growing sense of self-importance. What we see here is lust for power, empire building, and
arrogance. What happened here is a classic tale of virtue and vice. (Remember the old-fashioned
virtue of humility?) As arrogance developed, with organizational support, the manager began to believe quite sincerely that the rules did not apply to him and that everything he was doing was for
the good of the agency. The result, again with agency sanction, was that accountability was nullified
and the public interest defined by one person.
Source: Excerpted and reprinted by permission of International Journal of Organization Theory and
Behavior. C. W. Lewis, “Mini-Symposium on Public Service Ethics: Introduction.” International
Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, 2003a, 6(3), 403–404.

management, and is a matter of leadership . . . the leadership of an organization
must be, and must be seen, as personally and professionally committed to good ethics.
They [managers] must demonstrate through their actions that they will not tolerate
unethical behavior by anyone with whom they do business (Betti, 1990, p. I2).
In this vein, Peter Drucker (1989, pp. 229–230) tells us, “Every enterprise requires
commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is
no enterprise, there is only a mob. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and
exemplify those objectives, values, and goals.”
Most of us learned how to deal with complex pressures and ethical dilemmas from
our bosses in a modern version of apprenticeship called modeling or, if conscious and
direct, mentoring. Social learning theory tells us that learning is fostered through observation and by the example of those who control rewards and deal out penalties.
Ethical modeling is an ancient notion that is more cosmopolitan than American, or
even Western, public administration. An illustration from Buddhism (Bukkyo Dendo,
Kyokai, 1987, pp. 468–469) strikes a familiar chord:
If an important minister of state neglects his duties, works for his own profit or
accepts bribes, it will cause a rapid decay of public morals. Under such circumstances, faithful ministers will retire from public service, wise men will keep silent
from fear of complications, and only flatterers will hold government positions, and
they will use their political power to enrich themselves with no thought for the sufferings of the people.
Workforce Diversity
When it comes to dealing with other people in the office, old, automatic responses may
no longer be as reliable as they once were. Disabled workers, the foreign-educated, single parents supporting a family, adult children caring for aging parents, and workers
with nontraditional lifestyles all make the office a much more complicated place
than it was when the boss-as-model learned on the job.
Today’s catchphrase is cultural diversity—a descriptive term, because the workforce
is changing, employee relationships are changing. Some behaviors may need rethinking; others may call for full-scale remodeling. For example, public organizations are
compelled to reject discrimination and sexual harassment on ethical grounds. Another
behavior that warrants censure is sexual assault, in response to which the Air Force
Academy adopted a policy by which “a complaint will automatically prompt a formal
criminal investigation but victims will no longer have the option of remaining anonymous” and announced it “will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, intimidation
or assault of any kind!” (Schemo, 2003, unpaginated).
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There are many other examples of changing relationships and behaviors. When
the ICMA’s code was originally adopted in 1924, city management was much simpler:
no assistants, county administrators, consultants, women, or minorities (Tranter, 1987).
Today these people are part of the team, along with private-sector collaborators and
dual-career couples with investment interests and personal lifestyles that raise questions and entail commitments different from those of the profession’s formative years.
Fondly recalled, the “good old days” conjure up simplicity, not equity.
The new faces, new cultures, and new customs and norms are adding fresh dimensions to employee relations and novel ethical issues. “Even now, the average manager may think: ‘To be fair, I should assume everyone is the same and treat them that
way”’ (Solomon, 1990, p. BI). That response begs the question. It is not bigotry or biased
treatment—both are intolerable in public service—but more subtly demeaning behavior, stereotypical thinking and treatment, inadvertent slights, and misunderstandings.
Both personal idiosyncrasy and cultural variation in habits, mores, values, and
even body language complicate the manager’s job. What motivates the employee? How
does the manager build trust in the office? Does eye contact signal trustworthiness or
belligerence? Is an informal chat before the meeting gets down to business an inexcusable waste of time or a team-building tactic?
Loosely paraphrasing Lawrence D. (Larry) Fisher, director of Oklahoma’s Human
Relations Development Department (personal communication, August 20, 1990), an
Oklahoma story evokes the ethical dimensions of workforce diversity: “At an agency
meeting, a junior manager overhears a bigoted remark told by a Kiowa colleague about
a Comanche. Should the manager say something?” Before answering, it is useful to
think through three additional questions.
1. Does either speaking up or keeping silent define professional behavior? Ethical
behavior?
2. As you respond, do you visualize the junior manager as Native American or
Caucasian? Do you visualize the Kiowa as the manager’s supervisor, peer,
or subordinate?
3. Does a public manager’s ethnic identity determine appropriate behavior?
Answers to the first question may be moderated by seniority, reporting lines, context, professional roles, and other considerations. But there is a significant distance
between should and would. The concepts are distinguished by courage, prudence,
responsibility, and other matters. Is only the how and when affected by these considerations, or is the obligation affected also? (Chapter Six’s tools for assessing responsibility
may be of help here.)
The second question raises the specter of bias or prejudice affecting the reasoning.
Was it truly impartial? An emphatic no to the third question emphasizes professional
Building an Ethical Agency 239

commitment to impartiality, even—or especially—in the face of ethnic, age, sex, or
other personal characteristics. The answers to the three questions may stimulate
rethinking of the initial problem. Once again, should the manager say something?
New York State (Department of Civil Service, 1990, p. 4) responded to diversity
with a “strategic workforce planning initiative,” which offers the following perspective:
Diversity has grown from purely a social agenda of enlightened government to include pragmatic concerns related to business viability for all employers, private or
public. The very productivity that the state will need could be threatened by counterproductive workplace tensions if workers are unprepared to deal with cultural
differences. Clearly, managers and supervisors will need greater skills in working
with a multicultural and increasingly diverse workforce.
Mistakenly, and apparently bowing to the ethical neutrality argument (see Chapter Four),
the New York plan (p. 70) argues that “this is not a social or moral issue, but rather a
pragmatic one.”
No one can predict for sure where diversity is taking public service, except to
say that the workforce will be different and the workplace probably so. In preparation,
we turn to the ethical dimensions of employee time as an everyday area of control,
awkward bloopers, outright abuse, and chronic misunderstanding. This issue taps many
ethical aspects of interpersonal relations in the office, including those that directly
affect every manager.
The Problem of Time Abuse
Misuse of working hours and workers is a commonplace and costly problem posing
serious ethical issues. It may constitute the rather simple appropriation of public property for personal gain or unauthorized use, which can be seen variously as intangible
theft or conflict of interest. When the misuse stems from an unscrupulous supervisor’s
directive, the problem is abuse of office. Then too, the problem may be linked to carelessness or incompetence on the part of the employee or supervisor. All told, these behaviors are contrary to ethical standards in public service.
Time abuse is different from lost time, which refers to all time paid but not worked,
whatever the reason, including legitimate reasons. In this regard, how many employees understand that vacation time may be devoted to personal purposes but that the
employee is still on the payroll and still a public servant? It is up to the manager to explain that the ethical obligations binding on public employees still operate and that
this is not the time for conflicting or unauthorized moonlighting. Authorized outside
employment usually presents no problem, as long as it does not interfere with job performance, generate conflicts of interest, or appear improper.
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A quick calculation in any agency reveals the serious financial implication of time
abuse. With 21.5 million civilian employees in government alone, the aggregate and
cumulative potential loss is striking. Time is money in government, too.
More broadly speaking, the productive use of working hours for public purposes is hardly a paltry matter. Payroll and benefits account for 75 percent or more
of spending in many jurisdictions or agencies. As a big-ticket item for the organization and the worker, employee time and its ethical dimensions call for discriminating reasoning by supervisory staff. Even so, abusive supervisors and greedy, ill-advised, or
wrong-thinking employees, abetted by careless supervision, perpetuate time abuse.
The federal government takes the straightforward position that personal use of
working hours and government workers, like other resources or assets, is contrary to
standards of conduct. Many states similarly prohibit personal use of working hours by
statute, personnel rule, or legal opinion. The model ethics legislation for states and
localities drafted in 1990 under the auspices of the Council on Governmental Ethics
Laws, states, “A public official or employee shall not use public funds, time, personnel,
facilities, or equipment for the official or employee’s private gain or that of another
unless the use is authorized by law” (Feigenbaum, Larsen, and Reynolds, 1990, Sec.
210; emphasis added). The last phrase is designed to allow for economic development
ventures and the like that join state resources to private activities.
More knotty supervisor-subordinate interactions on both agency and personal
time cause ethical problems in any office. Federal standards extend to superiors’ requests to work after hours, as the OGE (1990a, pp. 833–834) spells out:
While one normally thinks of [f]ederal property as being things, it also includes the
time of federal employees while on government duty. Therefore, one employee cannot ask another employee to provide services in furtherance of purely personal projects while on official duty. And, if a supervisor asks someone he supervises to
provide free personal services to the supervisor on non-official duty, the supervisor
is requesting a gift from that employee which is prohibited by statute.
Less regulated environments tend to confine the ban to working hours (as implied
in the case, “A Matter of Convenience,” at the end of Chapter Five). With respect to
working hours only, the Josephson Institute took a different tack by shifting responsibility so that it is the subordinate’s responsibility to say no. This posture allows that,
although the superior is obligated to the subordinate, obligations flow in the other
direction, too. According to the Josephson Institute (1990, p. 8) guidelines, “Public employees should refuse to perform improper personal tasks on government time.”
This advice strikes head-on against team player loyalties and an employee’s economic dependence on the organization and is plumbed in Exhibit 10.2. These are
matters of courage. Civil rights activist and author (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)
Building an Ethical Agency 241

Maya Angelou says, “Courage is the most important virtue . . . because without
courage you can’t have other virtues” (Fuchs, 1989, p. 13). Ethics is about doing the
right thing; it is not always easy. Fiduciary responsibility to the public and the ethical
principle that calls for taking personal responsibility support the Josephson Institute’s
posture.
Clarification of Work Norms
A new recruit may not even be aware of the ethical—never mind the managerial or
legal—aspects of a directive or of norms different from those of other work environments. Although cross-recruiting can be a positive, constructive, even creative step, it
also builds in some trouble spots. From the dollar-a-year or on-loan executive to the
transplanted military officer, volunteer, or part-time worker, the potential is there for
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EXHIBIT 10.2. JUST SAY NO.
A technician employed by the city (population 100,000) complained to the city manager, to the corporation counsel, and later that same day, to a local television station that her supervisor had ordered
her several times to do private jobs on city time and with city equipment. Once she was asked to install city equipment at a private site on her own time and felt she had to cooperate or “face the music.”
After the investigators sifted through work orders, purchase orders, time cards, invoices, and the
records of several local vendors, it looked as if charges soon would be brought against the supervisor
and several other employees. The investigator who led the police inquiry reported no information
implicating high officials outside the one office.
1. What are the ethical issues as distinct from legal or practical ones in this case?
For the employee?
For the supervisor?
2. Is the employee hiding behind her supervisor in order to escape responsibility? (See Chapter
Four.)
3. Is the obligation to protect public time and property a license for suspicion?
Is it a subordinate’s ethical obligation to second-guess the boss?
Does this disrupt the office?
4. Should the technician, who admits to illegal activity, be rewarded for blowing the whistle?
5. Does the technician appear to have answered the questions in Exhibit 7.5, and with what
results?
6. Loyalty often is identified as an ethical value. What does loyalty mean in this case?
Loyalty to whom and for what?
Is loyalty simply an appeal to personal bonds and sentiment, or does it rightfully exert
an ethical claim in public service?
How does loyalty affect accountability?
7. How does this case compare with “A Matter of Convenience” in Chapter Five and what different issues affect your reasoning?

confusion, casual misunderstanding, or undiscerned conflicts of interest. Potential
problems bid selectivity, followed by precautionary exposure to public service obligations and agency expectations.
A manager’s task is to clarify agency work norms when the new employee crosses
over from, for example, a military to a civilian post. Although some evidence suggests
potential problems in recruiting from the private sector, values such as telling the truth
and avoiding conflicting claims obviously are not all that different in the world of private business. Although the pressures may be similar, in public service, where company
time is public property, the moral compass points to the unacceptability of appropriating public property for personal use.
The business compass may point in a different direction, that is, toward organizational loyalty, stamina, grit, and a can-do approach to getting the job done. Some
differences turn on the degree of private ownership. For example, although nepotism is contrary to public service standards, a parent hiring a child to work in a familyowned business is accepted, even expected.
The competition among values and interests that crop up in current debates over
family leave, flex time, job sharing, rehiring retirees, and other recent innovations are
results of organizational change. Of course, dogmatic insistence on certain working
hours to the exclusion of number of hours worked, productivity, or competing demands
in an employee’s life may induce reactive rigidity such as clock watching, lackadaisical
performance, and anxiety. It certainly tends to sacrifice compassion as an ethical value
and stresses the organization as the preeminent, if not exclusive, stakeholder.
Need for a Team Ethic
Despite innovation and experimentation, many organizations that tend toward the
private on the continuum depicted in Figure I.1 play down the team spirit that characterizes so much of public service. The term team evokes close association, a network
of affiliation, kinship of goals, and mutual supports, dependency, and dependability.
It is only when a “we-they” line is drawn around the agency and public employees forget that the we extends to the public that the team ethic undercuts public service ethics.
Public service may be performed by a team, but the team is not an exclusive club.
In response to cross-recruiting, managers can smooth the transition and build an
effective, ethical team. For starters, managers can preach public service reality.
The challenge is to help new members join and then succeed by letting them in on the
house rules.
Managers are called upon to proselytize and inspire, advocate and model, hearten
and reward; training, supervision, controls, and incentives are marshaled. This is the
time for straight talk, repeated talk, backed up by right action. Cross-recruiting is also
a prime time for introducing the fusion route described in the Introduction.
Building an Ethical Agency 243

The Challenge for Nonprofits and Volunteers
Managing employees and volunteers with different skills, backgrounds, and lifestyles
is a special challenge in nonprofit organizations. As the public service workforce is
diversifying, so are the type of agency and mode of organization. The scope and functions of the nonprofit or independent sector have grown remarkably over the past several decades and are today both broad and pioneering (see Resource B). The nonprofit
umbrella covers many different career paths and opportunities in diverse fields. Nonprofits vary by size, revenues and financing modes, and mission. Some are local, some
are national, and many speak for budgets and staffs that dwarf local governments.
Some operate with a board of directors and function like a business, but without shareholders or owners.
Many nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, who are often treated as unpaid staff.
Many of them, retirees and others, are new to public service, its demands, and its ethical standards. Misguided compassion, however well meaning, can bring an agency to
its knees and a community service to a standstill.
With one foot in the business camp and the other in public service, a nonprofit
manager needs both eyes focused straight ahead. This means moving ethical modeling and public service expectations to the top of the manager’s agenda. The reactive
alternative risks letting scandal force a response.
Collaborative Relationships as a Source of Problems
Given different work norms, relationships and interactions get even stickier when we
venture outside the pyramidal agency and into the indirect, sometimes convoluted
ways we have of doing the public’s business. Not everyone involved in decision making or service delivery nowadays fits neatly in a superior-subordinate relationship with
a defined role in a hierarchical office. This is a source of many ethical problems that
face public servants and more-or-less-public agencies of all sorts.
Complicating matters are network relationships and matrix-type organizations
marked by flat or variable authority structures and collegial relationships. Intersectoral, international, intergovernmental, and inter-jurisdictional arrangements complicate matters further. Parties to proxy, third-party, or indirect administration use loans,
grants, and contracts and, like associates in public-private partnerships, share no common chief in the weblike administrative environment.
Collaborative relationships, by definition, share no single command structure, organizational culture, or compulsory or even habitual behavioral standards (Goodsell,
2004). When public opinion and participation are added to the complexity, ambiguity, and blurred accountability, we clearly see the “new” administration Woodrow
Wilson ([1887] 1987, p. 12) described more than a century ago: “There is scarcely a
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single duty of government which was once simple which is not now complex; government once had but a few masters; it now has scores of masters.”
In a collaborative setting, where misunderstandings and foul-ups are predictable,
it is helpful to put ethical standards and expectations up-front. What do we expect from
special government employees such as temporary advisers, expert consultants, or corporate, academic, church, or other members of blue ribbon commissions? Do they
know the prevailing ethical norms? Legal requirements? Is a briefing prudent or patronizing? Is financial disclosure advisable?
Does it matter whether decision makers are unpaid volunteers or part-time rather
than full-time employees? Evidence for the seriousness of the question lies in their large
number and important functions. Many state and local commissions, including landuse, ethics, and other commissions, rely on volunteer appointees, and millions of state
and local government employees work on a part-time basis. Different jurisdictions respond to the issues differently. Some are more restrictive for full-time, paid employees.
Buying In
In the present climate, contact and communication with contractors and suppliers are
especially sensitive. Much of the effort in this arena is confined to legal compliance
rather than the integrity aspect of administrative ethics. (The case ending Chapter
Four illustrates what can happen when there is a misunderstanding of public service
obligations imposed by a contractual relationship with government.)
Contracting and procurement pose special problems and temptations inside government and out. The team’s composition shifts; its objectives are shared only partially, and its coherence is marginal at best. Relationships are fluid and temporary;
alliances and allegiances may change. In this atmosphere, tough and open talk, mutual responsibilities agreed to in advance, laid-out ethical expectations, and leveraged ethics programs are among the best ways to reduce risk and sponsor ethical
behavior. This method gets all participants to buy in.
Propelled by scandal and public concern, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
took the lead in the procurement function. A commission appointed by President
Reagan in 1985 reported that relying on government regulations alone is ineffectual, and
major defense contractors responded with the Defense Industry Initiative on Business
Ethics and Conduct [DII, at http://www.dii.org], whose signatory companies are pledged
“to adopt and implement a set of principles of business ethics and conduct that acknowledge and express their federal-procurement-related corporate responsibilities to
the Department of Defense, as well as to the public, the Government, and to each other.”
Procurement fraud has been with us since the beginning of the republic. The very
first congressional investigation—a 1792 inquiry into an Indian victory over troops
serving under Major General Arthur St. Clair—was an eighteenth-century version of
Building an Ethical Agency 245

a defense procurement scandal. “Blame for the disaster was placed on the War
Department, particularly the quartermaster and supply contractors, who were accused
of mismanagement, neglect and delay” (Congressional Quarterly, 1974, p. 15).
Historically, scandals often provoke a statutory response. In 1863, Civil War scandals led to passage of the “forerunner of the principal conflict of interest law in the
federal government—18 U.S.C. Section 208” (Maskell, 1989, p. 1). Nonetheless,
some behavior seems to resist change, perhaps because the “market price” for it is so
persuasive.
New and usually more stringent procurement rules are very productive if the
gauge is “amount of legislation.” Over and above objections to more bureaucratic paperwork, arguments against tightened standards of conduct are strong: unfair constraints on using professional expertise; dissuading experts from temporary career
moves, and unwise, hermetically sealed boundaries between the public and private
sectors. However, practical experience counters with a strong case on behalf of unique
procurement taboos.
As risks multiply, so do administrative costs associated with reducing them. In a
collaborative arena, relationships tend to be temporary and fluid, and to efficiently deliver a single good or service. Under these conditions, production-oriented managers
may resist putting time and energy into ethics, of all things, when the relationship
is designed single-mindedly on a market basis: get the job done. Unless a manager is
willing to do the public’s business on a buyer-beware basis, this rejection leaves us
with armies of contract compliance officers and lawyers poring over detailed contract
specifications in a suspicion-charged atmosphere.
Supplementary Tactic
As a supplementary approach, a manager can invest in a standard game plan to build
trust, improve communication, and reduce risk. In summary, an experienced coach
can call for a half-dozen plays:
1. Assert ethical values and behavioral expectations at the beginning of a project or
relationship.
2. Articulate government or public ethical standards and their applicability to project operations and colleagues.
3. Notify and inform partners and collaborators covered by government or public
service standards.
4. Support self-governance by private sector and nonprofit participants.
5. Prepare all parties for full disclosure and accountability.
6. Broadcast the principle of inexcusable ignorance; familiarity with public service’s ethical standards is the responsibility of all parties.
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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

The need is not merely to level the playing field but to insure we play in the same
ballpark. Similar challenges and their related risks prompted President Kennedy to
propose the first codification of federal conflict-of-interest legislation (some dating to
Civil War scandals). In a message to Congress on April 27, 1961, he argued as follows:
This need to tap America’s human resources for public purposes has blurred the
distinctions between public and private life. It has led to a constant flow of people
in and out of business, academic life and government. It has required us to contract
with private institutions and call upon part-time consultants for important public
work. It has resulted in a rapid rate of turnover among career government employees. And, as a result, it has gravely multiplied the risk of conflicts of interest while
seriously complicating the problem of maintaining ethical standards.
Developing an Ethical Agency
An agency is an abstraction, a legal authority, and a set of relationships. It does not
really have moral obligations. These are reserved for individuals. Asserting an agency’s
moral responsibility actually symbolizes ethical responsibilities imposed on its members by the agency’s officers, management, statutory authority, and functional mission.
No matter how broad an ethics mandate is, its effectiveness—and the responsibility
for it—turns on individual responsibility.
A critical item on the public service agenda is building ethical organizations. This
is a symbol, too—a shorthand way of speaking about forging administrative relations,
systems, processes, procedures, and standards that fortify the ethical individual, bolster ethical reasoning, nourish ethical dialogue, and inject ethical concerns into routine operations—admittedly, a tall order. Yet an ethical organization is the core of what
we understand public service to be in democracies (Denhardt, 1993, chapter 6).
Most likely, agencies will go the route of fusion, described in the Introduction, by
taking both the compliance and integrity roads to this goal. Stopping short, at compliance only, can be detrimental (Gilman, 2004b; Joseph, 2001); neither route has
worked satisfactorily by itself. Decades ago, a report of the congressional General
Accounting Office (1981, p. 1) advised, “Agencies need to develop programs that aggressively implement standards of employee conduct and actively promote ethical
behavior.”
If we agree on the goal and route, there still remains the question of the best
vehicle: How can we move the item off the agenda and into office operations?
Abstract answers include linking personal and public ethics through organizational
practices and procedures, promoting an organizational framework to buttress ethical integrity and responsibility, supporting ethical practitioners, and sustaining ethical
Building an Ethical Agency 247

reasoning and behavior within public agencies. These are really skeletal goals that beg
to be fleshed out with concrete proposals for action. This chapter offers proposals in
three categories: (1) agency operations, (2) a model ethics audit and risk-assessment
strategies, and (3) an ethics impact statement.
Other agencies, jurisdictions, and business practices are rich sources of tested
ideas. The resulting ethics agenda draws on a mix of actual practices, as well as our
experience and imagination. The ASPA, the Association for Applied and Practical
Ethics, the Brookings Institution, and others, have sponsored dozens of public service
ethics conferences. The U.S. OGE and, for state and local ethics programs, the
COGEL, have annual meetings with hundreds of representatives in attendance.
In addition, major international meetings focusing on ethical agencies have been
sponsored by the OAS, OECD, and the World Bank. These meetings disseminate
up-to-date thinking on how to develop, institute, refine, and maintain vigorous ethical
agencies. The topics vary from effective institutional policies to organizational practices, from leadership models to analytical tools, and from effective training to meaningful ethics codes.
Some of this material is available through journals such as Public Integrity and the
Public Administration Review; other work is available on-line. The latter include PUMA
(the Public Management Group) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development on ethics and anticorruption (www.oecd.org), the World Bank Institute
or the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (Governance and Public Sector
Reform Section, www1.worldbank.org/prem) and, on international standards for evaluating effective ethics programs within countries, the OAS (http://www.oas.org).
Systematically Improving Conduct
A very first step is usually to formulate a written policy, often as an adopted code; some
of the items listed here are part of managing the code (examined in Chapter Eight).
“Although no organization can prevent isolated incidents of unethical conduct, much
can be done to systematically improve ethical conduct” (Berman, 2002, unpaginated).
Experiences with codes and with public and corporate ethics programs flag stable, ongoing attention, which works better than piecemeal or fitful approaches. This entails
an ethics program with leadership at the center.
Many studies support that top leaders are examples of moral conduct for others in
organizations. When top leaders are seen to espouse the highest values of virtue,
and are strong advocates that these values are adopted by others and incorporated
into decisions and organizational systems (such as human resource management),
then ethical conduct is readily promoted (Berman, 2002, unpaginated).
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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Senior managers’ reputations and behavior, plus their commitment to the agency’s
ethics program, are vital to its success. Most leaders believe that simply being a good
person is enough. A variety of studies suggest otherwise (Trevino, Hartman, and Brown,
2003; Office of Government Ethics, 2000, p. 10). Although rarely as cheap as the
old adage would have us believe, talk is important. Officers’ and managers’ participation in programs and signing off on communications, from office memos and house
newsletters to budgets and news releases, do play a role.
But talking commitment is not enough. Public employees are sensitive to the flow
of real resources—an expressive nonverbal cue in any organization. Staff time and
real dollars that go for training, incentives, performance, and the ethical aspects of
agency policies and practices will be used by agency staff members to meter the authenticity of the talk and the priority of public service ethics in the agency. By way
of illustration, consider the ethical content of SOPs incorporating service priorities
and distribution rules, as shown in Exhibit 10.3. By way of clarification, what do you
think is the more meaningful communication: fine words at a staff meeting or disregarded negligence and padded budget estimates? Why would colleagues and employees
think otherwise?
Building an Ethical Agency 249
EXHIBIT 10.3. HARDLY NEUTRAL.
A social service agency staffs evenings for three hourly appointment slots, each covered by two
providers as accreditation dictates. Like many such agencies, it has a waiting list filled on a firstcome, first-served basis (much like the first-in, first-out [FIFO] inventory system). But this inventory
of people and problems is highly modified by apparent urgency, client convenience, providers’ availability and capability, and service eligibility based on catchments, age, and income. The choice: who
is to be denied immediate help because the agency can’t meet all needs.
A judgment call on urgency is made by the referring institution or school, physician, parent,
custodian or guardian, and so on, with the intention of acting quickly to minimize harm to the
prospective client (who may very well not be fully responsible for his or her own actions). An agency
worker also assesses urgency and seriousness of need during an initial intake or screening. Once the
need is evaluated, consideration turns to client demand for particular time slots and types of service
in conjunction with normal working hours of agency staff and professional standards of care.
The final factor in setting service priorities is potential effectiveness; resources are too scarce
to waste. Is the problem of recent origin or of chronic duration? Acute, urgent need with positive
prospects of treatment or meaningful intervention in an agency setting get preference over those on
the waiting list. Without these extraordinary factors, clients at the head of the list get the next available time slot.
• What ethical concerns does the SOPs raise?
• Which, if any, agency SOPs do you reject on ethical grounds, and why?
• What is neglected by the agency that you believe should play a role in service provision? Why?

Ethics can be built into daily routine and expected conduct. Ethical reasoning can
be made (1) creditworthy, (2) recognized, and (3) routinely expected. How? (Let us omit
individualized tools for decision making such as the ethics responsibility statement in
Exhibit 6.5.) A baker’s dozen of feasible techniques can contribute to making ethics
a standard dimension of management, decision making, and agency operations; these
intervention techniques are laid out in Exhibit 10.4. The list converts into a training
tool when we ask ourselves to identify items most effective in our own office, items least
effective in our own office, items we intend to bring back to the office, and items we
would like our supervisor to introduce.
These proposals load another set of duties on the human resource functions
but, as a state personnel manager quipped about ethics-based tasks, “Why not? We
handle everything that people care about, even parking. Especially parking.”
The ethics agenda lands on every manager’s desk, and earnest attention is a tough,
constant demand. That managers teach subordinates by doing is hardly a trailblazing
idea, but it needs to be extended directly to the ethical aspects of behavior in the
agency. More than modeling is needed, however. Any one person and any number
of people in the agency can play in this game. At every level and in every type of unit,
there is something to be done to improve the ethical climate. The whole team can and
should participate. It is the manager’s job to see that they do. Ethics is not a spectator sport.
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EXHIBIT 10.4. INTERVENTION TECHNIQUES FOR INTEGRATING
ETHICS INTO AGENCY OPERATIONS.
1. Do both compliance and integrity training and counseling.
2. Give briefings on common ethical problems on the job for new hires.
3. Give termination briefings on potential postemployment problems.
4. Designate senior manager(s) for integrity issues, separate from compliance/investigative unit.
5. Require annual sign-off on prospective commitment and compliance.
6. Attend to ethical values and character in recruitment.
7. Integrate ethical performance into promotional exams and annual reviews; link ethical behavior to incentives.
8. Publicize positive, noteworthy role models.
9. Raise ethical concerns at meetings and through regular communication channels.
10. Train middle managers to recognize and commend subordinates’ statements about ethical concerns.
11. Review management practices and administrative routines at every level and in every type of
unit in the organization.
12. Get the whole team—all employees, all levels, all units—to participate; ethics is not a spectator
sport.
13. Give earnest attention to ethical treatment of subordinates, clients, and others.

There is no doubt that effective ethics programs can alter institutional life. In fact,
they must if they are to be effective. Many governments are creating independent ethics
offices with reporting responsibilities to the head of the agency. For example, the Ethics
in Government Act of 1978 (as amended) requires every agency head in the executive
branch of the federal government to appoint a DAEO (as described in Chapter Eight).
With responsibilities mandated by regulation, the DAEOs’ independence is protected
by OGE’s regular evaluation of their program.
Surely, integrity-based, positive ethics can be integrated into an agency’s operations. The widespread institutionalization of the merit principle over the past century
shows that we can transform the way we do everyday business. It may be a slow, frustrating process, and there is much to learn. Woodrow Wilson ([1887] 1987, p. 16)
warned over a century ago, “In government, as in virtue, the hardest of hard things is
to make progress.”
Countering Objections
Wilson also noted in a less frequently cited quote, “We go on criticizing when we ought
to be creating” ([1887] 1987, p. 16). All new ideas ignite derivative problems, and an
ethics agenda is no exception. For instance, West Virginia, “trying to recover both
morally and financially from the loss of over $200 million through the mismanagement of state investment funds” (Hall, 1989, p. 20), pronounced itself the thirtysixth state to create an independent ethics commission. The speaker of the West
Virginia House of Delegates and cosponsor of the state’s 1989 Ethics Act reviewed
objections to the legislation. His arguments (Chambers, 1989, p. v) are relevant to objections to administrative ventures.
“You can’t legislate morality” was a common refrain for those who questioned the
need for comprehensive ethics legislation. The bureaucracy of ethics regulations . . .
seemed to outweigh any benefits. To some, an ethics law was merely window dressing, unlikely to change how real public officials act except to complicate being one.
Inertia, rather than opposition, presented the greatest difficulty.
There are five major objections to agency action: (1) it substitutes ritual for responsibility; (2) ethical behavior is seen as an exception, not the rule; (3) red tape is
generated; (4) some people object to behavior modification, and (5) there is the
double-edged threat of vigilante ethics. Because we can lay the objections aside only
by meeting them, let us take each one in turn.
Ritual Substituted for Responsibility The first objection views ritualistic compliance as a poor but likely proxy for ethics. It is valid as far as it goes, but it does not go
far enough. Institutional mechanisms do endanger the broader goal by threatening to
Building an Ethical Agency 251

substitute formalistic compliance for ethical responsibility. But must they? Can we accommodate new concerns in administrative routines without trivializing fundamental
principles? The answer is, “Of course.” That is what responsive, innovative public
management is all about.
Ethical Behavior Seen as Exception The second objection is keyed to defining ethical behavior as the exception, not the rule, by rewarding managers for ethical behavior. Some managers, noses wrinkled in distaste, resist linking ethical behavior to
professional rewards or financial incentives. Unless we are willing to ignore ethics altogether, this objection undercuts the former by leaving no alternative except to make
ethical behavior routine and an ordinary habit in daily operations.
Red Tape Generated The third objection hoists the red flag of red tape—a symbol
of excessive bureaucratic routine derived from the banding once tied around legal papers and official documents in England. Regulations and procedures should be instrumental in the achievement of objectives, not valued for their own sake, and few
public practitioners are particularly fond of rules and paperwork. The compliance side
of the equation is heavily weighted toward red tape, but it also makes ethics programs
less timely, less effective, and ultimately less relevant. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala argues that an ethical organization requires
[a] culture to support those behaviors, and doesn’t punish people for taking an action you want them to take. Structures or systems need to be in place to make employees feel comfortable expressing their views . . . raising difficult issues . . .
questioning authority . . . or pushing back when necessary (Shalala, 2004, unpaginated).
A balance between compliance and values is needed for an effective agency ethics
program. This attitude does not preclude necessary or desired rules and procedures;
it takes account of assistance, guidance, values, and principles.
Federal employees already enjoy detailed standards and full-blown ethics programs with a heavy compliance slant. The OGE conducted the first executive branch
ethics survey of employees in 2000. The vast majority of federal employees reported
that they were aware of their ethics program and had a clear understanding of its objectives (U.S. Office of Government Ethics, 2000, p. 7). Further, those who had filed
financial disclosure forms and supervisors reported significantly higher awareness of
the scope and purpose of the ethics program. More than 25 percent of the respondents had asked for ethics advice in the past five years (p. 30). Employees viewed the
ethics program quite positively. Those with more frequent ethics training had
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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

“significantly more positive perceptions of an ethical culture and employee behavior,”
and the more familiar employees were with the overall ethics program, the more
likely that they would view themselves working in an ethical culture (U.S. Office of
Government Ethics, pp. 8, 42). The study (p. 44, Exhibit 44) finds a profound relationship between certain “ethical factors” (defined as including executive leadership,
rewarding ethical behavior, unethical behavior punished) and outcomes (unethical behavior observed, employees seek ethics advice, okay to deliver bad news).
Federal, state, and local managers undoubtedly and pragmatically would resist intricate, paper-laden, and immoderate proposals. Three rules of thumb let us respond
to the need without adding unduly to the administrative burden. First, ethics dos, like
ethics don’ts, should be as few as necessary and as simple as possible to do the job. Second, instead of force-feeding prototypical packages or universal remedies, ethics programs are best tailored to the administrative realities in different jurisdictions and
agencies. Despite structural and substantive similarities, program design and implementation best address agency-specific issues. The third rule of thumb identifies the internal, direct clients of agency interventions as the ethical managers and employees
who want to do the right thing. (These guidelines explain why the ethics impact statement proposed later in the chapter follows the contours of the simpler, shorter environmental assessment instead of the more rigorous environmental impact statement.)
Objection to Behavior Modification The fourth objection is to modifying behavior. It can be raised against all work routines and rules, including laws and standards
of conduct. Yes, they modify behavior; that is what they are for. Yes, some people
will spend a great deal of time figuring a way around them, and some will have to do
that in order to do their job. A case in point is how performance is adapted to its
measure; recall the old urban legend about sanitation workers watering down garbage
because their productivity was measured by tonnage.
Then again, other people will ignore the spirit in favor of rigid application, as a
case from Philadelphia reveals. This is the city portrayed as “corrupt and contented”
at the turn of the century by muckraker Lincoln Steffens ([1904] 1982). Philadelphia’s
extensive ethics code dates to 1963. A decision once issued by its commission prohibited municipal employees from being foster parents (who were defined as “contracted agents with the city”) because full-time employment meant that they could not
receive additional government payments (Potamianos, 1990).
Cases throughout this book suggest that these problems are endemic. An annual
sign-off can address them explicitly by targeting next year’s performance and future commitment; it allows everyone a good-faith promise instead of ensuring a few pointless lies.
The upshot of the most carefully crafted ethics program may not be entirely what
the public manager would want. Human imagination being what it is, some perverse
Building an Ethical Agency 253

behavior is predictable. Yet if we reject proposals until perfection is guaranteed, in effect, we reject all change.
Fear of Vigilante Ethics The fifth and final objection to agency action sees these proposals as a modern version of that sword hanging over Damocles. The threat is
double-edged. One edge cuts into productivity: more shackles on the manager are a
menace to effective public service. We have faced and overcome this problem before.
In the nineteenth-century American bureaucracy, “agencies organized to avoid evil
became that much less able to do good” (Nelson, 1982, p. 763).
The other edge is at our neck: the potential for harassment and coercion in an abstract sphere about which people disagree (Garvey, 1993). For this and other reasons,
procedural protections are crucial to an agency’s ethics program (described in Chapter Eight). Proposals that bear on personnel generally, but especially on recruitment
and promotion, provoke legitimate concern about Fourth Amendment rights and
the court-protected right of privacy. The backlash against polygraphs, reference and
credit checks, urinalyses, and blood tests invites nightmarish visions about the probable response to public agencies’ use of so-called integrity tests (honesty screening). A
variety of protections for government employees has eroded in the past thirty years,
including legal immunity.
However, certain programs such as financial disclosure, broadly criticized when
they were proposed in the 1970s, today are accepted widely. Finding for the federal
government’s right to demand financial disclosure, the court’s decision in Duplantier
v. United States argued that an individual’s privacy as a government employee is trumped
by the public’s right to know. In 1989, the Supreme Court upheld drug testing for government employees who operate hazardous equipment or carry weapons; later that
year, the court ruled that mandatory drug testing without prior labor union approval
is permitted for rail and airlines employees.
Some ideas sound good in theory but in practice are negative, obsessed with compliance, and even demoralizing. Do these threats bid managers to hold out for no
risk and then do nothing? Or can managers go ahead and rely on an ancient virtue to
minimize risk?
Need for Prudence
Managers can and should move ahead, with prudence. The success of an agency’s
ethics agenda turns on its managers’ prudence, in the age-old meaning of wisdom and
caring for the community and general good. It demands the rejection of its modern
corruption into personal expediency or self-interest.
In the Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI), Aristotle associates practical wisdom with the
statesman who is concerned with right action; others, solely concerned with right thinking, may indulge in purely abstract wisdom. Edmund Burke and others have argued
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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

that “although principles are necessary, they are not enough. They must be applied
to concrete reality by a type of practical reasoning which Burke called prudence”
(Canavan, 1963, p. 606). Prudence tempers the impeccable with the practical in order
to pursue the ideal, not simply substitute the doable. Recall that pragmatism is built
into the initial decision-making model in Chapter Two.
Public managers are, by and large, creative, judicious, and capable of conceiving
of positive, nonthreatening ways of incorporating ethics into agency procedures. In
annual reviews, for example, the criterion could be self-defined by having the employee
respond to the question, What do you do to contribute to the ethical operations or
practices in this agency? A contractual format is suitable for an annual sign-off on
prospective code commitment and compliance. Both illustrate the practical importance of both trust and oath giving (Chapters One and Two), along with personal commitment. Considering the volume of paper crossing a manager’s desk, flagging
important communication becomes an art.
A city manager offers a word of advice for prudent managers with first-rate ethics
programs. Expect mistakes. “It then becomes important to deal with them quickly and
openly. An analysis and discussion with staff on why the ethical impropriety occurred
and how to prevent such an occurrence in the future is essential” (Bonczek, 1990, p. 7).
Rules of Thumb
Rules of thumb for the prudent manager are culled from this and earlier chapters and
listed here as general guidelines for ready reference. They speak to managers’ decisions about both ethical issues and ethics in the agency (see Exhibit 10.5). Serving public managers best when combined with the fundamentals shown in Exhibit 6.2, these
rules of thumb give purpose and direction to ethical action in the agency and to agency
intervention techniques.
A Proposed Ethics Impact Statement and Process
The ethics impact statement (EthIS) we propose provides for a decision-making process
that integrates several analytic methods and tools laid out in this book. Figure 10.1
charts the steps in this process. Formally adopted (and adapted), it procedurally secures
a role for ethical analysis in agency deliberations, particularly over policies and regulations. Another application is critiquing potent SOPs in the agency, such as in Exhibit
10.3. An individual manager can apply the process informally to work through the
wrenching dilemma that seems an inevitable part of public service. The design is deliberately slanted toward process rather than outcome because the objective is to integrate systematically ethical analysis into decision making. The goal is to amplify managers’
thinking, not usurp it.
Building an Ethical Agency 255

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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 10.5. RULES OF THUMB.
The “rule of thumb” derives from English common law that permitted the head of household to beat the spouse using
a stick with a diameter no larger than the thumb. (Gender references in the original formulation are removed to meet
contemporary standards.)
1. Danger! Justifying an action in the name of a greater good or higher authority, instead of taking action for the sake of that purpose (Chapter One).
2. Disobedience is preferred to illegality; refuse an illegal directive (Chapter Two).
3. Public position may not be used for dissent as a citizen (Chapter Two).
4. Ethical public service rejects naïveté and cynicism and opts for hard-headed optimism
(Chapter Two).
5. Beware of those who wrap themselves in the common good or confidently assert future interests (Chapter Three).
6. Respect for future generations is a test for the public interest (Chapter Three).
7. Empathy is another test of commitment to the public interest (Chapter Three).
8. Use of office for personal gain for oneself or others is unethical (Chapter Three).
9. Individual responsibility is by no means identical to sole responsibility (Chapter Four).
10. A public manager’s first task is fixing the problem and only secondarily fixing the blame (Chapter Four).
11. We cannot hide behind our boss or our desk to escape responsibility (Chapter Four).
12. We cannot hide behind our subordinates (Chapter Four).
13. We cannot hide behind our ignorance (Chapter Four).
14. Ethical neutrality strips the humanity from managers and service recipients; dehumanizing the
victims denies the ethical element (Chapter Four).
15. The obligation for informed ethical reasoning falls on the individual public manager accommodation (Chapter Five).
16. Ethical judgment is best when it is self-applied (Chapter Five).
17. Ethical public service demands that public servants touch base with all ethical perspectives
(Chapter Five).
18. In public service, the search is for compatibility and balance, reconciliation and accommodation (Chapter Five).
19. Impartial open-mindedness is the first-order test of genuine empathy in public service (Chapter Five).
20. The impartial public manager is ethically driven, not ethically empty (Chapter Five).
21. Danger! Militant claims to moral superiority (Chapter Five).
22. A typical starting point for ethical decision making is accepting the minimum prescription: avoid
doing harm (Chapter Six).
23. Public service’s posture of avoiding harm leads to an obligation to correct direct or indirect
problems we create (Chapter Six).
24. Anticipate follow-through by inquiring, “Can I live with this?” (Chapter Six).
25. Apply the acid test of prospective publicity and ask what kind of person would do this and
whether you want to be and be known as that kind of person (Chapter Six).
26. Future generations are the most dependent stakeholders of all, and public officials are their only
institutional trustee (Chapter Six).
27. Ethical managers exercise reasonable selectivity among responsibilities and choose their battles
in a principled way (Chapter Seven).
28. The willingness to listen is a component of ethical decision making (Chapter Seven).

An EthIS or similar framework can help add ethical analysis to the decision maker’s
formidable inventory, customarily amassed through years of cultivating new skills and
mastering new techniques. Take inventory for a moment. Counting in dollars? Use costbenefit analysis. Accounting for nonquantifiable factors? Turn to cost-effectiveness analysis. Pull out a standardized format for fiscal notes when proposed legislation calls for
cost estimates. Develop performance and productivity measures. Apply evaluation techniques and statistical analysis. Attack the project with program evaluation and review
techniques (PERT). Today public managers must puzzle over scenarios worked up on
a spreadsheet or scrutinize once-novel variables in environmental impact statements,
risk assessments, and comparable-worth analyses. The point is, in order to assist decision making and improve decisions, each analytic skill adds new techniques, technical
tools, and some new vocabulary. Responsible for specialized knowledge that keeps accumulating, public managers, in effect, sign up for lifelong learning.
Ethical analysis is no different. It makes comparable intellectual demands. Like
the other items in the inventory, it is sound only when used soundly. An EthIS must be
properly applied, at the right time, in carefully selected situations. Perhaps there is one
major difference: it cannot be farmed out to paid consultants or outside authorities.
(Expert advice and external assistance are appropriate in the fact-finding and analytic
stages.) The process is dynamic, consultative, participatory, and cooperative (versus
adversarial). But it is not perfunctory. Ethics involves individual responsibility for moral
Building an Ethical Agency 257
29. Where to draw the line? The more unethical one judges a behavior, the less likely one will practice it or tolerate others’ doing it (Chapter Seven).
30. Ethics is not a toggle switch. Ethical managers exercise reasonable selectivity among responsibilities (Chapter Six) and choose their battles in a principled way (Chapter Seven).
31. Danger! The slippery slope and losing the capacity to make moral judgments or act on them
(Chapter Seven).
32. Ethical managers and employees are the internal, direct clients of agency intervention (Chapter Eight).
33. Many employees look to ethics rules as a basic moral compass, but everyone should understand
that rules are only the beginning of ethical responsibility (Chapter Eight).
34. A public manager’s primary ethical concern is behavior toward other people (Chapter Ten).
35. In a diversifying workforce, some behaviors need rethinking; others need full-scale remodeling (Chapter Ten).
36. In a collaborative setting, put ethical issues and standards on the table, right up front (Chapter Ten).
37. Ethics dos, like ethics don’ts, should be as few as necessary and as simple as possible to do the
job (Chapter Ten).
38. Tailor operations to specific administrative realities (Chapter Ten).
39. A responsible manager seeks to minimize opportunities and temptation and encourage integrity,
both individual and institutional (Chapter Ten).
40. Your rule of thumb: _________________________________________________________

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The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 10.1. ETHICS IMPACT STATEMENT AND PROCESS.
1. Feasibility stage
(go/no go)
planning/predecision
Categorical/reasonable exclusion
Prepare EthiS
Stop
Stop
2. Scoping
3. Tiering
4. Fact finding
5. Analysis
6. Recommendations
7. Sign EthiS
responsibility by
decision maker(s)
Use precedent and General category
make decision
Lead
Problem is new, broad,
cumulative, or time bound
Gather multidisciplinary data
Solicit participation, public
review, and comment
Identify and assess alternatives and
probable impacts
Identify and assess factual controversies
and information problems
Identify and assess ethical values, principles,
responsibilities, and obligations at stake
For action
For mitigation, relief, or compensation
Statement of ethical principles, values,
and decision-making method
Assess appearance of alternatives
Ensure cooperative consultation
among affected parties, agencies,
and jurisdictions

judgments and choices. The last step in the process, signing the EthIS, is not a hollow symbol; it is a critical component of the seven-step process. Ethics responsibilities
cannot be delegated, bought, or temporarily rented.
For efficiency’s sake and to minimize the administrative burden and paperwork,
the EthIS is patterned after the environmental impact assessment. It is a shorter, simpler, streamlined version of a formal environmental impact statement. The acronym
EthIS distinguishes the process from its environmental kin, developed by the Council
on Environmental Quality in 1987. Situated in the Executive Office of the President,
the council issued regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy
Act—the underlying charter for environmental protection nationally. Many recommendations that follow are adaptations of these regulations (40 CFR 1500–1508).
Step 1: Determining Feasibility
Timing Because the objective is ethical action, not after-the-fact justification, the EthIS
process begins in planning, when a proposal’s initial feasibility is appraised and before
a decision is made.
Exclusion Answers to Rion’s questions in Chapter Six—Why is this bothering me?
and Is it my problem?—when asked at the agency level, may mean that no ethics
impact statement is needed. Proposals with no significant ethical facets, either individually or cumulatively, may be excluded categorically. Note, however, that an ethical dimension permeates all significant decisions. Because ethics for public managers
is linked to behavior, proposed agency actions that will not practically be affected by
EthIS (for example, a legal mandate) or emergency responses in which delay constitutes a decision (crisis management) may be reasonably excluded. Yet an EthIS on otherwise reasonably excluded actions may yield ideas for corrective action or statutory
change (activating the inventive resolution from Chapter Six).
Step 2: Scoping
A decision to prepare an EthIS initiates scoping: “an early and open process for determining the scope of issues to be addressed and for identifying the significant issues related
to a proposed action” (40 CFR 1501.7). Scope refers to “the range of actions, alternatives,
and impacts to be considered” (1508.25). A pilot diagnosis exercises selectivity again
and sets boundaries. That can be accomplished by asking Rion’s question—“What is the
ethical concern?—and responding in terms of Cooper’s formulation of obligation as
responsibility for and accountability as responsibility to. The diagnosis is used to identify
and eliminate insignificant elements. Relevant criteria in scoping include severity of effects, controversy and uncertainties, and gravity of values and principles at stake.
Building an Ethical Agency 259

At this point, a lead senior manager is designated, appropriate staff members
are assigned, and a reporting date is set. A team may include a low-level line manager
for purposes of responsibility and effectiveness. “The person performing the task is in
an ideal position to assess the outcomes of the action in terms of human impact”
(Denhardt, 1988, p. 147).
Step 3: Tiering
The lead manager satisfies a core value in public service—efficiency—by forestalling
repetition. Where appropriate, the manager folds the proposal into an umbrella category keyed to general ethical (as opposed to legal or pragmatic) criteria and makes
the decision by using precedent and logic. This potential shortcut also checks for consistency. The EthIS process proceeds only with new, broad, or cumulative factors or
when a review is suitable. Note that past decisions may be time-bound. As a check
on obsolescence, the manager can consider revisiting dated decisions.
Step 4: Fact Finding
Many decision-making models begin with getting the facts, getting them all, and getting them straight. Realistically, there are informational limits that are best set by preliminary stakeholder analysis (see Chapter Seven). However, inexcusable ignorance
scuttles the whole EthIS process (Exhibit 4.4 poses general but critical questions about
information). It is imperative to identify legal obligations and mandates; Chapter Four
raises three questions about the legal context so critical to public service.
Because a wide sweep in fact finding helps minimize bias, error, and omission in the
analytic stage, the process calls for multidisciplinary data. An inclusive sweep covers four
categories of information about facts and values: objective, subjective, quantitative, and
qualitative. Expert opinion and advice are solicited at this step and the next. Preliminary
stakeholder analysis is crucial to designing meaningful participation and consultation.
At some point, too much information complicates matters instead of clarifying
them. “[A]rriving at ethical decisions requires a greater tolerance for ambiguity than
does arriving at decisions based on empirical evidence alone” (Denhardt, 1988, p. 120).
When to stop collecting facts and to proceed to the next step is a decision critical to
the process.
Step 5: Analyzing
The EthIS team selects an ethical analytic framework at this stage (criteria underlying
selection are discussed in Chapter Six). A truly momentous issue or having no team
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consensus calls for the application of either several frameworks or one framework that
combines different ethical perspectives (see the checklist in Exhibit 6.1). Possible
analytic techniques include one or more of the following: identifying values or principles at risk (Figure 1.1 and Exhibit 1.6); assessing and ranking responsibilities by rigor,
perhaps using the tools discussed in Chapter Six; and using the stakeholder diagnostic presented in Exhibit 7.1. Note that information standards in Exhibit 4.4 entail disclosure of all major opinions, points of controversy, and incomplete or unavailable
information.
In this stage, substance is assessed and so is appearance. The latter’s separate entry
in Figure 10.1 symbolizes its eminence in public service, not its analytic isolation from
the assessment of alternatives and probable effects.
Step 6: Making Recommendations
Once obligations, effects, principles, and values have been sorted out and selected in
Step 5, the EthIS now recommends an action or decision. The go/no-go decision
model in Chapter Two honors legal and pragmatic boundaries in ethical decision making. In a true dilemma, the fundamental obligation to serve the public interest implies
reconciliation where possible (see Chapters Three and Five). As a result, the team successively corrects and modifies proposals. In this context, a rigorous obligation to avoid
doing harm implies that the team’s goal is to minimize harm and reduce any adverse
impact on values, principles, or stakeholders (see Chapter Six). The end result is that
the decision maker (or makers) identifies the public interest by proposing an action,
discloses the decision-making method, and recommends action triggered by the proposal that he or she considers obligatory.
As for the document, its general style and overall format are best when concise
rather than wordy and in clear prose—plain language that is comprehensible to the
general public.
Step 7: Taking Responsibility
The importance of taking responsibility for a decision has already been discussed in
Chapters Four and Six. The format for the ethics responsibility statement to be signed
by the EthIS team members and the agency head can be adapted from the model statement shown in Exhibit 6.6 or a similar declaration. A simple statement might read, “I
certify that the attached policy, regulation, or procedure is recommended after due
consideration of its ethical dimensions.”
There remain, of course, the implementation and evaluation processes once the
decision is made.
Building an Ethical Agency 261

Pros and Cons of Ethics Impact Statements
The EthIS and similar instruments promise advantages not too different from evaluation assessments (Wholey, 1983, p. 103; Fischer, 1995, pp. 27–41). The list is tempting: assist in setting priorities and realistic objectives, identify early on the problems
and needed corrections in policy or regulation, pinpoint unsettled issues and unanticipated effects for legislative proposals or executive decision, and inform decision
makers and the public.
As an action-forcing device, an ethics impact statement can contribute to resolving
disputes quickly and fairly, which is one of the stated goals of environmental impact
statements (40 CFR 1501.1[c]). The EthIS process, like its parent model, has the paradoxical potential for accomplishing just the opposite. As a disclosure instrument, it could
freeze action by increasing political opposition over newly clarified controversies and
stakes. Even with subdued enthusiasm, one can still admit that an ethics impact statement reserves a role and formalizes a process for ethical analysis. At minimum, it is an
advocacy device and learning tool for ethical reasoning and ethical decision making
in the agency.
Other Useful Tools
More modest, usually noninstitutional, frameworks for probing public policy’s ethical
aspects have been and are now being developed for those “unperceived angles and forgotten dimensions” (Fischer, 1983, p. 32). Recently, the OECD began a massive evaluation of assessment strategies of ethics programs around the world (Gilman, 2004).
Managers may prefer to insert an examination of the normative elements of operating procedures, policy, and other decisions into evaluation techniques already in place.
Conducting Agency Ethics Audits
The agenda outlined in this chapter is double-pronged. A jurisdiction’s or agency’s
ethics program realistically cannot be divorced from compliance issues. Legally enforceable standards and controls play an important part in establishing a fair, productive, and supportive workplace. Complying with agency procedures and obeying
rules are important. But an agency’s ethics program need not and should not focus exclusively on the adequacy of and compliance with internal controls and legal prohibitions. It can also target ethical reasoning and behavior and their role in the
organization by expanding workaday priorities to managers’ receptivity to ethical considerations and the scope for ethical deliberation in the agency. The aim is to move on
both fronts, in line with the fusion route discussed in the Introduction.
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Before we agree on what needs to be done, it makes sense to evaluate current practice, problems, and potential. A practical, accessible tool is necessary for assessing
the agency as an ethical environment. Model ethics assessment tools designed to
profile the agency’s strengths and deficiencies and produce an action agenda are available on-line from the ERC, INDEPENDENT SECTOR, OECD, and others (see Resource
B, Exhibit 9.3, and Berman, 2002). They function somewhat like an audit manual in
less regulated jurisdictions and more informal agencies. The word model is aimed at
encouraging adaptation to each agency’s peculiarities.
The OGE’s Agency Ethics Program Questionnaire is another useful resource.
Federal agencies are required by the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, as amended,
to submit an annual report to OGE on their ethics programs. Given the federal executive branch’s elaborate standards of conduct, formal ethics offices and systems, and
control mechanisms and audit procedures, other assessment or audit tools the model
audit necessarily serve in federal offices as a diagnostic tool or vulnerability checklist.
An audit absorbs managers’ time and energy, along with staff resources. Even allowing that any operation can be improved, no manager can do it all, all at once. Some
realistic selectivity is needed. A quick overview can give a reading on urgency and criticality, which can be done using the mapping diagnostic in Figure 1.6. A serious mismatch between preference and practice could move the full-fledged assessment to a
high priority on a manager’s agenda.
A cautionary note is in order here. At a hearing on Housing and Urban Development a U.S. senator asked, “What’s the thermometer that you inject into an agency
to get an immediate readout of the health of that agency?” The then-chairman of the
President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency answered, “Well, unfortunately, I don’t
think the level of the technology is at the level of the thermometer. It’s more the hand
to the brow that maybe your mother did to establish whether or not you have a fever.
So it’s not a perfect instrument” (U.S. Senate, 1990).
Assessing Job Risk
Job vulnerability assessment is a related method limited to identifying potential snags
or staff that needs special assistance. A form of risk assessment, it concentrates on compliance, detection, and enforcement. For fraud or other abuses, “[a]n initial step is
learning to recognize indicators of the presence of fraud or of the potential for it”
(U.S. Department of Defense, 1984, preface).
The GAO analyzed fraud cases from 1976 to 1979 and found that federal employees were responsible for 29 percent of the attributable cases (General Accounting
Office, 1981, p. 1). Using a Delphi technique to pool expert judgments and statistical
techniques to analyze responses, the GAO identified fifty-two factors affecting relative
job exposure. The GAO’s method is not meant to predict the behavior of individual
Building an Ethical Agency 263

incumbents but to play the odds on certain jobs. It rests on a proportional relationship
between problems and opportunities, all else held constant (p. 10). For example, the
position of food inspector ranked high on relative vulnerability among the jobs selected for evaluation. A poor “integrity record” (reported misconduct) or reputation
did not appear to influence rankings in a test evaluation; the second-highest exposure was awarded another position with “an excellent integrity record” (p. 1l).
Isolation and discretion are defining characteristics for the food inspector’s job. If
the manager’s objective is to minimize temptation and opportunity among line employees assigned off-site discretionary leverage, then the implication of the GAO’s
study is that preventive action (subject to position count and budget constraints) calls
for teaming employees and rotating frequently among partners and sites.
Assuming that ingenuity outpaces detection, analysis necessarily lags behind novel
abuses. This is true, for example, in the area of information technology and security,
procurement, and more (President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, 2003, p. 21).
If one suspects that white-collar crime is especially ingenious and therefore undetected to some degree, then the fact that recurring abuses are pedestrian comes as
no surprise. Some traditions are honored, even in the face of vigorous enforcement
efforts. Typical patterns and related examples include police selling protection; case
fixing; contract bid rigging and kickbacks; regulatory crimes involving building and
utility inspectors, licensing, and land use; judicial conflicts of interest; election crimes,
including ballot and campaign finance fraud; narcotics-related abuses, such as firearms
violations, and graft of all kinds.
Dealing with Temptation
Some local governments prove that America is still the land of opportunity. No stranger
to corruption, cities provoked the reform movement of the Progressive Era at the turn
of the century and its literary genre, muckraking. Old-time, big-city machine politics is
associated with corruption for good reason. George W. Plunkitt of New York’s former
Tammany machine bestowed upon us the standard specimen of conflict of interest:
Everybody is talkin’ these days about Tammany men growin’ rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft.
There’s all the distinction in the world between the two. There’s an honest graft,
and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I
seen my opportunities and I took ‘em” (quoted in Riordan, 1974, p. 7).
In his celebrated autobiography, Lincoln Steffens wrote of corruption in Los
Angeles’s early days. Seemingly foreseeing the contemporary scene, Steffens argued
that “society really offers a prize for evil-doing: money, position, power.” He concluded
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that the fault lies not so much with Adam, Eve, or even the serpent. “Now I come and
I am trying to show you that it was, it is the apple” ([1931] 1974, p. 289).
Big-city government is big business, and that offers a chance for big but illbegotten prizes. (Just think of the opportunities in economic development alone.) From
the business front, Laura Nash (1990, p. 3) prescribes “facing up to fallibility. When
you couple the undeniable pervasiveness of human fallibility with the age-old temptations of money and power, the need for a deliberate exploration of the moral challenges of management becomes clear.”
Responsible managers try to reduce temptation through routine procedures and
controls. Concerned with creating a supportive environment for compliance but also
for ethical behavior, a manager seeks to minimize opportunities and temptations and to encourage
integrity, both personal and institutional. This managerial responsibility of prevention applies to government no less than to nonprofit or other components of public service.
High-risk, vulnerable areas identified with incipient problems can be targeted for preventive action across dozens of federal agencies.
The many steps along the Introduction’s fusion road to a supportive ethical environment partly follow a paper trail. As Paul Appleby (1951, p. 169) rightfully pointed
out, “The bureaucratic substructure and its red tape often provide the bulwark of
agency conscience.” Although bureaucracy has become a much-maligned word, in many
ways good public management is an essential foundation of modern democracies. While
modeling ethical behavior in public service and mentoring newer recruits to the agency,
senior professional public managers often also find themselves in the awkward position
of managing “up”—and managing “out,” that is, tutoring those with whom the agency
has working or collaborative relationships and others who exercise oversight over
the agency.
Many newly appointed political officials are unaware of the ethical demands of
their jobs because they mistakenly assume that ethical standards are the same in all
environments. Legislators as well as recruits from the private sector may find out the
hard way that this is not true. They may learn this lesson not because they are unethical but because no one has communicated to them the special values and norms
of the public sector and the public’s expectations that these will be met scrupulously.
This chapter identifies critical tools that can be used to focus the ethical use of power
in public agencies. It also provides some ways of understanding how good ethics
regimes can help public servants do the right thing the right way. Those who exercise political power may be tempted to confuse ends and means by thinking, for example, “So what if we short-cut the procurement process, as long as the project comes
in on time?” The result not only can damage their careers or land them in jail but it
can have a profound effect on the agency: budget cuts, weakened morale, difficulty
in hiring new staff, or immobility that translates into failing to meet critical policy
objectives.
Building an Ethical Agency 265

As guardians of the ethical integrity of their organizations, professional public
managers breathe life into ideas such as “accountability” and “responsiveness” by
facilitating the political agenda and policy initiatives of duly elected leaders. This is
part of what it means to be good public servants. And another part? Grasping their
moral compass, holding firm to personal integrity, and nourishing the ethical agency.
Case: Fair Play or Foul at the U.S. Olympic Committee?
The Olympic Athletes’ Oath (dating to Antwerp Games, 1920): “In the name of
all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams.”
The Olympic Creed (recited by host country’s judge): “The most important thing
in the Olympic games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important
thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to
have conquered, but to have fought well.”
The worldwide Olympic movement, begun in the late nineteenth century, embodies
the ideals of fair and open competition as well as cultural understanding. The declared
mission of its recognized U.S. agency—the United States Olympic Committee
(USOC)—is to promote the Olympic ideal, support sports, and inspire Americans.
Yet in 2003, the USOC was embroiled in an extraordinary ethics controversy that led
to the removal or resignation of several of its officials and a reorganization all but directed by a U.S. Senate committee.
The USOC is a nonprofit agency relying on volunteers and donations and, like
many such organizations, has a somewhat cumbersome governance structure. (See
sources on nonprofits in Resource B, Part 8.) Its board, made up of more than a hundred volunteers and run by an executive committee, elects a volunteer president
and hires a chief executive officer to manage the professional staff. By 2001, the organization had had three CEOs in two years. The first resigned under an ethics cloud.
The second was forced to resign shortly after taking the position when it was discovered that she had lied on her résumé.
In 2000, the board had created an ethics officer position and hired an experienced
corporate ethics officer, Pat Rogers, to take the job. To support Rogers in his role, a
group of ethics luminaries (including a former chief of staff to the president of the
United States, the former head of the federal Office of Government Ethics, and the executive director of the Ethics Officers Association) were appointed to the USOC’s Ethics
Oversight Committee. Everything seemed to be in place to build a solid ethical foundation for the USOC.
After an extensive search, the board selected a new CEO who had a corporate
background, Lloyd Ward. Among his major responsibilities was stewardship of the
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millions of dollars that the USOC received from private donations and the government;
this money would be supplemented significantly by the upcoming winter games in
Salt Lake City. Generally, Ward was to move the USOC out of the negative spotlight
that had been turned on the organization during the past several years.
The precipitating event was a letter of introduction on behalf of a friend to senior
officials in the Dominican Republic, a potential host of the Pan Am Games. Ward introduced his childhood friend, whose company he urged the Dominicans select to
provide back-up electrical services for the games, and indicated that he deemed this
choice necessary before confirming the selection of the Dominican Republic as host.
In the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that the friend’s company was new
and that he had no experience in providing these services.
In a subsequent conversation with these officials, the friend offered a kickback if
his company was selected. The Dominican officials refused and ordered him out of
their office. He did not know that they had recorded the entire conversation. The tape
was sent to the USOC’s president and was later released to the press and the Department of Justice for a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.1 Although
the USOC’s president vigorously denied releasing information, the executive committee ultimately forced her to resign. At the same time, Rogers was asked to investigate the allegations and report to the Ethics Oversight Committee.
There was concern among some on the ethics committee that an investigation
would further tarnish the USOC’s reputation. Much of the committee’s internal deliberations focused on the question of how to balance a report that, at the same time,
voiced members’ concerns. Over Rogers’s objection, the committee resolved to focus
on the appearance of a conflict of interest.
According to informed sources, the executive committee of the USOC invited
all ethics committee members to attend a meeting. However, before this could occur,
the ethics committee chairman, via conference call, had the ethics committee by majority vote commit to the following: (1) no one would attend the meeting, (2) no one
would respond to any questions, and (3) no one would make any recommendations.
Given this, the executive committee voted to accept the report and take no action. As
a result, Rogers, three members of the ethics committee, and one member of the
executive committee resigned. Subsequently, the ethics committee chairman stated
that Rogers seemed “out to get” Ward—no matter what—and vehemently denied
Rogers’s countercharge that the chairman’s directions to him was “make this go away.”
This resulted in considerable congressional interest because the federal government had given millions of dollars in cash and in-kind donations to the USOC, which
had been incorporated by an act of Congress in 1950. There were several unsuccessful attempts by the executive committee to head off congressional involvement by announcing “major changes” and “internal reorganization.” By that time, Senators
Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colorado), John McCain (R-Arizona), and Ted Stevens
(R-Alaska) had entered the fray by arguing that the USOC was involved in a cover-up
and illicit activities. They held hearings where the senior USOC leadership looked at least
inept, if not corrupt. On March 1, 2003, CEO Lloyd Ward resigned. After additional
Building an Ethical Agency 267

accusations of misuse of funds and improper activities by Ward, the Senate forced the
resignations of the USOC’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer. The U.S.
Senate appointed a commission to make recommendations on how to reorganize the
USOC, and may dictate a new governance structure through legislation.
◆◆◆
Discussion Questions
1. What are the ethics principles and values involved here?
2. The USOC seemed to be doing the “right thing” by putting in place a new CEO,
an ethics officer, and an ethics committee. Where did it go wrong? Or did it?
3. Was there anything wrong with Ward (the CEO) providing a letter of introduction? Did he do anything improper? What criteria do you use here?
4. Did the CEO’s friend do anything improper? Would your answer be different to
question 3 if the friend’s company had had experience in this area?
5. Did the Ethics Oversight Committee operate effectively? What standards should
be applied in evaluating its performance?
6. Was the issue for the committee in fact striking a balance between confronting
ethics breaches and doing damage to the organization? If you were sitting on
the 9ethics committee, how would you frame the problem, and why?
7. Should Congress weigh in so heavily in reorganizing what is, after all, a nonprofit
organization? Why? Does operating in a political environment change the ethical
principles and values at play?
8. Is a prominent nonprofit organization such as the USOC obliged to serve the public interest? To maintain impartiality? And to appear to do both? Why?
◆◆◆
Note
1. The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials for business purposes and includes substantial criminal penalties for firms and individuals. For details, see www.lectlaw.com/files/bur21.htm.
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269
AFTERWORD
The Job Ahead
Afew indelible words summarize the many values, diverse responsibilities, and anticipated trajectory of ethical public service. The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It is a testament to the wisdom of those who founded this republic that public servants swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to their boss, to the government, or even the mayor or president. And it is clear from the preamble that their
responsibility is to the people, now and in the future.
Those same writers of the Constitution also understood the threat to liberty of
unrestrained public power. “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions” (Federalist no. 51).
For that reason, Juvenal’s renowned question from the second century, Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes? or “Who guards the guardians?” is a permanent fixture in American public service. The question begets innumerable answers: oversight and watchdog agencies, internal controls, grand juries and congressional investigations, the
courts, criminal statutes, and enforced standards of conduct. Yet rules and regulations
alone are inadequate guarantees of ethical behavior.
Y

Institutions are important to public integrity, but the character of public servants
is critical. Excellent public service and good government rely first and foremost on
good people with the character, vision, and courage to do the right thing. Drawing on
their skills at moral reasoning (Chapter Six) and their devotion to the public interest
(Chapter Three), public managers have an ethical responsibility to help define what
the right thing is. T. S. Eliot warns us in Murder in the Cathedral, “The last temptation
is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” We also must beware of doing the right thing the wrong way and of confounding ends and means.
By oath, office, and profession, public managers voluntarily commit themselves
to thoughtful, ethical action. President Theodore Roosevelt summed up the point that
technical expertise alone is not up to the task: “To educate a man in mind, and not
in morals, is to educate a menace to society.”
Good counsel advises us to consent to a lifelong commitment and to anticipate
change as experience and cognitive development move us to different places, different
spaces (as Chapter Five explains). In this spirit, and to stress the inspirational role of
mentor, model, or exemplar (the journal Public Integrity publishes a feature on exemplars) in order that we accept the role for ourselves, we offer Exhibit A.1.
To help set the stage, we turn to an age-old practice in ethics: telling a parable.
This little story is about a new public manager. On his first day on the job, the new
manager discovered on his desk three envelopes, left by the manager he was replacing. She had numbered the envelopes 1, 2, and 3 and marked each: “Advice. Open
only in case of crisis.”
The new manager faced his first crisis about six months later. The public was
furious over the proposed tax increase. He opened the first envelope to read: “Call a
press conference and blame me.” He decided to follow her advice.
Within a year, the next crisis arose. This one was over the site of a low-security
correctional facility. He opened the second envelope: “Blame chance events beyond
your control.” Again, he followed her advice.
When the third crisis came along, the manager opened the third and last envelope. Her advice: “Resign, and prepare three envelopes.”
This little scenario emphasizes taking responsibility and shows that it cannot—
and should not—be avoided in ethics or in public service.
Ethics in public service is a perpetual responsibility to implement and comply with
the law, to serve the public interest, to avoid doing harm, to hold the future in stewardship, and to accommodate clashing definitions of what is right and important in
public life.
The job ahead is no more and no less. From here we meet the ethics challenge
in public service in the twenty-first century.
270 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Afterword 271
EXHIBIT A.1. VALUES AND VISION FOR
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.
To avoid losing sight of ethical values and principles even under crisis but especially in the press of
humdrum routines, identify long-term guidelines for yourself. Using about a half-dozen virtues you
prize, write yourself a memorandum describing yourself as you are now and the kind of person you
wish to be after the next election or promotion.
To: My future self
From: Myself, a person of moral character
Subject: Personal integrity
Focal virtues I want to
Retain Gain
The central principles and duties I want to guide my official actions include
I want to be like and be known as someone like (select role model and explain choice)
For inspiration, write yourself a two- or three-sentence vision statement reflecting these statements.
What will propel you to the office and drive your best efforts?
Print your name and the date five years from now on an envelope. Put this inside and seal.
Open on date indicated and re-examine your memorandum.

272
RESOURCE A
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied
Ethics in Public Service (Work in Process)1
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
T. S. ELIOT, NOBEL LAUREATE (FOUR QUARTERS, “LITTLE GIDDING”)
Key to Entry Classifications
Publications other than works of philosophy [A]
Corruption [C]
Human rights [H]
International or multinational initiative or agreement [I]
Laws and codes [L]
Media [M]
Philosophy [P]
Religion [R]
c. 19th century B.C. Life of Abraham, biblical patriarch, whose halt (credited
to divine intervention) to the sacrifice of his son Isaac
teaches prohibition against human sacrifice. [R] [H]
18th century B.C. Collection of laws and edicts of Hammurabi, King of
Babylonia, as earliest complete known legal code;
known as the Code of Hammurabi; sets forth in
cuneiform legal procedure and penalties for unjust accusations, false testimony, judicial injustice, and other rules
with the goals of “stable government and good rule”
and that “the strong may not oppress the weak.” [H] [L]
Y

13th century B.C. Prescriptions and proscriptions collectively known as the
Ten Commandments (two biblical versions, in Exodus
20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21); date to the Israelites’
exodus from slavery during the reign of Egyptian
Pharaoh Ramses II (19th dynasty); include prohibitions
against idolatry, profanity, murder, theft, adultery, false
witness, and covetousness; exodus led by Moses—Hebrew prophet and lawgiver. [R] [L]
c. 1200 B.C. Introduction of Hinduism into ancient India; dharma
refers to religious and moral precepts governing personal
and social behavior and supports hierarchical (caste) social system based on karma, which determines status in
cycle of reincarnation. [R]
c. 604–521 B.C. Purported life of Chinese philosopher Lao-tze (Old Master), credited with authoring the Tao Te Chin (Classic of the
Way of Virtue) and founding Taoism (The Way), which
stresses acceptance and harmony with universe (“Be still
like a mountain and flow like a great river”), development
of virtue (notably the Three Jewels of compassion, moderation, and humility); China’s state religion in 440–1911;
whether actual historical figure is contested. [R]
563–483 B.C. Life of Siddhartha Gautama, later called Buddha (Enlightened One), founder of Buddhism, whose core teachings include Four Noble Truths about suffering and the
nature of human existence; Noble Eightfold Path (e.g., right
thought, intent, action, contemplation); individual accountability through karma or intention for acts, their consequences, and operation of moral law; ultimate goal of
nirvana, associated with compassion and equanimity. [R]
c. 551–479 B.C. Life of Confucius, Chinese philosopher during Chou dynasty; teacher, magistrate, and provincial justice commissioner; teachings stress devotion to classical learning,
parents, and rulers’ moral excellence; disciples compile
his philosophy that emphasizes virtues (e.g., being humane) and propriety. [R]
c. 500 B.C. Principles of Art of War, attributed to Chinese General Sun
Tzu; includes “All warfare is based on deception” (chapter 1), preference for strategy over battle, and recognition
of costs of war. [A]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 273

c. 496–406 B.C. Life of Sophocles, author of Antigone, classic statement of
difference and possible conflict between ethics and law. [P]
c. 460–377 B.C. Life of Greek physician Hippocrates, formulater of Hippocratic Oath—a statement of physicians’ professional
and moral duties, including patient confidentiality; “Into
whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act
of mischief and corruption.” [L]
c. 410–399 B.C. Codification of Athenian law. [L]
c. 399 B.C. Sentencing of philosopher and teacher Socrates, found
guilty of charges of impiety and guiding Athenian youth
to filial irreverence, to die by drinking poison hemlock. [P]
c. 428–347 B.C. Life of Plato, Greek philosopher, whose dialogues, including The Republic, The Statesman, and The Laws, address
political questions of good government, right conduct,
and justice. [P]
384–322 B.C. Life of Aristotle, Greek philosopher, founder of formal
study of logic, and author of Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, which argues that a political life develops the practical virtues, that proper goal of law is human welfare, and
moderation is a virtue (golden mean). [P]
335–263 B.C. Life of Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism, which argues all faculties in a unified soul are rational and passions are errors of judgment; influence on Plato. [P]
c. 0 Sermon on the Mount: collection of Jesus’ religious and
moral teachings (the Holy Bible, Matthew 5–7); includes
mercy, peace, righteousness, forgiveness, and love. [R]
354–430 Life of Augustine, theologian and author of The City of
God, argues that political authority restrains wickedness
rather than promotes virtue. [P] [R]
570–632 Life of Mohammed (or Muhammad), to whom Muslims
believe the holy book of Islam, the Qur’an (Koran), was
revealed; teachings of moral, ethical, legal, and social
conduct, submission to God, and individual responsibility
for moral life and accountability at final judgment. [R]
1135–1204 Life of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Latin, Maimonides; referred to by acronym Rambam), born in Spain, court
physician in Egypt, author of Jewish legal commentary
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and code; major philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed, combines Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish theory of law and ethical conduct. [P] [R]
1215 Signing of Magna Carta (Great Charter) by King John at
Runnymede under threat of civil war; a source of basic
principles in English law, including Clause 39, which prohibits arrest and imprisonment “except by the lawful
judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” Clause
40 prohibits bribery: “To no one will we sell, to no one
will we refuse or delay right or justice”; annulled by papal
bull after two months but reissued in modified form in
1217 and 1225; underwent minor changes in 1297. [L]
1224–1274 Life of Thomas Aquinas, Dominican priest, theologian,
teacher, author of Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologiae; strongly influenced by Aristotle, whom he reintroduces to Western thought; provides systematic treatment
of what evolves into “just war” theory. [P] [R]
1469–1527 Life of Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine during Italian
Renaissance, government official and author of Discourses
on Titus Livy and The Prince, his best-known work, which
offers largely secular perspective on political rule. [P]
1651 Publication of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), English philosopher and royalist supporter
who used reason (rather than authority) to argue on behalf of absolute sovereignty and drew on the concept of
social contract among self-interested human beings. [P]
1620 Signing of the Mayflower Compact, which pledges to
adopt laws for the public good (“most meete and convenient for the Generall Good of the Colonie”). [L]
1670 Publication of Theologico-Political Treatise, major work of
political philosophy endorsing democracy by Baruch
Spinoza (1632–1677), author of the posthumously published Ethics. [P]
1689 Publication of Two Treatises of Government and other works
by John Locke (1632–1704), English political philosopher associated with moral and political individualism
and distinction between private and public realms, the
latter to secure peace and security for private pursuits in
civil society based on voluntary consent. [P]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 275

1712–1778 Life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who writes that “Man is
born free, and everywhere in chains” (Social Contract) and
argues that civil and political obligations cannot be based
on natural law but rather through social contract, without
which human beings are neither free nor moral; critical
of John Locke and inspiration for Immanuel Kant. [P]
1734 Acquittal of John Peter Zengler, editor and printer of New
York Weekly Journal, on charge of seditious libel; popularly
credited with establishing freedom of the press in U.S. [M]
1739 Publication of A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
(1711–1776), Scottish philosopher and historian, author
of The History of England (vol. 1, 1754); provides critique
of moral rationalism. [P]
1759 Publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Scottish
philosopher, teacher, and government official, Adam Smith
(1723–1790), which draws on the notions of empathy, impartial spectator, and moral imagination that would heavily
influence subsequent political philosophy and ethics;
Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations (1776) argues on behalf of liberal, commercial society and complementary virtue, liberty, and prosperity. [P]
1773 Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, first legislation positing freedom of conscience as fundamental right; passed by
Virginia State Legislature in 1785. [H ] [L]
1776 Signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4;
this explanation for revolution is a formal statement of
core values of nascent American political system. [L]
1784 Publication of the first successful daily newspaper, Pennsylvania Packet & General Advertiser; sets stage for media’s
watchdog role. [M]
1785 Publication of Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by
Prussian moral and political philosopher of European Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, who espouses republican
government, peace through international organization
and law, unconditional human freedom and dignity, and
deontological principle of categorical imperative; author
of Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason
(1788), Critique of Judgment (1790), and other works. [P]
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1787 Convening of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia. [L]
1787–1789 Publication of The Federalist Papers, supporting ratification
of new U.S. Constitution (antifederalist counterarguments included); Federalist 51 argues for “necessity of
auxiliary precautions” (“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”); 57 states, “The aim of every
political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for
rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and
most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society;
and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to
hold their public trust.” [L]
1789 Publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation (“The Public Good ought to be the object of
the legislator; General Utility ought to be the foundation
of his reasonings”) by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832),
English philosopher espousing utilitarian principle by
which actions are judged by their effects on community
members’ happiness. [P]
1789 Establishment of U.S. Treasury Department as first domestic federal agency, with prohibition against conflict of
interest and financial reward for whistle-blowers. [L]
1790 Signing, by Benjamin Franklin (1707–1790), as president
of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, a petition to U.S.
Congress urging abolition of slavery and slave trade;
suggests that virtues and ethics must be practiced, not
just learned by rote. [H]
1791 Ratification, on December 15, of the Bill of Rights—ten
original amendments to the U.S. Constitution. [L] [H]
1791 Accusation of Henry Knox, U.S. Secretary of War, of illegal land speculation in Maine to cover his wife’s gambling debts. [C]
1792 Conduct of first congressional investigation: an inquiry
into an Indian victory over federal troops. [C]
1798 Dismissal by U.S. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering
of two clerks in passport office for accepting illegal gratuities. [C]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 277

1804 Establishment of Haiti, first independent, black republic,
after successful slave revolt in French colony. [H]
1807 Abolishment by British Parliament of slave trade after
years of political action associated with evangelical William
Wilberforce and Society of Friends (Quakers). [H]
1813–1855 Life of Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, first selflabeled existentialist; critiqued conventional morality and
Christianity; focused on individualism, the personal, and
subjectivity, as opposed to liberal conception of rationality and choice. [P]
1817 Initiation of two congressional investigations of President James Monroe. [C]
1818–1883 Life of Karl Marx, Prussian philosopher and social critic,
strongly influenced by Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach; espoused concept of alienation and dialectic progression of
history based on class struggle (materialism), and advocated
future communal ownership of means of production. [P]
1820 Banning of slavery, through Missouri Compromise, west
of Mississippi River and north of 36°30′ latitude, except
in Missouri. [H]
1821 Publication of Philosophy of Right by Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), which espouses view that
individual is subordinate to the state (“state in and by itself is the ethical whole”) and sees history as progress; associated with dialectic and moral relativism. [P]
1827 Imprisonment of Dr. Tobias Watkins, first senior U.S.
federal official imprisoned for embezzlement. [C]
1827 Absconding of Samuel Swartwout, Collector of Customs for New York City, to England with more than 5
percent of U.S. Treasury. [C]
1829 Issue, by U.S. Postmaster General Amos Kendall, of first
Code of Conduct for federal employees. [L]
1833 Passage, by British Parliament, of the Slavery Abolition
Act freeing all slaves in British Empire. [H] [L]
1837 Founding of the Aborigines’ Protection Society in Great
Britain; in 1909 merges with the Anti-Slavery Society, a
public charity self-identified as the world’s oldest continuing international human rights organization. [H]
278 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1838 Forcing of Cherokee Native Americans to move to
Oklahoma, along the “Trail of Tears.” [H]
1839 Formation of British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
(now Anti-Slavery International), dedicated to abolishing
slavery worldwide. [H]
1845 Publication of autobiography by Frederick Douglass
(c. 1817–1895), escaped slave, participant in Underground
Railroad, advocate of slaves’ right of rebellion and fugitive
slaves’ right of resistance; important to abolitionist and suffrage movements, Equal Rights Party’s vice-presidential
candidate in 1872; later U.S. minister to Haiti. [H]
1848 Publication of the Communist Manifesto, first published fruit
of collaboration between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
and declaration of socialist (later, Communist) doctrine,
which ends with celebrated utopian vision of end to exploitation: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains . . . workers of all countries, unite!” [P]
1848 Launch of women’s rights movement in U.S. when
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, abolitionists
and suffragists, call first women’s rights convention at
Seneca Falls, New York; declaration modeled after U.S.
Declaration of Independence pronounces, “We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women
are created equal.” [H]
1861 Publication of Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873), English philosopher strongly influenced
by utilitarianism of his father, James Mill, and Jeremy
Bentham; adds qualitative differences to utilitarian calculus
of hedonistic pleasures, with mental and spiritual pleasures
rated superior (“Better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied”); reformer as political activist and early
advocate of women’s suffrage and social reform. [P]
1863 Initiation of humanitarian movement now known as
Red Cross by Henri Dunant and other Swiss; established
initially as International Committee for Relief to the
Wounded. [H]
1863 Declaration, on January 1, by President Abraham
Lincoln, that all slaves residing in territory in rebellion
against Union are to be freed. [H] [L]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 279

1863 Passage of forerunner of the principal federal conflictof-interest law, 18 U.S.C. Section 208 after Civil War
scandals. [C] [L]
1864 Adoption by twelve governments of the first Geneva
Convention to protect the war-wounded. [H] [I]
1864 Issue of General Order 212, which provides two-year jail
sentence and $10,000 fine for public officials who represent private parties back to U.S. government, including
Representatives and Senators. [C] [L]
1865 Deliverance, on Mar. 4, by President Lincoln of his Second Inaugural Address, a model of reconciliation: “with
malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in
the right . . . to bind up the nation’s wounds.” [H]
1868 Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, first president impeached by House of Representatives, on
grounds of alleged violations of the Tenure of Office
Act; by one vote, Senate fails to convict. [C]
1868 Ratification of Fourteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution; prohibits states from denying or abridging citizens’
rights and requires states to grant all persons equal protection and due process. [H] [L]
1871 Petition sent to Congress, signed by Susan B. Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other suffragists, on behalf
of voting rights for women. [H]
1883 Passage of Pendleton Act in effort to end spoils system
and institute merit-based federal civil service. [C] [L]
1878 Founding of American Bar Association in August by 100
lawyers from 21 states; begins the U.S. legal profession;
ethics standards, Model Rules of Professional Conduct
first adopted in August 1983 and amended in 1987,
1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998,
2000, and 2002. [L]
1883 Publication of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, associated
with existentialism espousing individualism and choice
and opposing the 19th-century liberal concept of rationality; argues that traditional values represented by
Christianity are weakening (“God is dead”) and on
280 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

behalf of concept of superior or overman, later imported
in vulgar usage into Nazi doctrine. [P]
1887 Publication of Woodrow Wilson’s “The Study of Administration” in Political Science Quarterly; often cited as
“founding” academic study of public administration, the
article mentions neither ethics nor morals but does speak
of duty; author becomes 28th U.S. president
(1913–1921). [A]
1891 First publication, On Aphasia, by Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939, Austrian), founder of psychoanalysis, who
revolutionizes understanding of personality with its unconscious mental processes, including repression and resistance, and profoundly influences intellectual
developments in ethics and many other fields. [A]
1900 Ratification of Geneva Convention, which protects belligerents, casualties, and prisoners of war in order “to
serve . . . the interests of humanity and the ever increasing requirements of civilization.” [H] [I]
1901 Beginning of Nobel Peace Prize by first annual awarding of
Nobel Prize for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, as established in will of Alfred
Nobel, inventor of dynamite (1866), and extended to economics in 1968 by the Bank of Sweden; Henri Dunant and
Frederic Passy share first prize (http://www.nobel.no). [H]
1903 Publication of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868–1963), founding officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose sociological and historical work focuses on duality of
African American identity and who opposes Booker T.
Washington’s political strategy of conciliation for African
Americans. [H]
1909 Founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose legal challenges
to segregation and discrimination play an important role
in the development of U.S. human rights. [H]
1910 Passage of first U.S. comprehensive but weak campaign
finance reform, Federal Corrupt Practices Act; revised in
1925 and replaced in 1971. [L]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 281

1915 Beginning of genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Empire; lasts until 1923 and results in death of estimated
1.5 million people and many refugees. [H]
1919 Founding in Paris by five national societies in Britain,
France, Italy, Japan, and United States of International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies;
178 recognized societies today. [H] [I]
1920 Ratification of Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; grants women right to vote. [H] [I]
1921 Publication of first article on intelligence by Jean Piaget
(1896–1980), Swiss cognitive psychologist whose groundbreaking work on children’s intelligence and moral development influenced Lawrence Kohlberg. [A]
1924 Adoption of first ethics code by the International
City/County Managers Association, which was founded
in 1914 to promote professional local government management worldwide; amended in 1998. [L]
1922–1923 Years of the Teapot Dome scandal during the administration of U.S. President Warren G. Harding; involves
secret leasing of naval oil reserve lands to private companies; becomes symbol of government graft and corruption. [C]
1927 Publication of Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976), German philosopher, influenced by
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; associated with existentialism (which he later rejected); influenced Michel
Foucault, author of An Introduction to Metaphysics
(1953). [P]
1933 Extension of government help through President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to people hurt by the
Great Depression; launched U.S. welfare state. [H] [L]
1935 Announcement of Nuremberg Race Laws at Congress
of the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NAZI), convened in Nuremburg, Germany, in September; laws include (1) the Law for the Protection of German Blood
and German Honor, prohibiting intermarriage and
extra-marital intercourse between Jews and Germans
and the employment of German woman under age 45
in Jewish households, and (2) the Reich Citizenship Law,
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which deprives Jews of German citizenship and invidiously distinguishes between Reich citizens and nationals;
these laws formalize and legalize heretofore unofficial
Nazi oppression. [H] [L]
1935 Beginning of debate between Carl Friedrich and
Herman Finer on the utility of internal versus external
political-bureaucratic controls for ensuring ethical administrative behavior. [A]
1938 Enactment of Italy’s government, under Mussolini, of
anti-Semitic racial laws and regulations outlawing mixed
marriages, expelling Jews from universities and ownership of certain property. [H]
1938 Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass”: November 9,
pogroms in the Third Reich see murder of dozens of
Jews, burning of synagogues, desecration of cemeteries,
and wrecking and looting of Jewish businesses, hospitals,
schools, and homes, while police and fire brigades stand
by. [H]
1938 Adoption of first ethics code for public finance profession by Government Finance Officers Association,
founded in 1906 as Municipal Finance Officers Association as professional association of state-provincial and
local finance officers in U.S. and Canada; in 1989 approves revision that is still in force. [L]
1939 Passage of The Hatch Act, which restricts the political activity of federal executive branch employees and state and
local government employees whose work is touched by
federal funds; less restrictive amendments passed in 1993;
U.S. Office of Special Counsel has jurisdiction. [C] [L]
1942 Wannassee Conference in January in Berlin; Rheinhard
Heydrich (in charge of organizing extermination of European Jews), Adolph Eichmann (director of deportations to death camps), and 15 Nazi bureaucrats plan and
organize the Final Solution, meaning annihilation of estimated 11 million Jews in Europe and Soviet Union. [H]
1945 First use of atom bomb in war, by U.S., on Hiroshima,
Japan, on August 6. [H]
1945 Second use of atom bomb in war, by U.S., on Nagasaki,
Japan, on August 9. [H]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 283

1945 End of World War II with the surrender of Germany
and Japan. [H] [I]
1945–1946 Conduct of year-long Nuremberg Trials (International
Military Tribunal, including judges from Great Britain,
France, U.S., and U.S.S.R.), of 24 major Nazi war criminals; establishes that obeying orders is in no way a justification for inhumane behavior. [H] [I]
1948 Adoption, on December 10, by the General Assembly of
the United Nations, of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which proclaims the right to life, liberty,
and security of person; prohibits slavery and more. [H] [I]
1948 Assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
(revered as sage, Mahatma; born 1869), seen as a spiritual ascetic; developed philosophy and techniques of
nonviolence (satyagraha, derived from Hinduism), civil
disobedience, and passive resistance (noncooperation) in
political struggle and evolved into international symbol
of same; leader in struggles for civil and political rights
for Indians in South Africa (1893–1914) and India’s independence from Great Britain (granted in 1947); opponent of the caste system and untouchability and
advocate of Hindu-Muslim concord. [H]
1948 Enactment of apartheid laws in South Africa that institutionalize racial discrimination and segregation; ensuing
laws systematize apartheid (Afrikaans for apartness). [H]
1949 Signing, in August, of four Geneva Conventions, supplemented by two protocols in June 1977. [H] [I]
1949 Publication of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold,
U.S. forester, scientist, and conservationist who helped
popularize link between ecology and ethics: “That land is
a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land
is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.” [A]
1950 Passage of Population Registration Act requiring that all
South Africans be classified into racial categories of
white, black (African or Bantu), or colored (mixed decent); category of “Asian” later added; government’s Department of Home Affairs responsible for classifying
citizenry. [H]
284 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1950–1951 Investigations by the Kefauver Commission (headed by
Senator Estes Kefauver), a crime-investigating committee, reveal that organized crime still operates in U.S. [C]
1951 Hearings chaired by U.S. Senator Paul Douglas of
Illinois; corruption charges are presented against Rural
Recovery Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and
the Department of Justice. [C]
1954 Prohibition of racial discrimination in schools enacted
into law; on May 17, the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision
overturned by U.S. Supreme Court; racial segregation in
public schools prohibited in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, as a violation of the U.S. Constitution; Thurgood Marshall argues for NAACP that
fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause prohibits
“separate but equal” facilities. [H] [I]
1955 Refusal by Rosa Louise Parks, a member of the local
branch of the NAACP, to relinquish her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama; she is arrested and fined for her
personal defiance of de jure racial segregation; her act leads
to the 1956 bus boycott; in 1992 her autobiography is
published; in 1996 she is awarded the U.S. government’s
highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
and in 1999 receives the Congressional Gold Medal. [H]
1956 Adoption by U.N. of Supplementary Convention on the
Abolition of Slavery. [H] [I]
1958 Adoption by Congress, in July, of 10-point “Code of Ethics
for Government Service for all federal officeholders and
employees, whom the code exhorts to (1) “Put loyalty to the
highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to
[g]overnment, persons, party, or department and (10) be
“ever conscious that public office is a public trust.” [L]
1961 Publication of The History of Madness in the Classical Age by
Michel Foucault (1926–1984), French psychologist, historian, and philosopher; closely associated with postmodernism, whose work inverts Kantian epistemology,
arguing scientific objectivity and rationality are artifacts
and conventional; sees “man” as epistemological concept
and explicitly treats ethical issues in studies of Greek and
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 285

Roman sexuality (The Use of Pleasure and The Care of
the Self, 1984); author of The Order of Things (1966), The
Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). [P]
1961 Call issued for international campaign on behalf of “prisoners of conscience” by Peter Benenson and British newspaper, Observer; launch of Amnesty International, a global
advocacy organization for human rights; recipient of
Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and United Nations Human
Rights Award in 1978. [H] [I]
1962 Execution of Adolph Eichmann (born 1906), head of
Gestapo’s Department of Jewish Affairs in 1941–1945
and director of deportations to death camps, after being
kidnapped by agents of Israel’s Mossad in Argentina;
tried in Israel in 1961; found guilty of crimes against the
Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes;
defense of “just obeying orders” is rejected. [H]
1962 Codification of U.S. federal conflict-of-interest statutes
(18 U.S.C. Section 208). [C] [L]
1962 Publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere by Jurgen Habermas (b. 1929), German sociologist
and philosopher, associated with Frankfurt School of
critical theory, concept of “public sphere,” discourse theory of deliberative democracy, and critique of positivism
that opens way for using critical social theory for political
consciousness and activism; author of The Theory of Communicative Action (vol. 1, 1984; vol. 2, 1989). [P]
1963 Launch, in April, of Martin Luther King Jr.’s
(1929–1968) crusade for nonviolent resistance to unjust
laws; ordained as a Baptist minister and doctor of theology, a leader of the U.S. civil rights movement, and an
international symbol of nonviolent resistance and racial
justice, sets out arguments for moral responsibility to
disobey unjust laws (civil disobedience) in Letter from
Birmingham City Jail; gains national prominence as a
leader of 1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama;
founds, in 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (dedicated to nonviolent protest); stirring
appeal to Christian morals and American ideals in the
speech, “I Have a Dream,” delivered in August 1963;
passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act traced, in part, to
286 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

his letter and speech; wins the Nobel Peace Prize in
1964; assassination in Memphis in April 1968 provokes
riots in more than 100 U.S. cities; Congress designates
national holiday in his honor in 1983. [H]
1964 Enactment of Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting and jobs in U.S. [H] [L]
1965 Passage of Voting Rights Act, which prohibits race, color, or
previous condition from affecting right to vote and requires
uniform standards for voting qualifications in U.S. [H] [L]
1965 Issue of Executive Order 11222 by President Lyndon B.
Johnson; code of conduct for executive branch links public confidence and trust to integrity of public officials in
conduct of official duties. [L]
1967 Appointment of Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993), chief
counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education
Fund, renowned for arguing Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas in 1954, as first African American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. [H]
1970 Passage of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), part of U.S. Organized Crime Control Act, which grants law enforcement broad power to
fight organized crime; subsequently evolves broad applications. [C] [L]
1971 Publication of A Theory of Justice by American political
philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002), whose work, in
tradition of classic liberalism, draws on Jean Jacques
Rousseau’s “social contract” theory and Immanuel
Kant’s deontological perspective; argues that principles
of justice can be justified only if free and rational persons, from behind a veil of ignorance (unaware of their
place in society), would choose such principles to govern
the basic structure of society; basic principles of Rawl’s
justice as fairness formulation are (1) individual has right to
broadest liberty compatible with same for others, and (2)
inequalities in wealth and power are just only when they
can be reasonably expected to advantage those who are
worst off; poses veil of ignorance to safeguard distributive
justice in decision making; provides philosophical basis
for social equity in the New Public Administration. [P]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 287

1972 Beginning of the Watergate scandal on June 17, when
five men are arrested while trying to bug the offices of
the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate
hotel and office complex. [C]
1973 Resignation, on October 10, of Vice President Spiro
Theodore Agnew; plea of “no contest” to single charge
of failing to report income received in 1967 brings a
$10,000 fine and three years of probation; Representative Gerald R. Ford assumes vice presidency under 25th
amendment to U.S. Constitution (passed February 10,
1967) that defines presidential succession. [C]
1974 Resignation, on August 8, of Richard M. Nixon, first
U.S. president to resign after House Judiciary Committee
approves three articles of impeachment based on evidence gleaned in congressional Watergate investigations;
Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as president. [C]
1974 Issue of pardon by President Ford, on September 8, of
former President Nixon; Nixon accepts an unconditional
pardon for all federal crimes that Nixon “committed or
may have committed or taken part in” while in office. [C]
1974 Release of model ethics law by Common Cause, founded
in 1970 by John Gardner; overhauled in 1989. [L]
1974 Passage of California’s Political Reform Act, which requires every government agency—local and state—to
adopt a Conflict of Interest Code; approved by referendum in 1990, Proposition 112 adds the Ethics in Government Act and the Post-Government Employment
Restrictions Act to the 1974 act. [L]
1974 Publication of Anarchy, State, and Utopia by American political philosopher Robert Nozick (1938–2002), libertarian
advocate of minimal state and individual rights (including
“floor of equality”) and opponent of liberalism’s using
state to pursue distributive justice; argues state’s intrusion
on individual choice coercively infringes on liberty; challenges liberalism associated with John Rawls. [P]
1974 Creation of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission
against Corruption, in response to pervasive bribery (e.g.,
“backdoor route” and “tea money”); adopts a triple
focus on investigation, prevention, and education; then
288 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

develops Hong Kong Ethics Development Center (business ethics) and ICAC Moral Education Web. [C]
1976 Publication of initial Norwegian version of Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle by Arne Naess, Norwegian philosopher, environmental activist, and founder of the Deep
Ecology movement, which accords nonhuman life or nature value independent of human utility and extends
ethical consideration to all life. [P]
1977 Passage of U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials for
business purposes and includes substantial criminal
penalties for firms and individuals. [C] [L]
1977 Ethics Resource Center founded.
1977 Death of Stephen Biko (born 1946), Bantu intellectual
and political activist; among founders of South African
Students’ Organization in 1968 and its first president; inspiration to student movements central to 1976 uprisings; expelled from medical school and movement
limited (banned and restricted); arrested at roadblock
and subsequent death from brutal treatment in detention
draws international condemnation; author of famous
statement of hope: “In time, we shall be in a position to
bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift: a more
human face.” [H]
1977 Initiation of Sullivan Principles by Reverend Leon
Sullivan, member of board of directors of General
Motors, large employer in South Africa; aimed at persuading U.S. companies to treat South African employees like
U.S. counterparts; uses economic pressure to undermine
apartheid and advance human rights and justice. [H] [C]
1978 Passage of Ethics in Government Act (Pub. L. 95–521, 92
Stat. 1824–1867), which establishes Office of Government
Ethics to prevent and resolve executive employees’ conflicts
of interest and promote impartiality and integrity. [L]
1978 Passage of Independent Counsel Law, originally enacted
as Title VI of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978;
provides for court-appointed independent counsels (originally, special prosecutors) to investigate criminal allegations against high government officials. [C] [L]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 289

1978 U.S. Congress passes the Civil Service Reform Act of
1978, establishing the Office of Special Counsel to protect whistle-blowers from retaliation for reporting waste,
fraud, and abuse; first office ever created for this express
purpose. [L]
1978 Publication of Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium (1978) by
Martha Nussbaum (born 1947), U.S. feminist philosopher in tradition of liberalism and individualism; associated with feminist critique of liberalism; author of Sex
and Social Justice (1999). [P]
1979 Delivery of speech (his malaise speech) by President
Jimmy Carter describing a crisis of America’s spirit and
a lack of confidence in America’s purpose and its future;
his approval ratings decline as result of public’s response.
1980 U.S. Congress passes unanimously and president signs
the federal ethics code (P.L. 96–303), with mandatory
posting in every federal building; code developed by
Ethics Resource Center. [L]
1981 Publication of Lawrence Kohlberg’s The Philosophy of Moral
Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, an influential
work of developmental psychology that details moral reasoning at various stages of cognitive development. [A]
1981 Adoption of ethical principles by American Society for
Public Administration (founded in 1939); its first code is
adopted in 1984 and revised in 1994. [C]
1982 Publication of In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan; influences study of women’s moral development and offers
critical response to justice perspective associated with
Kant, Rawls, and Kohlberg; critique developed by
Martha Nussbaum, Susan Okin, and others; inspires development of “ethics of care” based on relationships,
contrasted with “ethics of justice” based on rights and
principles. [A]
1983 Convening of first International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Washington D.C. as mechanism for
information exchange and networking among anticorruption law enforcement agencies; meets biennially hereafter. [C] [I]
290 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1984 Publication of Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and
Moral Education by educator Nel Noddings, proponent of
caring as basis for moral action and relationships rather
than principles as basis for moral development; inspiration for perspective termed ethic of care. [A]
1984 Adoption by New Jersey of American Bar Association’s
Model Rules of Professional Conduct; first state to
do so. [L]
1985 Appointment by President Ronald Reagan of the
Packard Commission (in response to defense industry
scandal, “Ill Wind”); recognizes limits of federal regulation and recommends corporate self-governance that
evolves in 1986 into Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct. [C] [L]
1985 Formation of first business ethics office at General Dynamics by Ethics Resource Center. [L]
1986 Endorsement by Canada’s Institute of Public Administration of its Statement of Principles Regarding the Conduct of
Public Employees. [L]
1987 Tower Report on Iran-Contra issued in November, authored by Special Review Board appointed by President
Ronald Reagan and headed by Senator John Tower of
Texas; points to president’s management style as factor
contributing to wrongdoings. [A]
1988 Memorandum issued from director of U.S. Office of
Government Ethics, Judge Frank Nebeker, on the investigation of Attorney General Edwin Meese III, stating
that “simply avoiding criminal conduct is not the mark of
public service.” [L]
1988 Use of chemical weapons against Kurdish village,
Halabja, by Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein, killing
thousands. [H]
1989 International outcry provoked by bloody army crackdown on student “democracy” protesters in Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square, People’s Republic of China, in June;
picture of one person halting tank column comes to
symbolize what an individual can accomplish in pursuit
of freedom. [H]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 291

1989 Separation of U.S. Office of Government Ethics from
Office of Personnel Management; becomes a separate
agency under Office of Government Ethics Reauthorization Act. [L]
1989 Issue of Executive Order 12674, by President George H.
W. Bush, on standards of conduct for federal executive
branch employees. [L]
1989 Enactment of Whistle Blower Protection Act; simplifies
whistle-blowers’ proof of retaliation by their agencies
and gives whistle-blowers increased procedural protections, guarantees of confidentiality, and right to appeal
to Merit Systems Protection Board. [L]
1989 Issue of report, To Serve with Honor, by President’s Commission on Federal Ethics Law. [A]
1989 Issue of Executive Order 12674, by President George H.
W. Bush, which adds limits on outside earned income
to standards of conduct for federal executive branch
employees. [L]
1990 Announcement by signatories of Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct (based on findings of President Reagan’s blue ribbon commission
appointed in 1985) that they obligate themselves to monitor their compliance with federal procurement laws and
voluntarily disclose violations and corrective actions;
group accounts for about half of all U.S. Defense Department’s contract funds. [C] [L]
1990 Establishment of Center for Public Integrity that forms
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
in 1997 to support “watchdog journalism in the public
interest.” [M]
1991 Announcement of repeal of last remaining apartheid
laws by South African Prime Minister F. W. de Klerk. [H]
1991 Fines raised for white-collar crimes by U.S. Sentencing
Guidelines for Organizations; fines reduced if “effective
program for preventing and detecting” wrongdoing is in
place and company cooperates with investigation. [C] [L]
1991 Media report navy’s mishandling of sexual assault scandal, called Tailhook. [C] [H]
292 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1992 Publication of Reinventing Government by David Osborne
and Ted Gaebler, which popularizes entrepreneurial
management that is oriented to customers and performance—in government; neither “ethics” nor “morality”
is listed in index. [A]
1992 Formal Establishment by Executive Order 12805, in
May, of President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency
as coordinating body for Inspectors General and Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency to foster integrity, economy, and effectiveness. [L]
1992 Founding of Ethics Officer Association for managers
of ethics and compliance programs in business
and nonprofit agencies in U.S. and other countries,
as cross-industry network to supplement DII (1990).
[L] [I]
1993 Launch of fight against global corruption by Transparency
International, a nongovernmental organization. [L] [I]
1993 Establishment of first U.N. special tribunal, International
Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, to prosecute war
crimes and genocide; former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic is among defendants. [H] [I]
1994 Establishment of Canada’s Office of Ethics Counsellor,
with responsibility for the conflict-of-interest and postemployment code for public officials and lobbyists’ registration and code. [L]
1994 Establishment of Great Britain’s Committee on Standards in Public Life. [L]
1994 Increase in efforts by Office of Government Ethics to
participate in foreign governments’ anticorruption efforts
after Conference on Ethics in Government organized by
Office of Government Ethics in cooperation with U.S.
Information Agency, at request of federal foreign policymaking agencies. [C] [I]
1994 Launch of investigation by independent counsel
Kenneth W. Starr of alleged financial improprieties in
Whitewater land deal in Arkansas by President William
Jefferson Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton. [C]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 293

1994 Inauguration, in May, of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
(born 1918) as president of South Africa; a leader of
the struggle against apartheid and of African National
Congress (formed in 1912 and outlawed in 1960);
serves until June 1999; statement at the opening of the
Rivonia Trial before Pretoria Supreme Court in April
1964 concludes, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I
have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and
with equal opportunities;” in June 1964, he and seven
co-defendants found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment; released in February 1990; received Nobel
Peace Prize in 1993. [H]
1994 Establishment of U.N.’s second special international criminal tribunal to prosecute those responsible for war crimes
and genocide, primarily against Tutsis, in Rwanda; other
tribunals follow. [H] [I]
1995 Massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men during war
in Bosnia by Bosnian Serbs; Srebrenica known as worst
war crime in Europe since World War II. [H]
1995 Authorization of establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; South Africa’s Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34, based on
the final clause of the Interim Constitution of 1993, confronts events under apartheid, including human rights violations on all sides of the conflict. [H]
1995 Proposal by Economic and Social Council of the United
Nations to Draft International Code of Conduct for
Public Office Holders. [L] [I]
1995 Publication of Model Ethics Law by Council on Governmental Ethics Laws; council formally established in 1978,
consisting of executives of federal and state ethics agencies; by 2003, identifies ethics programs in 43 U.S. states,
11 major U.S. cities, and all Canadian provinces. [L]
1995 Passage, in December, of Lobbying Disclosure Act, requiring registration with House and Senate by individuals making lobbying contact with specified government
officials and employees. [C] [L]
294 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1996 Debut of Public Integrity, an annual publication that becomes a quarterly journal in 1997. [A]
1996 World Bank, pinpointing corruption as the single greatest obstacle to development, is publicly committed by its
president to fighting corruption at World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting; adopts anticorruption
strategy in 1997. [C] [I]
1996 Adoption, in March, by General Assembly of the Organization of American States, of Inter-American Convention Against Corruption; convention becomes effective in
March 1997. [C] [I]
1996 The Republic of South Africa establishes the Registrar of
Assets for the Parliament. This office investigates ethical
issues involving parliamentarians and publishes their annual financial disclosure statements on the Internet. [C]
1997 Release by International Monetary Fund, with 184 member countries, of Guidance Note on good governance to implement its commitment to combating corruption. [C] [I]
1997 Adoption of anticorruption strategy and action program
in Lima, Peru, by Eighth International Conference
against Corruption Issues, 93 countries participating;
Lima Declaration states that corruption “erodes the
moral fabric of every society.” [C] [I]
1997 Creation of Ethics Section of American Society for Public Administration; first officers elected in 1998.
1998 Adoption of Recommendation on Improving Ethical
Conduct in the Public Service, by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, with 35 signatory countries; its Programme on Public Management
and Governance (PUMA) based on its Principles for
Managing Ethics in the Public Service: “Although governments have different cultural, political, and administrative environments, they often confront similar ethical
challenges, and the responses in their ethics management
show common characteristics.” [C] [I]
1998 Release of report by Independent Counsel Kenneth W.
Starr September 10; report of investigation of President
Clinton’s actions with respect to perjury and obstruction
of justice. [A]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 295

1998 Impeachment, on December 19, of President Clinton,
second U.S. president to be impeached by U.S. House of
Representatives.
1998 Establishment of the International Criminal Court, with
jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes
against humanity and based in The Hague; court established by the Rome Statute and adopted by 120 countries
participating in United Nations Conference; first permanent, treaty-based international criminal court. [H] [I]
1998 Publication of Three Seductive Ideas by Jerome Kagan, the
developmental psychologist who refutes fallacies such as
“infant determinism” and argues on behalf of humans’
capacity for change and growth and that humans are
motivated by a biologically based concern for right and
wrong and empathy. [A]
1999 Declaration issued, by first Global Forum on Fighting
Corruption, in February: “we emerge persuaded that
corruption is not inevitable” (Declaration on Safeguarding Integrity among Justice and Security Officials);
hosted by U.S. Vice President Al Gore and with participants from 90 countries; further, “Corruption, dishonesty and unethical behavior among public officials
represent serious threats to the basic principles and values of government, undermining public confidence in
democracy and threatening to erode the rule of law”
(Guiding Principles). [C] [I]
1999 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Division for Public Economics and Public Administration launches project to assist African governments in
enhancing ethics policies and anticorruption programs in
their public services. [C] [I]
1999 Activation, in February, of Convention on Combating
Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. [C] [I]
1999 Resignation of twenty-member executive committee of
European Commission, in March, over allegations of
pervasive, chronic corruption in the bureaucracy it oversees. [C] [I]
296 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

1999 Issue of Durban Commitment on Corruption; with participants from 135 countries meeting in Durban and
opened by South Africa’s President H. D. Thabo Mbeki,
the Ninth International Anti-Corruption Conference
(IACC) declares “one of the most debilitating legacies of
the twentieth century.” [C] [I]
1999 Creation of the Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development’s on-line ethics information center. [I]
1999 Initiation of global compact; U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan and Leon Sullivan (Sullivan Principles,
1977) initiate global compact based on Sullivan Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility and advocate
corporate support of human rights, just treatment of
labor, and environmental responsibility. [H] [I]
2000 Issue, in January, of the Declaration of the Stockholm
International Forum on the Holocaust; states that the
“Holocaust (Shoah) fundamentally challenged the foundations of civilization” and that the “unprecedented character of the Holocaust will always hold universal
meaning.” [H] [L]
2000 Adoption, in July, of International Monetary Fund’s code
of conduct for members of its executive board. [L] [I]
2000 Issue of Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development’s “Trust in Government: Ethics Measures
in OECD Countries.” [C] [I]
2000 End of Starr’s investigation, September 20; after six
years of investigation costing more than $50 million,
Starr concludes that there is insufficient evidence to
charge President and Mrs. Clinton with criminal wrongdoing in the Whitewater case. [C]
2001 Admission by President Clinton, in January, under an
agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, that
prior to leaving office he knowingly gave misleading testimony about Monica Lewinsky; accepts suspension of
his license to practice law, a fine, and any claim to repayment of his legal fees in return for termination of Whitewater investigation and freedom from criminal
prosecution. [C]
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 297

2001 Issue of declaration, Defeating Corruption Through Integrity, Transparency and Accountability; at The Hague,
Netherlands, Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption, hosted by Dutch government and cosponsored by
U.S. [C] [I]
2001 Signing of USA PATRIOT Act (P.L. 107–56) into law
on October 26 and later Homeland Security Act of
2002 (H.R. 5005); acts reorganize many parts of U.S.
federal government; legislation follows the September 11
act of international terrorism in which four hijacked airplanes kill thousands at three sites, including the World
Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, and
Shankesville, Pennsylvania. [H] [L]
2001 Collapse of Enron, an energy-trading firm; bankruptcy
is declared in December, draining billions of dollars
from creditors, shareholders, and employee pension
plans; report of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations finds that members of Enron’s board of directors failed in their fiduciary responsibility. [C]
2002 Publication of John M. Doris’s Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, in which empirical studies support
“situationalism” and refute moral character as basis of
ethical behavior. [A]
2002 Finding of guilt, by Texas jury, of audit firm of Arthur
Andersen, on charges of obstruction of justice for destroying documents during Security and Exchange Commission’s investigation of Enron. [C]
2002 Signing into law, in July, of corporate responsibility legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002); provides tougher
penalties for fraud and holds executives personally responsible for their corporate financial statements; follows
in response to numerous accounting scandals that led to
bankruptcy filings of Enron, WorldCom, and Global
Crossing. [L]
2002 Meeting of the First United Nations Interagency AntiCorruption Coordination in Vienna, Austria. [C] [I]
2002 Seizure, by U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, of nearly
100 student computers suspected of storing downloaded
music and movies in violation of copyright law. [C]
298 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

2002 Ratification of International Criminal Court (1998); its
statute enters into force. [H] [I]
2003 Looting in April of Iraq’s National Museum of Antiquities, allegedly by mob and professional thieves during
U.S. military action in Iraq; outcry from international
community often articulated in terms of “duty to preserve history and art for future generations”; by June it is
learned that the damage and theft, while severe, are far
less serious than initially reported. [H] [I]
2003 Provision by U.S. Air Force of first official accounting
(resulting from a congressional probe) of reports
of sexual assaults at Colorado Springs service academy; policy for handling such charges revamped in
June. [C] [L]
2003 Enactment of U.S. federal law, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, passed in 1996),
with aim of ensuring privacy, security, and confidentiality of patients’ medical records. [L]
2003 Meeting of Third Global Forum on Fighting Corruption
and Safeguarding Integrity in Seoul, Korea. [C] [I]
2003 Meeting of Eleventh International Anti-Corruption
Conference (IACC) in Seoul, Korea. [C] [I]
2003 Issue of Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development’s (OECD) Recommendation on Guidelines
for Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Service:
“Serving the public interest is the fundamental mission
of governments and public institutions.” [C] [I]
2003 Release of Peru’s government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on atrocities committed
in 1980–2000 during fighting by government forces,
Shining Path guerrillas, peasant militias, and others. [H]
2003 Acceptance of Nobel Peace Prize by Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s
first female judge, activist in opposition to oppression of
women. [H]
2003 Signing of U.N.’s Anti-Corruption Convention in
Merida, Mexico. [C] [I]
◆◆◆
Chronology of Theoretical and Applied Ethics in Public Service 299

Note
1. Readers are encouraged to suggest additional entries, especially on developments outside
the United States. The U.S. and contemporary tilt reflects this book’s dominant audience
and, necessarily, the authors’ own interests and limitations.
Criteria for selection include historical and contemporary relevance (as innovative, enduring, or otherwise core contribution) to the development of theory and practice in ethics;
the number of adherents or cultures affected, and strong association with a particular moral
perspective. Key topics include corruption, human rights, international and multinational
initiative or agreement, laws and codes, media developments, philosophic and religious contributions, and empirical works and other publications of special note.
Special thanks are extended to Chris Guiletti, graduate student at the University of
Connecticut, for his research assistance, and colleagues Bayard L. Catron, James Heichelbech,
and Morton J. Tenzer for their comments and suggestions on numerous entries.
300 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

301
Print and Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and News Media
Links
Public Administration Review http://www.aspanet.org/publications/
par/index2.html
Public Integrity (American Society for http://www.publicintegrity.org
Public Administration’s Ethics Section)
Ethics & Justice http://www.members.tripod.com/
~s_hayes/
Ethics Today, newsletter of Ethics http://www.unpan.org/
Section of American Society for namerica-aspa-ethics.asp
Public Administration
Federal Ethics Report and Ethics http://secnet.cch.com
in Government Reporter
(CCH Washington Service Bureau)
Global Virtue Ethics Review http://www.govt.ucsd.edu/newjour/
g1/msg02415.html
The Journal of Ethics via Society http://www.rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/
for Ethics corlett.se.html
RESOURCE B
Selected Internet Resources
Y

Journal of Power and Ethics http://www.spaef.com/JPE_PUB/
index.html
State Capitals Newsletters http://www.statecapitals.com
States News http://www.statesnews.org
CNN http://www.cnn.com and search via
key words (e.g., integrity, corruption)
BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk and search via
key words
The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com and search
via key words
The Straits Times, Singapore http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com
Professional Associations and Standards of Conduct
American Bar Association Standing http://www.abanet.org
Committee on Professionalism
American Society for Public http://www.aspanet.org
Administration
American Society for Public http://www3.niu.edu/~tp0dcm1/
Administration (ethics section aspa/ethicsec/index.htm
via ASPA homepage)
American Society for Public http://www.aspanet.org/
Administration (compendium ethicscommunity/compendium/
of resources)
Association of Inspectors General http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/ig/
via homepage front11.htm
Council on Governmental http://www.cogel.org
Ethics Laws
Ethics Officer Association http://www.eoa.org
(for corporate and nonprofit ethics
and compliance programs)
International Association of http://www.theiacp.org
Chiefs of Police
302 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

National Association of State http://www.nasbo.org
Budget Officers (see module 12 of the training
program for Standards of
Professional Conduct)
International City/County http://www.icma.org/abouticma/
Management Association ethics/index.cfm
National Association of State http://www1.icma.org/main/
Budget Officers Guidelines for bc.asp?bcid=40thsid=1+ssid2=24
Common Ethics Questions
International Personnel http://www.ipma-hr.org
Management Association
Public Interest, Research, and Academic Organizations and
Institutes
Internet Center for http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~uwvw/
Corruption Research corruption.index.html
Association for Practical http://php.ucs.indiana.edu/
and Professional Ethics ~appe.home.html
Australian Association for http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au.aapae
Professional & Applied Ethics
Center for Business Ethics, http://ecampus.bentley.edu/dept/
Bentley College cbe/
Center for Business Ethics http://ecampus.bentley.edu/dept/
(links to external resources) cbe/resources/ethicsorgs_
domestic.html
Center for Public Integrity http://www.publicintegrity.org/
dtaweb/home.asp
Center for Responsive Politics http://www.crp.org
Center for the Study of Ethics http://www.iit.edu/~csep
in the Professions
Common Cause http://www.commoncause.org
Council of State Governments http://www.csg.org
Ethics on the World Wide Web http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/
(with extensive links) lester/ethics/ethics_list.html
Ethics Resource Center http://www.ethics.org
Selected Internet Resources 303

Ethics Resource Center (links) http://www.ethics.org/resources/
links.cfm
Institute for Business & Professional http://www.depaul.edu/ethics/
Ethics (extensive links)
Institute for Global Ethics www.globalethics.org
Institute for Global Ethics http://www.globalethics.org/
weekly newsletter newsline/members/index.tmpl
Institute for the Study of Applied http://www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/
and Professional Ethics ethics-inst.html
National Conference of State http://www.ncsl.org
Legislatures
Pew Center for the States http://www.stateline.org
Society for Ethics http://www.rphan.sdsu.edu/faculty/
corlett/se.html
Transparency International, http://www.transparency-usa.org
U.S. chapter
University of South Queensland, http://www.usq.edu.au/dvc/ETHICS
Australia
Codes of Conduct
Illinois Institute of Technology http://www.iit.edu/departments/
Center for the Study of Ethics csep/PublicWWW/codes/
in the Professions: Codes of Ethics
Online Project
Online Ethics Center for Engineering http://www.cwru.edu.affil/wwwethics
and Science, with links to codes and
case materials
Common Cause, A Model Ethics http://www.commoncause.org/states/
Law for State Government (1989) elaw_intro.htm
via homepage
304 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Council on Governmental http://www.cogel.org
Ethics Laws, A Model Law for
Campaign Finance, Ethics, and Lobbying
Regulation, July, 1990 Proposed
Draft for Adoption, edited by
E. D. Feigenbaum, J. L. Larsen,
and B. J. Reynolds (1990)
INDEPENDENT SECTOR’s http://www.independentsector.org/
compendium issues/accountability/standards.html
U.S. Government and Related Sites: Federal
Office of Government Ethics http://www.usoge.gov
Office of Government Ethics http://www.usoge.gov/usoge006.html
Resource Library (including
executive orders, statutes,
opinions, forms, and other resources)
via homepage
Department of Agriculture, http://www.usda.gov/ethics
Office of Ethics
Department of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/dodgc/
Standards of Conduct Office defense_ethtics/main.html
Department of Interior, Ethics Office http://www.ios.doi.gov/ethics/
ethics.html
Office of Special Counsel (Hatch Act) http://www.osc.gov
Department of Justice, http://www.usdoj.gov.olc.htm
Office of Legal Counsel
National Archives and Records http://www.nara.gov/gc/ethics/
Administration, General Counsel Staff ethics.html
House Committee on Standards http://www.house.gov/ethics
of Official Conduct
Senate Ethics Committee http://www.ethics.senate.gov
Selected Internet Resources 305

U.S. Government and Related Sites: State
Council on Governmental Ethics Laws http://www.cogel.gov
Council on Governmental Ethics Laws http://www.prairienet.org/
(full text state statutes and legislation ~scruffy/f.htm
on the Internet)
Legal Information Institute, http://www.law.cornell.edu/
Cornell Law School statutes.html
PIPER Resources: State and http://www.piperinfo.com/state/
Local Government on the Net inde.cfm
Connecticut State Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ct/us/
Florida Commission on Ethics http://www.ethics.state.fl.us
Georgia State Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ga.us
Hawaii State Ethics Commission http://www.state.hi.us/ethics
Illinois Board of Ethics http://www.ethics.state.il.us
Indiana State Ethics Commission http://www.state.in.us/ethics
Iowa Ethics and Campaign http://www.ethics.state.ia.us
Disclosure Board
Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ka.us
Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ky.us
Louisiana Board of Ethics http://www.ethics.state.la.us
Maine Commission on Governmental http://www.ethics.state.me.us
Ethics and Election Practices
Maryland State Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.md.us
Massachusetts State Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ma.us
Missouri Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.mo.us
New York State Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ny.us
Ohio Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.oh.us/
ethicshome.html
Oklahoma Ethics Commission http://www.state.ok.us/~ethics
Pennsylvania Ethics Commission http://www.state.pa.us
Rhode Island Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.ri.us
South Carolina State Ethics Commission http://www.state.sc.us/ethics
306 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Texas Ethics Commission http://www.ethics.state.tx.us
University of Houston’s Texas Ethics http://www.lawlib.uh.edu/ethics
Reporter (with opinions and links)
Washington State Executive Ethics Board http:/www.wa.gov/ethics
West Virginia Ethics Commission http://www.wvethicscommission.org
Wisconsin Ethics Board http://ethics.state.wi.us
U.S. Government and Related Sites: Local (Suggestive)
Chicago Board of Ethics http://www.ci.chi.il.us/ethics/
overnew.html
King County (WA) Board of Ethics http://www.metrokc.gov/ethics
Los Angeles City Ethics Commission http://www.cityofla.org/ETH
San Francisco Ethics Commission http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/ethics/info.htm
Seattle Ethics & Elections Commission http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/ethics
General U.S. Government Resources
FirstGov http://www.firstgov.gov
Govspot http://www.govspot.com
Government Printing Office (GPOAccess) http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs
Library of Congress resource links http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/news/
extgovd.html
International and Multinational Sites
Business for Social Responsibility’s Global http://www.bsr.org/resourcecenter
Business Responsibility Resource Center
Business Ethics and Stakeholder http://www.cdp-hrc.uottawa.ca/
Relations Program (Canada) globalization/busethics/busmain.html
Canada, Office of the Ethics Counsellor http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/
oe00001e.html
Selected Internet Resources 307

European Business Ethics http://www.eben.org
Network (EBEN)—with links
European Commission http://europa.eu.int
European Commission (codes of conduct) http://europa.eu.int/comm/
codesofconduct/index_en.htm
Inter-American Development Bank http://www.iadb.org
International Monetary Fund http://www.imf.org
Latin American Centre for http://www.isop.ucla.edu.lac
Development Administration,
anticorruption and ethics network
Organization of American States http://www.oas.org
Organization of American States http://www.oas.org/juridico/
(anticorruption efforts, including english/followup.htm
model laws and Inter-American
Conventional against Corruption)
Organization for Economic http://www.oecd.org/topic/
Co-operation and Development’s 0,2686,en_2649_37447_1_1_1_1_
Anti-Corruption Unit 37447,00.html
Anti-Corruption Resources http://www1.oecd.org/daf/
nocorruptionweb/
Ethics and Corruption in the http://www.oecd.org/about/
Public Sector 0,2337,en_2649_37447_1_1_1_1_
37447,00.html
Ethics and Corruption in the Public http://www.oecd.org/searchResult/
Sector and Principles for Managing 0,2665,en_2649_37447_1_1_1_1_
Ethics in the Public Service 37447,00.html
Transparency International: Coalition http://www.transparency.org
Against Corruption in International
Business Transactions
TI’s Corruption Perception Index at http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~uwvw/
Internet Center for Corruption Research corruption.cpi_2003.html
Global Corruption Report http://www.globalcorruptionreport.
org/
United Nations http://www.un.org
United Nations Global Compact http://www.unglobalcompact.org/
Portal/Default.asp
308 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

United Nations Online Network in Public http://www.unpan.org/index.asp,
Administration and Finance (UNPAN) especially the on-line centers and on
accountability and transparency
http://www.unpan.org/
corethemes-transparency.asp
U.N. Governance Project http://www.un.org/partners/
civil_society/calendar/c-gov.htm
U.N. Governance Project http://www.undcp.org/unodc/en/
(anti-corruption links) corruption_links.html
U.S. Agency for International http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/
Development (USAID) anticorruption
(anti-corruption program
and resources)
U.S. Agency for International http://www.usaid.gov/democracy/
Development (more resources) anticorruption/resources.html
U.S. Office of Government Ethics http://www.usoge.gov/internat.htm
on international developments
World Bank’s Anti-Corruption http://www.worldbank.org/
Knowledge Resource Center publicsector/anticorrupt
Public Opinion Sites on Values and/or Confidence in
Government
Inter-University Consortium for Social http://www.icpsr.umich.edu
and Political Research (University of
Michigan), which includes the
General Social Survey (National
Science Foundation), ICPSR
Opinion series since 1972 on whether, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
on important values, Americans are codebook/united.
divided or united; go to homepage,
then codebook and variable united
and confidence in government http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
codebook.htm
On-Line Survey Research/ http://www.ukans.edu/cwis/units/
Public Opinion Centers: com2/po/index/html
A Worldwide Listing
(University of Kansas)
Selected Internet Resources 309

Pew Research Center for the People http://www.people-press.org
and the Press
its values update http://www.peoplepress.org/
dataarchive.htm
and report, Deconstructing Distrust http://www.people-press.org.
trustrpt.htm
National Election Studies http://www.umich.edu/~nes
(NES, University of Michigan)
its trust in government index http://www.umich.edu/~nes/
nesguide/toptable/tab5a_5.htm
and graph http://www.umich.edu/~nes/nes
guide/graphs/g5a_5_1.htm
University of Michigan, http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/index.shtml
World Values Survey
National Opinion Research Center http://www.norc.uchicago.edu
(NORC, University of Chicago)
Roper Center for Public Opinion http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu
Research (University of Connecticut)
The Washington Post 1998 series on http://www.washingtonpost.com/
morals and values in the U.S. wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/
vault.htm
and its guide to public opinion data on http://www.washingtonpost,com/
the Internet from nonpartisan sources wp-srv/politics/polls/datadir.htm]
via homepage
Nonprofit Sites
INDEPENDENT SECTOR at www.independentsector.org/
including its model code for nonprofits http://www.independentsector.org/
members/code_main.html
and compendium of standards and codes http://www.independentsector.org/
issues/accountability/standards.html
BBB Wise Giving Alliance http://www.give.org/standards/
newcbbbstds.asp
Georgia Center for Nonprofits www.gcn.org/ethics.html
310 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

Maryland Association of http://www.mdnonprofit.org,
Nonprofit Organizations
including its ethics standards http://www.mdnonprofit.org/
ethicbook.htm
Evergreen State Society’s Internet http://www.nonprofits.org/
Nonprofit Center
Association of Fundraising Professionals http://www.afpnet.org/ethics
Pennsylvania Association of http://www.pano.org/standards/
Nonprofit Organizations standardscode.php
Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits http://www.urban.org/content/
and Philanthropy PolicyCenters/Nonprofitsand
Philanthropy/Overview.htm
Leader to Leader Institute (formerly http://www.pfdf.org
Peter F. Drucker Foundation for
Nonprofit Management)
Nonprofit Quarterly http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org
Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, http://www.nonprofitresearch.org
projects and findings on accountability
and evaluation
Brookings Institution, numerous http://www.brook.edu
publications on nonprofit management
Ethics Cases, Scenarios, and Games
U.S. Office of Government Ethics http://www.usoge.gov/pages/comp_
resources and links web_trng/comp_web_trng.html
“Ethics Moment” column in PA Times, http://www.aspanet.org/patimes/
newsletter of American Society for
Public Administration
Federal Standards of Conduct http://www.lexrex.com/interative.eg/
(U.S. Office of Government Ethics) main.html
Games and scenarios (BellSouth) http://www.ethics.bellsouth.com/
briefcases.htm
Harvard Business School Publishing’s http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/
management case studies, including products/cases/index.html
government contract compliance
Selected Internet Resources 311

Journalism (Washington Post) http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-srv/local/longterm/tours/
newseum/ethics/front.htm
Quandaries (U.S. Department of http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/ethics
Justice on standards of conduct)
Scenarios and explanation of federal http://www.usda.gov/ethics/
standards (U.S. Department of training/index.htm
Agriculture)
New York City’s Conflicts of http://www.nyc.gov/html/conflicts/
Interest Board, On-Line Ethics Quiz html/quiz/quiz01.shtml
Note: This catalogue is necessarily limited; a search conducted on December 14, 2003
for the keyword ethics drew more than 4.2 million hits! The sites here illustrate available resources in broad categories and/or reflect the authors’ primary research interests and audiences. All sites are in English. It may be necessary to search from a
homepage to arrive at the desired destination. Useful key words for searching international, media, and other sites include ethics, morals, morality, integrity, transparency, accountability, fraud, corruption, and bribes. All these sites were accessed last on September
21–22, 2004, and since have been updated individually.
312 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service

313
Ten tools for decision making are compiled here for ready reference. As their
titles indicate, they are oriented toward action. We argue in Chapter One that
ethics is about decisive action that is rooted in moral values and publicly defensible in
terms of moral principles, right results, or both. These tools are designed to assist the
public manager in ethical decision making.
RESOURCE C
Tools for Making Ethical Decisions
Y

314 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 1.4. ROLE DIAGNOSIS.
Graphic courtesy of Brian Baird, doctoral student in engineering at the University of Connecticut and
research assistant in the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
Personal, Family,
Community
Public
Service
• Begin by assessing the roles you play and the seriousness of competing ethical claims.
A role defines the capacity in which one is acting and the behavior befitting it.
• No simplistic trump, please; while there may be strong reasons for opting for one role
over another, they need not be ethical reasons.
Professional,
Work ID
Agency, Job
Jurisdiction,
Citizen
Humanity,
Sustainability,
Legacy
(11 pt)
Duties
Roles
Priority
Reach
Responsibility
Self-imposed, informal,
voluntary
Obligation
Externally imposed,
formal, sanctioned
Tool 1: Assess Roles Using Role Diagnosis
Begin by assessing the roles you play and the seriousness of competing ethical claims.
A role defines the capacity in which one is acting and the behavior befitting it. No simplistic trump, please; although there may be strong reasons for opting for one role over
another, they need not be ethical reasons.

Tool 2: Use Go/No-Go Decision Model
Tools for Making Ethical Decisions 315
FIGURE 2.2. GO/NO-GO DECISION MODEL.
Unethical
Illegal no action* no action
Legal and Ineffective no action† no action
Legal and Effective action no action
Take immediate action
only at the intersection.
(Proportions do not depict number
or scope of activities or decisions
each arena represents.)
Ethical
* Pursue change in law? † Innovative redesign?
Legal Ethical
Effective
Three judgment calls on immediate action:
1. Is it legal?
2. Is it ethical?
3. Is it effective?

Tool 4: Rank Responsibilities
Tool 3: Pursue the Public Interest
316 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
EXHIBIT 3.1. PURSUE THE PUBLIC INTEREST.
Step 1. Touch Four Bases in Sequence . . . Dismiss None
1. Democracy: delegate, agent
How? Listen and respond, balance competing popular preferences
Values: responsiveness, receptiveness,
Tools: cost/benefit analysis, public opinion polls
2. Mutuality: statesman, trustee/steward
How? Create and define community, use moral imagination and dialogue
Values: inclusion, ethics, impartiality, civic virtue
Tools: analysis of constitution, mission statement, regime and professional values
3. Sustainability: steward, sustainer
How? Preserve, protect, anticipate
Values: empathy, benevolence
4. Legacy: steward, custodian, legator
How? Preserve, transmit, educate, cherish
Values: empathy, benevolence
Step 2. Reflect on Four Principles
• Trustee Principle—Protect future generations’ interests.
• Sustainability Principle—Secure future generations’ opportunity for comparable quality
of life.
• Chain of Obligation Principle—Provide for the needs of current and coming generations
and give near-term concrete risks priority over long-term hypothetical risks.
• Precautionary Principle—Absent compelling need, avoid imposing risk of irreversible harm
or catastrophe.
Step 1 is adapted from C. W. Lewis, “In Pursuit of the Public Interest,” delivered at the 2004
Ethics Forum, national conference of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public
Administration, Portland, Oregon, March 27, 2004; the four principles in Step 2 are from the
National Academy of Public Administration, 1997, p. 7.
EXHIBIT 6.3. RANK RESPONSIBILITIES.
When you must make a trade-off, think about this:
Given the very real prospect of having to exceed legal authority, budget, energy, credibility,
and more, what do you do when you can’t do it all?
The lower the claim on the list that follows, the more appropriate is a principled no:
Avoid harm, the most stringent and the negative obligation
Remedy or relief for problems we provoke
Affirmative help for problems others cause
Voluntary charity, the least stringent, doing good works

Tools for Making Ethical Decisions 317
Tool 5: Use Threshold Test
EXHIBIT 6.4. USE THRESHOLD TEST.
If you’re dealing with problems others cause, consider this:
A principled yes emerges from considering as many factors as possible. The four listed are the most
pertinent.
1. Vulnerability: potential injury, risk to affected party
2. Proximity: know or should know, access, authority, competence, span of control
3. Capability: can help without excessive risk, danger, liability
4. Dependency: no place else to turn, weak or needy with few options or advocates, and low
probability of alternative remedies or services
Tool 6: Audit Decisions Against Four Standards
EXHIBIT 3.8. AUDIT DECISIONS AGAINST FOUR STANDARDS.
˛ The mirror test for integrity asks,
“What kind of person do I admire and want to be?”
˛ The publicity test for accountability asks,
“Am I willing to read about this in the newspaper? Tell my family?”
˛ The visceral test for implementation and authenticity asks,
“Am I willing and likely to follow through? Can I live with this?”
˛ The signature test symbolizes personal responsibility and asks,
“Do I take public responsibility for this recommendation, analysis, or decision?”
Signed __________________________________________
Date _______________________

318 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
Tool 7: Creatively Lead
EXHIBIT 7.2. CREATIVELY LEAD.
Redefine the problem to satisfy as many ethical values and principles as possible. Instead of stopping at doing as little harm as possible (the usual minimum duty), a public manager with moral imagination seeks to reconcile and execute four time-honored ethical principles and harmonize duties
and values:
1. Reciprocity signals respect for human dignity and rights and to avoid doing harm; the Golden
Rule is a familiar example.
2. Reversibility (or empathy) calls for seeing oneself as subject or victim, trading places, or walking in someone else’s shoes.
3. Utility (or net good results, however defined) urges concern for the number of people affected
and how deeply, in both the long and short term.
4. Universality and consistency block arbitrary, haphazard, or unscrupulous behavior in favor of
impartiality, fairness, and predictability.

Tools for Making Ethical Decisions 319
Tool 8: Use Stakeholder Diagnostic
EXHIBIT 7.1. STAKEHOLDER DIAGNOSTIC.
Category (check one) Description of Stake
□ Internal ________________________________________
□ External and direct ________________________________________
□ External and indirect ________________________________________
Step 1. Score each factor.
High = 3
Medium = 2
Low = 1
None = 0
The higher the score, the less acceptable the decision for that stakeholder.
Factors Score
Dependency on agency—inaccessible alternative services _____
Dependency—improbable relief or remedy from harm/injury _____
Vulnerability to decision—likelihood or risk of potential harm/injury _____
Vulnerability—gravity (versus triviality) of effect _____
Scope—broad policy impact (versus negligible) _____
Risk to fundamental ethical value, duty, or principle _____
Add column for total score:
Step 2.
Repeat the scoring for each of the stakeholders to allow comparisons among them.
Next, add all stakeholders’ scores together for a measure of the overall potential.
A decision that causes severe permanent harm or injury receives a high score.
Step 3. Action
A high score across the board should prompt managers to reject the proposal outright
(#1, below).
A high score for some stakeholders coupled with a low score for others may prompt managers to
recommend alternatives or targeted relief (#2, below).
1. Manager recommends obligatory action or relief ? □ Yes □ No
2. Score triggers manager’s considering alternative action or relief ? □ Yes □ No

Tool 9: Seek Inclusion
320 The Ethics Challenge in Public Service
FIGURE 7.1. EXPANSIVE REACH OF PUBLIC SERVICE.
Graphic courtesy of Brian Baird, doctoral student in engineering at the University of Connecticut and research
assistant in the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
Personal, Family,
Community
Public
Service
Professional,
Work ID
Agency, Job
Jurisdiction,
Citizen
Humanity,
Sustainability,
Legacy (11 pt)
Inclusion
Reach Priority

Tool 10: Before You Blow
Tools for Making Ethical Decisions 321
EXHIBIT 7.4. BEFORE YOU BLOW.
Given the high risk and no guarantee of effectiveness, when should a loyal team player, with strong
organization ties, break ranks? Whistle-blowing is suitable only after
Facts are verified.
The soul is searched.
Organizational channels are exhausted.
Before reaching for the whistle, ask
1. Is the violation serious enough to warrant the risk to self and to the organization?
2. Are you prepared for this action to become known and for heroism to mutate into betrayal?
3. Are you sure of your facts? Are you sure you are right?
4. Are you sure that superiors or colleagues are not trying to correct the situation?
5. Is your motive purely in the public interest?
6. Are you ready to accept the consequences if you are wrong?
Six yes answers signal ethical leaders to do the right thing.

322
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NAME INDEX
343
A
Abraham, 272
Ackerman, F., 168
Acton (Lord), 139
Adams, G. B., 14, 104
Agnew, S. T., 288
Allison, G. T., 13
Alt, P. M., 111
An-Na’im, A. A., 231
Anechiarico, F., 195
Angelou, M., 241–242
Annan, K., 297
Anthony, S. B., 280
Appleby, P. H., 14, 26, 35, 88,
109–110, 117, 265
Aquinas, T., 275
Arendt, H., 101, 104
Aristotle, 18, 111, 122, 254, 274,
275, 290
Arthur, C. A., 31
Ashcroft, J., 43
Attila the Hun, 78–79
Augustine, 274
B
Bailey, S. K., 29, 35, 77, 80, 139, 154
Baird, B., 40
Baker, H., 106
Balfour, D. L., 14, 104
Balla, S. J., 101
Barnard, C., 11–12
Barrett, D., 49
Barringer, F., 34
Behn, R. B., 101
Belkin, L., 45
Bell, D., 74
Benenson, P., 286
Bentham, J., 130, 277, 279
Berger, J., 3
Bergson, 80
Berman, E. M., 248, 263
Betti, J. A., 237–238
Bhatnagar, S., 227
Biko, S., 289
Bogdanos, M., 78
Bok, S., 136, 175, 195
Boling, T. E., 6, 34, 80
Bonczek, S. J., 255
Booth, W., 78, 100
Boren, J. H., 113–114
Boulding, K., 34
Bovens, M., 101
Bowman, J. S., 122, 176, 191
Branigan, T., 3
Branigin, W., 100
Breyer, S., 198
Broder, D. S., 25, 123, 132
Brown, M., 114, 249
Buddha, 273
Bukkyo Dendo, K., 29, 238
Burke, E., 130, 254–255
Burke, F., 35
Burns, A. I., 16
Bush, G. W., 50n.1
Bush, G.H.W., 40, 87, 112, 123,
132, 209, 292
C
Calley, W. L., 99, 105
Campbell, A., 176

Campbell, B. N., 267
Canavan, S. J., 255
Cannon, L., 100
Carpenter, J., 68
Carroll, L., 158
Carter, J., 13–14, 23, 66, 290
Catron, B. L., 22, 169, 236
Chambers, R., 251
Chambliss, W. J., 110
Chandler, R. C., 40, 91, 114–115
Chen, D. W., 45, 46, 49, 51n.7
Cibes, W. J., Jr., 4
Clark, J., 179
Clay, H., 27
Clinton, H. R., 293, 297
Clinton, W. J., 51n.5, 133, 212, 293,
295, 296, 297
Cockburn, A., 99
Cohen, S., 113
Collins-Chobanian, S., 231
Confucius, 273
Cooper, T. L., 11, 28, 29, 31, 74,
143–144, 151, 222, 224, 229,
259
Cox, A., 213
Cranston, A., 200
Culhane, J. G., 43
Cummins, R. A., 232
D
Daley, R. J., 81
Damocles, 254
De Klerk, F. W., 292
Deming, W. E., 112
Dempsey, J., 6, 34, 80
Denhardt, J. V., 42, 74
Denhardt, K. G., 103, 137, 143,
195, 260
Denhardt, R. B., 42, 74, 247
Derby, S. L., 142
Dobel, J. P., 35, 151, 152, 190
Doig, J. W., 35
Doris, J. M., 298
Dostoyevsky, F. M., 236
Douglas, M., 142
Douglas, P., 12, 234n.2, 285
Douglass, F., 279
Downs, A., 170
Dreillinger, C., 116
Drucker, P. F., 103, 105–106, 238
Du Bois, W.E.B., 281
344 Name Index
Dubnick, M. J., 100–101
Dunant, H., 94, 279, 281
Duncan, D., 217, 218
Duval, R. S., 232
Dworkin, R., 62
E
Ebadi, S., 299
Egan, T., 3
Ehrlichman, J., 174
Eichmann, A., 104, 283, 286
Eimicke, W., 113
Eisenhower, D. D., 87
Eliot, T. S., 193, 270, 272
Emerson, R. W., 112
Engels, F., 279
F
Feigenbaum, E. D., 241
Feinberg, K. R., 43, 45, 46, 49,
51n.4
Feuerebach, L., 278
Fillo, M., 197
Finer, H., 283
Fischer, F., 262
Fischhoff, B., 142
Fisher, L. D., 239
Ford, G. R., 132–134, 288
Foucault, M., 282, 285–286
Franklin, B., 277
Frederickson, H. G., 45, 77, 79
Freel, D., 190, 196, 199, 207, 209
French, P. A., 137
Freud, S., 281
Friedrich, C., 283
Fuchs, L., 242
G
Gaebler, T., 112, 293
Gandhi, M., 62, 284
Gardner, J., 288
Garment, S., 88
Garvey, G., 254
Gawthrop, L. C., 76
Gehman, H., 101
George, D., 78
George III, King, 46
Gettleman, J., 57
Giacalone, R., 203
Gillen, P., 71
Gillette, C. P., 45
Gilligan, C., 45, 134, 290
Gilman, S. C., 81, 132, 195, 200,
221, 227, 229, 247, 262
Gilmour, R., 40
Gingrich, N., 195
Glaberson, W., 45, 46
Gogol, N., 16
Goldstein, A., 3
Goodpaster, K. E., 148
Goodsell, C. T., 25, 103, 244
Gore, A., 296
Gormley, W. T., Jr., 101
Graham, G. A., 80, 113, 115
Grant, U. S., 83
Grassley, C. E., 96
Green, D. P., 142
Grosenick, L., 203
Groudine, C. J., 97
Guggliotta, G., 78
Gulick, 12
Guy, M. E., 112, 137
H
Habermas, J., 286
Hall, R. T., 251
Hamilton, A., 195
Hamilton, R. A., 67, 71n4
Hammurabi, 31, 185, 272
Hansen, J., 179, 180
Hardin, G., 74
Harding, W. G., 282
Harmon, M. M., 30, 77
Harris, J., 61, 62
Hart, D. K., 45, 79
Hartman, L., 249
Hays, W. S., 176
Heclo, H., 103
Hegel, G.W.F., 278
Heichelbech, J. R., 79, 125, 126
Heidegger, M., 282
Heinzerling, L., 168
Heydrich, R., 283
Hippocrates, 88–89, 185, 274
Hirschkorn, P., 49, 50, 51n.8
Hirschmann, N. J., 134
Hobbes, T., 275
Hochschild, A., 31, 105
Holmes, E., 133
Hopkins, T. D., 45

Name Index 345
Hospers, J., 126
Huang Liu-Hung, c., 35, 81
Huberts, L.W.J.C., 221
Hull, R. H., 113
Hume, D., 276
Hummel, R. P., 103
Hussein, S., 291
Hy, R. J., 178–179
I
Inglehart, R., 230, 231, 232
Inouye, D. K., 59
J
Jacobs, J., 195
Jacowitz, K. E., 142
Jefferson, T., 22, 27, 52, 91, 276
Jehl, D., 100
Jennings, B., 90, 91, 129
Jesus, 274
John, King, 275
Johnson, A., 280
Johnson, H. K., 175–176
Johnson, L. B., 79, 209, 287
Johnson, M., 125
Johnson, R. B., 67
Johnston, D. C., 177
Jos, P. H., 176
Joseph, J., 247
Josephson, M., 29, 40
Jotman, M., 16
Joyce, J., 15
Juvenal, 83, 174, 269
K
Kagan, J., 296
Kahneman, D., 142
Kant, I., 125, 276, 285, 287, 290
Kass, H., 76
Katz, R., 59
Keeney, R. L., 142
Kefauver, E., 285
Kellar, E. K., 216
Keller, B., 99
Kendall, A., 185, 186, 278
Kennedy, J. F., 10, 35, 43, 88, 128,
188, 247
Kernaghan, K., 34
Key, V. O., Jr., 5
Kierkegaard, S., 278, 282
King, M. L., Jr., 62, 111, 286–287
Kleinig, J., 45, 127, 217
Klingemann, H.-D., 231
Knight, M., 180
Knouse, S., 203
Knox, H., 277
Kohlberg, L., 14, 134–136, 232,
282, 290
Kolbert, E., 47, 49
Kristol, I., 74
Kunreuther, H., 142
Kurtz, H., 90
L
La Rochefoucauld, D. de, 117, 175
Langford, J. W., 34
Lao-tze, 273
Larsen, J. L., 241
Leopold, A., 284
Levy, P., 104–105
Lewinsky, M., 297
Lewis, C. W., 22, 81, 169, 175, 190,
198, 227, 229
Lichtenberg, J., 192
Lichtenstein, S., 142
Light, P. C., 30, 204
Lincoln, A., 133, 279, 280
Lindblom, C. E., 111
Linnerooth, J., 45
Lippmann, W., 74
Lipset, S. M., 16, 23, 24
Lipsky, M., 110
Locke, J., 130, 275, 276
Loewenstein, G., 142, 143
Long, J., 177
Lovallo, 142
M
Machiavelli, N., 105, 129, 134, 275
Mackenzie, G. C., 195
MacMahon, F. R., 69
Madison, J., 82
Magruder, J. S., 174, 175
Malvo, J. L., 216
Mandela, N. R., 294
Marini, F., 79
Marley, M. A., 135, 136
Marrs, G., 179–180
Marshall, T., 285, 287
Marx, K., 278, 279
Maskell, J. H., 246
May, L., 231
May, P., 179
Mbeki, H.D.T., 297
McCain, J., 267
McFadden, D., 142
McLaughlin, D., 96
Meese, E., III, 291
Menzel, D. C., 185–186, 204
Messe, C., 70
Messe, T. V., 68–72
Miale, F. R., 104
Milgram, S., 104
Mill, J. S., 126, 130, 279
Miller, J. L., 97
Milosevic, S., 293
Mohammed, 274
Mohammed, J. A., 216
Monroe, J., 278
Moose, C. A., 215–219
Morehouse, S. P., 190
Moreno, A., 231
Morgan, D. F., 74, 76, 77
Morgan, P. W., 85
Morin, R., 25, 123, 132
Morozov, P., 34, 40, 149
Morris, E., 77
Moses, 29, 106, 185, 273
Moses ben Maimon, 274–275
Mosk, M., 216, 218
Mott, L., 279
Moyers, B., 174
Mussolini, 283
Myers, P., 180
N
Naess, A., 289
Nash, L. L., 29, 143, 144–146, 148,
151, 265
Nebeker, F., 291
Neely, A. S., IV, 199
Negin, B., 227
Nelson, M., 254
Nietzsche, F. W., 280–281, 282
Nixon, R. M., 132–134, 288
Nobel, A., 281
Noddings, N., 45, 291
Nozick, R., 45, 288
Nussbaum, M., 290

O
Ochs, H., 104
O’Keefe, S., 101
Okin, S., 290
Osborne, D., 112, 293
Osiel, M., 59
P
Paine, T., 117, 174
Parks, R., 62, 285
Parksinson, 113
Passy, F., 281
Pataki, G., 50
Patterson, B. H., Jr., 67
Peers, (Gen.), 99
Perez, R. A., 100
Peter, L. J., 113
Peters, E. A., 89
Peters, T., 137
Petra, W., 117
Piaget, J., 14, 282
Pickering, T., 277
Plant, J., 192–193
Plato, 8, 28, 62, 129, 274
Plunkitt, G. W., 264
Poindexter, J. M., 107
Pollock-Byrne, J. M., 158
Potamianos, P., 253
Powers, R., 59
Q
Quixote, D., 11
R
Raspberry, W., 91
Rawls, J., 45, 62, 79, 84, 135, 287,
288, 290
Ray, R., 297
Reagan, R., 22, 106, 107, 168, 245,
291, 292
Recer, P., 101
Rest, J., 135, 136
Revere, P., 16
Reynolds, B. J., 241
Reynolds, G. H., 85
Rhoads, S., 46, 127
Rice, D., 116
Richter, W. L., 18, 35
346 Name Index
Ridenhour, R., 99
Rimer, S., 101
Rion, M., 12, 29, 40, 146–147, 148,
150, 151, 163, 259
Riordan, W. L., 264
Rizzo, A., 135, 136
Roberts, N., 77
Roberts, W., 79
Rogers, P., 266, 267
Rohr, J. A., 5, 8, 15, 17, 29, 56, 61
Roig-Franzia, M., 57
Romzek, B. S., 101
Roosevelt, F. D., 87, 282
Roosevelt, T., 77, 270
Rosenbaum, D. E., 43
Rosenbloom, D., 5, 56
Ross, J., 180
Rousseau, J. J., 14, 276, 287
Rumsfeld, D., 100
S
St. Clair, A., 245–246
Sakharov, A., 99
Sanchez, R., 100
Schelling, T. C., 167
Schemo, D. J., 238
Schneider, M., 16, 23, 24
Seidman, H., 40
Selzer, M., 104
Shabecoff, P., 111
Shafer, D. M., 135, 136
Shalala, D. E., 252
Shklar, J. N., 171
Shrader-Frechette, K., 79
Simon, H., 14
Singer, P., 169, 232
Skinner, B. F., 14
Slovic, P., 142
Smart, J.J.C., 126
Smith, A., 276
Socrates, 62, 274
Solomon, D., 105, 177
Solomon, J., 239
Sophocles, 56, 274
Spinoza, B., 275
Sprinthall, N., 135, 136
Sprinthall, R. C., 136
Stanton, E. C., 279, 280
Stark, A., 81, 86, 198
Starr, K. W., 97n.1, 293, 295, 297
Startwout, S., 278
Steffens, L., 253, 264–265
Stein, H., 177
Stevens, T., 267
Stevenson, A., 193
Stewart, D. W., 135, 136, 148, 150
Stillman, R. J., II, 12
Sullivan, L., 289, 297
Summers, H. G., Jr., 176
Sun Tzu, 273
Swisher, L. L., 135, 136
T
Talmadge, H., 174
Taylor, H. A., 69
Tedesco, M., 61, 62
Terkel, S. N., 174, 175, 232
Thompson, D. F., 86, 87, 89, 90,
101, 105, 107, 111, 200
Thoreau, H. D., 63
Thucydides, 53
Tompkins, M. E., 176
Tong, R., 111
Tower, J., 291
Tranter, R.A.F., 239
Trevino, L., 249
Truman, H., 23
Tuohy, L., 89
Tversky, A., 142
U
Usher, D., 46
V
Van Natta, D., Jr., 128
Vela, S., 59
Vieira, J. F., 70–72
Vogelsang-Coombs, V., 11
W
Waldo, D., 30, 40
Walzer, M., 174–175
Wamsley, G. L., 42
Ward, L., 266, 267
Warren, K. F., 52–53, 109
Washington, B. T., 281
Washington, G., 16, 91, 154, 221
Washington, H., 206–207
Watkins, S., 105, 176–177
Watkins, T., 278

Name Index 347
Waugh, W. L., Jr., 178–179
Weber, M., 12, 80
Weil, V., 217
Weimer, L., 31, 89, 196, 198, 199,
202
Weinstein, M., 111
Welzel, C., 231
Wenker, K. H., 59
Werhane, P. H., 168
White, R. D., Jr., 134, 135
Whitford, A. B., 104
Wholey, J. S., 262
Wilberforce, W., 278
Wildavsky, A., 105, 111, 142
Wilde, O., 144
Williams, R. L., 81, 83, 191, 198
Wilson, 135
Wilson, J. Q., 103
Wilson, W. (Col.), 99
Wilson, W. W., 13, 244–245, 251,
281
Wolf, C., 45, 46, 51n.8
Wong, K., 231
Wood, R. C., 213
Y
Yoder, D. E., 222, 224, 229
Young, J. R., 124
Z
Zengler, J. P., 276
Zeno of Citium, 274
Zernike, K., 100, 105
Zimmerman, J. S., 191

SUBJECT INDEX
349
A
ABC News, 67
Aborigines’ Protection Society, 278
Abortion, 67
Abu Ghraib prison abuses, 99–100
Abuse of office: incompetence as,
112–114; for personal dissent,
61–62, 63–64; for personal
gain, 80–83; temptation of,
264–265; time abuse as,
240–242; vulnerability assessment for, 263–264
Academic organizations, 303–304
Accommodation, 136–138, 139
Accountability: controls and, 16,
32–33; as formal obligation,
32–33; individual responsibility
and, 98–117; publicity test for, 93
Act to Establish the Treasury Department, 209
Act utilitarianism, 126, 127
Action guides, 148
Administrative actions, agency,
210–211, 212
Administrative law judges (ALJs),
189
Administrative Procedure Act, 58
Adulthood, 29
Africa: ethics programs in, 224,
296; regional agreements of,
224; traditional values of, 231
African National Congress, 294
Agencies: building ethical,
235–268; collaborative relationship issues of, 244–247; enforcement in, 210, 211; ethics
audits for, 262–265; ethics impact statement (EthIS) and
process for, 255, 257–262;
ethics programs and systems
for, 248–255; managers’ role in,
235–236; objections to ethics
systems in, 251–254; rules of
thumb for, 255, 256–257; team
ethic in, 243; techniques for integrating ethics into, 250; time
abuse in, 240–242; work norms
in, 242–243; workforce diversity in, 238–240. See also Rules
and regulations, agency
Agency Ethics Program Questionnaire, 263
Alabama: ethics code of, 196, 200;
Supreme Court, 56–57
Alaska: ethics code of, 190, 200;
land claims scandal in, 177
Altruism, 170
Ambiguity, 29; ethical reasoning
and, 121, 125; personal integrity and, 36–37, 139; rolegenerated claims and, 35–36
American Bar Association, 85, 280;
Canon 9 of, 199; Model Rules
of Professional Conduct of,
192, 280, 291
American Board of Internal Medicine, 67
American Institute of Certified
Public Accountants, 32
American Red Cross (ARC), 49,
93, 94, 214; fundraising ethics
case study of, 93–97
American Revolution, 130, 174
American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), 17, 32–33,
125, 138, 191, 248, 290; ethics
code and values of, 27, 37, 53,
86, 111, 112, 192, 290
Amnesty International, 286
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Nozick), 288

Anchoring, 142–143
Ancient history and cultures: corruption and anti-corruption efforts in, 82–83, 221; values in,
28–29
Anne Arundel County, Maryland, 207
Anthrax vaccine, 59
Anti-Slavery Society, 278, 279
Anticorruption systems: integrity
systems versus, 221, 227; international, 220–234
Antigone (Sophocles), 56, 274
Apology (Plato), 62
Appearance of impropriety: codification of, 87, 88, 198, 199–201;
defining, 84–85, 86–87; disclosure standards and, 88–93; establishing, 92–93; serving the
public interest and, 73, 84–88;
standard of, 33, 84–88
“Appearance of Impropriety” case
study, 198
Appointment affidavits, federal, 54, 55
Appointment dilemma, 7, 8
Argentina, 223, 227
Arizona, ethics code of, 196, 200
Arkansas, ethics code of, 200
Armenian genocide, 282
Arrogance, 76, 167, 169, 236–237
Arthur Andersen, 298
Asia, 224
Asian Development Bank, 221
Assessment tools, 262–265
Associated Press, 57, 217
Association for Applied and Practical Ethics, 248
Association of Government Accountants, 86
Athenian democracy and law, 221, 274
Athenian Pledge, 53, 54, 64, 77, 80,
192
Atom bomb, 14, 283
Audit: of decisions, 93, 317; of organizational ethics, 262–265
Austin, Texas, 27
Australia, 222
Autonomy, 231, 232
B
Bad news, passing up, 66–67
Baghdad Museum, 78
Barna Research Group, 122
350 Subject Index
Before You Blow tool, 178, 321
Behavior modification, objection to,
253–254
Behaviorism, 14
Being and Time (Heidegger), 282
Benchmarks, 103, 122; for codes of
ethics, 189–190; international,
220, 224
Beneficence, 150
Benevolence, 79
Better Business Bureau (BBB), 93,
94–96; Standards for Charity
Accountability by, 96
Bias: impartiality standard and,
82–83; in information
handling and disclosure, 109;
Western, 232
Bill of Rights, 126–127, 277
Biomedical ethics, 67
Birth control, 67, 68–72
Blaming others, 98–102, 105–107
Blind trusts, 175
Board of Education, Brown vs.,
285, 287
Bosnia, 294
Bosses. See Supervisors
Bottom lines, in public sector, 30
Boy Scouts, 214
Bribery, 81–83, 275; global
perspectives on, 229; state codes
of ethics on, 200–201
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, 278, 279
Brookings Institution, 248
Brown vs. Board of Education,
285, 287
Brownlow Committee, 12
Buddhism, 29, 231, 238
Budget cutbacks: ethical dilemmas
of, 2–3, 4–6; impossible
promises and, 114
Buffalo, New York, 200
Bureaucracy: competence and,
113–114; compliance approach
and, 16; conformity in, 103;
ethic of neutrality and, 111;
instrumental view and, 11–12;
power and, 103, 267;
small-minded, 236; vigilante
ethics in, 254
Bureaucratic caution, 138
Bureaucratic mentality or
dispositions, 103
Bush administration (G.W.), 23, 28.
See also NAME INDEX: Bush,
G.W.
Bush administration (H.G.W.), 28.
See also NAME INDEX: Bush,
H.G.W.
Business model of ethics, 12–13,
112; work norms and, 242–243
C
California: Conflict of Interest
Code of, 288; ethics codes and
programs of, 200, 206, 208;
Political Reform Act of, 288
Camouflage, 131
“Can I live with this?” test, 93, 145,
155–156, 157
Canada: ethics programs in, 190,
222, 227, 291, 293; philosophical approaches in, 128
Career advancement, questionable
ethics in, 102–103
Caring (Noddings), 291
Carter administration, 23. See also
NAME INDEX: Carter, J.
Case for Bureaucracy, The (Goodsell),
103
Case management, 110
Cases, Internet resources for,
311–312
Categorical imperative, 125
Causes, analyzing, 152
Center for Public Integrity, 292
Center for the Study of Ethics in
the Professions, 217
Chain of obligation principle, 75
Challenger Space Shuttle disaster,
100–101
Channels, going through, 175–176
Character. See Moral character; individual integrity
Charity, 139, 150
Checklist, decision-making, 145,
146, 152–153
Chemical truck accident case
study, 66
Chernobyl disaster, 99
Cherokee Native Americans, 279
Chicago, ethics code of, 6, 200,
206–207
Chicago Metro Ethics Coalition, 81
Chile, 223

Subject Index 351
China: Hong Kong ICAC and,
222; seventeenth-century, 35,
82; Tiananmen Square protest
in, 291
Christianity, 274, 280
Chronology of ethics in public service, 272–300
Church-state separation, 57, 67,
68–72
Cities: codes of ethics of, 206–209;
conflict of interest in, 264–265
Citizenship role, dissent in, 62–63
City managers, 239
City of God (Augustine), 274
Civil disobedience, 61–62, 63; historical events of, 284, 285,
286–287, 289, 291
“Civil Disobedience” (Thoreau), 63
Civil Rights Act, 286, 287
Civil rights movement, 62, 281,
285, 286–287
Civil Service Reform Act of 1978,
290
Civil War scandals, 209, 246, 247,
280
Cleavage issues, 67
Clients, ethical behavior toward, 236
Clinton administration, 212. See also
NAME INDEX: Clinton, W. J.
CNN, 49, 67, 124
Code of Ethics for Government
Service, 191, 209, 285
Code of Federal Regulations, 16
Codes of ethics, 185–219; on appearance of impropriety, 87, 88,
198, 199–201; approaches
to, 185–188; benchmarking,
189–190; on conflict of
interest, 197–198, 200–201,
208–213, 215–219; disclosure
standards and, 88–90; enforcement of, 193, 211–212; ethics
systems and, 215; ethics training
and, 202–204; federal offices and,
209–214; on financial disclosure, 189, 196, 198–199, 205,
207, 212–213; future directions
in, 205–206; high standards of,
27; impact of, 191–193; implementation of, 191–196,
213–214; information handling
and, 107–108; Internet resources on, 304–305; limitations
of, 195–196; management of,
213–214; municipal, 206–209;
in nonprofit sector, 93; for nonprofits, 214–215, 244; oaths of
office and, 53–56; objectives of,
191–192; prevalence of, 190;
professional competence and,
112; pros and cons of, 185–191;
state, 192, 196–202; triggers of,
197, 214; types of, 191; variability of, 188–190, 196–197, 215;
workable, 193–195
Coercion, 11, 105
Cognitive development, 14, 134–136
Cognitive psychology, 142
Collaborative relationships,
244–247
Collateral compensation, 47, 49
Collective action, injury in, 161
Colorado, ethics code of, 200
Columbia Space Shuttle disaster,
100–101, 114
Comanche, 239–240
Common Cause, 192, 196, 198,
199–200, 206, 208, 288
Common Law, 85, 86, 256
Common sense, 92, 121, 122–124
Communication, protective, 66
Communism, 279
Communist Manifesto, 279
Community dialogue, 76–77
Community values, 231
Compassion, 34, 40; corporate protection and, in case study,
43–51; justice and, 39, 42, 49,
110; misguided, 244; to service
recipients and clients, 236
Compelling interest justification, 89
Compensation: for human life loss,
43–51, 168; to reduce harm,
166–167
Competence, 98, 112–114
Complexity, 29, 142–143, 158
Compliance: approach of, 1, 15–16;
disobedience and, 58–61,
104–106, 170–181; ethics audit
and, 262; ethics industry and,
210–211; integrity approach
combined with, 17–18, 247;
legal obligations and, 52–72,
115; ritualistic, versus taking responsibility, 251–252; training
for, 202–204, 211. See also Codes
of ethics; Controls and oversight; Legal requirements;
Obligations
Comprehensive Ethics Training
Compendium, 203
Compromise, 115
Conference on Ethics in Government, 293
Conferences, ethics: international,
226–230; in United States, 248
Confidence. See Public trust and
confidence
Confidence gap, 23–25
Confidentiality: ethical dilemmas
of, 5–6, 151–155; of financial
disclosure, 213; information
handling and, 108; state codes
of ethics on, 202, 203, 206
Conflict of interest, 33; appearance
of impropriety and, 84–88, 198,
199–201; avoiding, 80–88,
264–265; codes of ethics on,
197–198, 200–201, 208–209,
215–219; competing claims
and, 29–43; definitions of,
197–198; federal offices and
statutes on, 209–214; financial
disclosure for, 198–199,
212–213; impartiality standard
and, 83–84; international initiatives against, 228–229; principles behind prohibition of, 81;
public interest standard and, 33,
73–74, 80–88; role diagnosis for,
32, 33, 40; statutes on, 188, 191,
247
Conformity, 103, 104–106; appeal
to consensus and, 132–134
Confucianism, 231, 273
Confusion, 131
Congressional Quarterly, 246
Connecticut: ethics code of, 200,
205; Office of Policy and Management, 4; Supreme Court, 89
Conscience, 67, 68–72, 79–80
Conscientious dissent, 61–64
Conscientious refusal, 62
Consensus, 131, 132–134
Consistency, 153, 170
“Contract, The” case study, 33,
105, 116–117, 206, 208
Contractor relationships, 205–206,
245–246

Controls and oversight: accountability and, 16; compliance approach and, 16; debate about,
14–15; public service obligations and, 32–33. See also Compliance; Legal requirements;
Rules and regulations
Convention on Combating Bribery
of Foreign Public Officials, 296
Corporate social responsibility, 297
Corruption: codes of ethics and,
193; in democracies, 221, 231;
historical perspective on, 82–83,
220–221, 264–265; international initiatives against,
220–234; sale of office and,
80–83; taking responsibility for,
107; temptation for, 264–265; in
U.S. agencies, 263–265. See also
Scandals; Unethical conduct
Corruption Perceptions Index (TI),
224–226, 231
Corruption permissiveness index, 231
Cost-benefit analysis: inadequacy
of, 142; stakeholder analysis
and, 167–168; utilitarian principle and, 126; for valuing human
life, 46, 168
Council of Europe, 221, 224
Council on Environmental Quality,
259
Council on Governmental Ethics
Laws (COGEL), 190, 196, 197,
199, 207, 241, 248, 294
Counseling, 211
Countervailing responsibility, theory of, 30
Courage, 131, 241–242
Courts-martial, 59
Cover-ups, 175
Cowan Commission, 84
CRASH (Community Resources
Against Street Hoodlums), 100
Creative leadership, 170, 318
Credibility, establishing ethical, 92
Credos, 17, 192
Crito (Plato), 62
Cross-recruiting, 242–243, 267
Cultural differences and commonalities: global perspective on
ethics and, 230–233; workforce
diversity and, 238–240
352 Subject Index
Cultural relativism, 232
“Cutbacks and Priorities” case, 4–6
D
Damocles’ sword, 254
De Motu Animalium, 290
Deception: in information handling,
56, 108–109; self-, 171; types of,
174–175
Decision making: application of,
151–155; approaches to, summarized, 123; checklist for, 145,
146, 152–153; common sense
in, 121, 122–124; contextual
factors in, 142; ethical processes
of, 110–112; ethics impact statement (EthIS) process for, 255,
257–262; go/no-go model of,
64–67, 76, 261, 315; harm
avoidance priority in, 148–150,
153, 162; individual responsibility for, 102–109, 114–115; information handling and, 107–109;
models of, 142–147, 168; philosophical perspectives for,
121–129; resources for,
121–122; about response to unethical conduct, 170–178; responsibilities and, 147–148,
149; stakeholder analysis for,
161–181; strategies and tactics
for, 141–160; under time pressure, 146–147; tools for,
121–181, 313–321. See also Ethical analysis; Ethical reasoning
Deep Ecology, 51n.6, 289
Defeating Corruption Through Integrity, Transparency and Accountability, 298
Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct (DII),
245, 291, 292, 293
Defense procurement ethics,
237–238, 245–246, 292
Defining Issues Test, 136
Delaware, ethics code of, 200
Delegate role, 121, 130
Delphi technique, 263–264
Democracy: ethical public management and, 36, 39, 267; historical, 220–221; international
initiatives for ethics and, 227,
230–231; need for ethics and
public trust in, 21, 22–25, 38,
53, 220–221, 227, 230–231;
obligations of, 39; public interest
and, 75, 76; public service ethics
and, 36, 39, 267; values in, 29,
39, 76
Denial, 171, 174, 175
Deontological approach. See Principle-based approach
Dependency, client, 236
Deregulation, 168
Designated Agency Ethics Officers
(DAEOs), 210, 211, 213, 251
Deuteronomy, 82, 273
Dharma, 273
Diagnostic, for competing claims,
38–43
Disaster aid, Victim’s Compensation Fund and, 43–51
Disclosure: deceptive or defective,
108–109; ethical reasoning
about, 145, 170–178; ethics impact statement (EthIS) for, 262;
global perspectives on, 227; restrictions on, in state codes of
ethics, 202, 203; standard operating procedures (SOPs) and,
110; standards of, 3, 88–93. See
also Financial disclosure
Discretion: legal, 52–53; taking responsibility and, 109–110
Discrimination, 238–240, 285
Disobedience: ethical reasoning
about, 170–181; versus illegality,
58–61; individual responsibility
and, 104–106
Disqualification, 175–176
Distribution and redistribution, 166
District of Columbia, ethics standards of, 201
Diversionary tactics, 98–102
Diversity, workforce, 238–240
Document falsification, 66
Dominican Republic, 266
Donor Expectations Survey, 94–95
Downsizing, 2–3, 4–6
Drug testing, 254
Duplantier vs. United States, 254
Durban Commitment on
Corruption, 297

Subject Index 353
Duties, 31; conflicting, 67. See also
Obligations; Responsibilities;
Roles
Dutton Publishing Company, 216
Duty or principle approach. See
Principle-based approach
E
Eastern Europe, 224
Ecological viability, 77, 164
Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle
(Naess), 289
Education, budget cuts in, 2–3
Effectiveness: competence and,
112–114; consideration of, in
go/no-go decision model,
64–67; importance of, 64
Efficiency, 112–114
Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 104
Emergency management case study,
178–181
Emotional components, of decision
making, 143–144, 155
Empathy: criteria of, 152; impartial
open-mindedness and, 138; in
serving the public interest,
78–80; stakeholder analysis and,
167, 170
Employee age, and reporting of
workplace misconduct, 117
Employee ethics, 235–247
Employee references, deceptive, 7, 8
Empowerment, 11
Ends and means, 111–112, 267
Enforcement: agency, 210, 211; of
codes of ethics, 193; federal,
211–212; by professional associations, 32–33; prosecutorial,
211–212. See also Compliance
Engineering inspector case study, 60
English Common Law Standard of
the Common Man Rule, 86
Enron, 13, 105, 176–177, 298
Enterprise of Public Administration, The
(Waldo), 40
Environmental impact statements,
262
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), 111
Equal Rights Party, 279
Error in reasoning, 131
Ethic of structure, 105
Ethical analysis, 143; in Cutbacks
and Priorities case, 5–6; for
ethics impact statement (EthIS),
260–261; ethics impact statement (EthIS) process for, 255,
257–262; in personnel director
case, 151–155; risk and, 79. See
also Decision making; Ethical
reasoning
Ethical dilemmas: in emergency
evacuation, 179–181; everyday,
139; examples of, 1–3, 4–6,
151–155, 158–160; go/no-go
decision model for, 64–67, 129;
moral choice versus moral judgment in, 7–9; principle-based
and results-based approaches to,
129; role diagnosis for, 33;
strategies and tactics for resolving, 141–160, 170–178. See also
Decision making; Ethical reasoning
Ethical hangover, 144
Ethical reasoning: appeal to consensus in, 132–134; characterbased approach to, 121,
122–124; cognitive development
and, 134–136; combined deontologica/teleological approach
to, 126–129, 136, 144–146;
commonsense approach to, 121,
122–124; inconsistencies in, reasons for, 131–132; open-mindedness in, 129, 136–138;
philosophical perspectives for,
121–129; principle-based (deontological) approach to, 121, 123,
125–126, 127; purity versus receptivity in, 130–132, 136–138;
about responses to unethical
conduct, 170–178; results-oriented (teleological) approach to,
121, 123, 125, 126, 127; stakeholder analysis in, 161–181;
strategies and tactics for,
141–160. See also Decision making; Ethical analysis
“Ethical Traditions,” 128
Ethics: approaches to, 15–18; business management theory and,
11–13, 112; competing claims
and, 29–43; consideration of, in
go/no-go decision model,
64–67; defined, 6; diagnostic
for, 38–43; disabling versus empowering potential of, 11; public
versus private sector, 11–15, 21,
25–28, 242–243, 267; rules of
thumb for, 255, 256–257; scope
of public service and, 9–11
Ethics audit, 262–265
Ethics commissions, 12, 121–122;
experience in, 190; municipal,
207–208, 217–218; partisan
politics in, 195; state, 200–201;
types of, 190–191
Ethics committees, national,
222–223
Ethics impact statement (EthIS),
255, 257–262
Ethics in Government Act of 1978,
209, 251, 289
Ethics Officers Association, 293
Ethics offices: agency, 251; federal,
209–214
Ethics programs: anticorruption versus integrity, 221; development
of organizational, 248–255;
ethics impact statement (EthIS)
process for, 255, 257–262;
global perspective on, 220–234;
international conferences and,
226–230; of multinational organizations, 224–226; national,
222–223; objections to, countering, 251–254; prudence in,
254–255
Ethics Reform Act of 1989, 209
Ethics Resource Center (ERC), 102,
117, 190, 193, 204, 214, 263,
289, 290, 291
Ethics Responsibility Statement,
156
Ethics systems, codes of ethics and,
215
Ethics Update, The (COGEL), 190, 207
Ethnic identity, 239–240
European Commission, 296
European Union, 221
Excellence, 40
Excuses, 131
Executive Office of the President,
12, 259

Executive Order 11222, 209, 287
Executive Order 12291, 168
Executive Order 12674, 87, 200,
209, 210, 292
Executive Order 12731, 209
Executive Order 12805, 293
Executive Order 12866, 51n.5
Executive Personnel Financial Disclosure Report (SF 278),
212–213
Exodus, 29, 106, 273
Expansive reach, 162–163, 164, 320
Expertise, 108, 109–110
Explanation, ethical, 132–134
Extremism, 121
F
“Fact File,” 124
Fact finding, for ethics impact statement (EthIS), 260
“Fair Play or Foul at the U.S.
Olympic Committee?” case
study, 266–268
Family, 33–34, 39, 81
Fanaticism, 139
Favoritism, 81
Feasibility assessment, for ethics impact statement, 259
Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA), 46, 108
Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA), 43
Federal ethics offices and standards,
209–214; Internet resources on,
305. See also Agencies; Rules and
regulations, agency
Federal Register, 210
Federal regulatory process, contradictions in, 43–44
Federalism, 196
Federalist Papers, 91; no. 51, 82, 269,
277; no. 57, 76, 277
Feminism, 290, 291
Ferguson, Plessy vs., 285
Fiduciary, 33
Final Solution, 283
Financial disclosure: confidential,
213; electronic filing of, 189;
federal standards for, 212–213;
international efforts on, 227;
municipal codes on, 207; state
354 Subject Index
codes on, 196, 198–199, 205.
See also Disclosure
Fixthefund.org, 45
Flexibility, 136–138
Florida, ethics code of, 196, 200
Four Quarters (Eliot), 272
Fourteenth Amendment, 36, 39, 280
Fourth Amendment, 254
France, 223; revolutionary, 221
Frankfurt School, 286
Fraud: assessing vulnerability for,
263–264; procurement,
244–247
Freedom of Information Act, 227
Freedom of Information Commission, 89
Freedom of speech, 203, 218
“From Bounty to Booty” case
study, 78
Functions of the Executive, The
(Barnard), 11–12
Fundraising ethics, 93–97
Fusion approach, 1, 17–18, 247, 265
Future generation test, 151
Future generations: expanding
reach and, 164; serving the public interest and, 76–78
G
Gallup, 23, 67, 82, 124
Games, Internet resources for,
311–312
General Counsel, 210–211
General Dynamics, 291
General Motors, 289
General Order 212, 279
Geneva Convention, 100, 229, 280,
281, 284
Georgia, ethics code of, 200
Gestapo, 286
Global Crossing, 298
Global Forum on Fighting Corruption, 198, 296, 298, 299
Global perspective, 220–234; citizen-level, 230–233; on common
values, 227, 229–233; on
conflict-of-interest prohibition,
227–229; international
conferences and, 226–230;
Internet resources on, 307–309;
multinational organization
ethics initiatives and, 224–226;
national ethics initiatives and,
222–223; on need for ethics
programs, 220–222; regional
agreements and, 224
Globalization, 227
Go/no-go decision model, 64–67,
76, 129, 261, 315
Golden mean, 18, 274
Golden Rule, 125, 128
Government employees, number
of civilian, 2
Government Finance Officers
Association (GFOA), 17, 32–33,
64, 283
Government vehicle, private use
of, 7, 8
Great Britain: ethics programs of,
221, 222, 223, 293; red tape
and, 252; Seven Principles of
Public Life of, 223; Victorian,
221
“Great Society,” 79
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals (Kant), 276
Guide for the Perplexed, The (Moses
ben Maimon), 275
H
Haiti, 278, 279
Hammurabi Code, 31, 185, 272
Happiness, global perspectives on,
232–233
Harassment, 238, 254
“Hardly Neutral” case study, 110,
249
Harm avoidance or reduction, 40,
67, 141, 148–150, 153; collective action and, 162; via compensation, 166–167
Harris, 49
Harvard University, 36, 138
Hatch Act, 83, 218, 283
Hawaii, ethics code of, 200
Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA), 299
Helping, as priority, 150
Hinduism, 231, 273, 284
Hippocratic Oath, 274
History of ethics in public service,
272–300. See also U.S. history

Subject Index 355
History of Madness in the Classical Age,
The (Foucault), 285
Holocaust, 297. See also Nazi
Germany
Holy Bible, 274
Homeland Security Act, 298
Hong Kong, ethics programs of,
221, 222, 288–289
Honolulu, ethics code of, 207
Horizontal equity, 45
How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined
American Government (Morgan
and Reynolds), 85
Human dignity principle, 128
Human life, valuation of, 43–51, 168
Human relations school, 11–12
Humanitarian movement, 279, 282
Humility, 139, 169, 237
Hypocrisy, 117, 131, 138, 170, 175
I
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
(Angelou), 241
Idaho, ethics standards of, 201
Idealism, 79, 80
Ignorance, hiding behind, 107–109
Ill Wind, 291
Illegitimate regimes, 61
Illinois, ethics standards of,
188–189, 201
Illinois Institute of Technology,
Center for the Study of Ethics
in the Professions, 217
Imagination, 79, 80, 143–144, 155,
161, 168–170
Impartial open-mindedness, 137,
138
Impartiality standard: in ethical
reasoning, 129; in serving the
public interest, 73, 83–84
Implementation, 115
In a Different Voice (Gilligan), 290
“In the Black with the Red Cross”
case study, 93–97
Incompetence, 112–114
Independent Commission Against
Corruption (ICAC), Hong
Kong, 222, 289
Independent Counsel Law, 289
Independent Counsels, 197, 289,
293, 295
INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 9, 22, 93,
215, 263; values and ethics code
of, 37, 56
Indiana, ethics code of, 201
Individual integrity: ambiguity and,
35–36; approach of, 1, 16–17;
competing ethical claims and,
35–36; compliance approach
combined with, 17–18, 247; decision making based on,
143–144; mirror test for, 93;
open-mindedness and, 138; organizational pressures and,
102–106, 116–117; and responses to unethical conduct,
170–178; taking individual responsibility and, 98–117. See also
Moral character
Individual responsibility. See
Responsibility-taking
Industry society, 232
Informal Advisory Opinion
(OGE), 189
Information handling, 107–109,
151–155
Information society, 108
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, An (Smith), 276
Inside Bureaucracy (Downs), 170
“Inspector General, The”
(Gogol), 16
Inspectors General (IGs), 197, 210,
212, 293
Institute for Criminal Justice
Ethics, 217
Institute of Public Administration,
291
Institute on Governance,
Canada, 128
Institutional integrity, 37, 38
Instrumental approach: perspective
of, 11–13; public confidence
and, 22
Integrity. See Institutional integrity;
individual integrity
Integrity systems: in agencies, 251;
international, 221, 227
Integrity tests, 206, 254
Inter-American Convention Against
Corruption, 224, 225, 295
Inter-American Development
Bank, 221
International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), 229, 290, 295,
297, 299
International Association of Chiefs
of Police, Oath of Honor of,
89, 215
International City Managers’ Association (ICMA), 32, 192, 282;
ethics code of, 86, 89, 239
International Code of Conduct for
Public Office Holders, 294
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 292
International Criminal Court,
296, 299
International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 94, 279, 282
International Monetary Fund,
295, 297
International Municipal Law
Association, 207
International organizations. See
Global perspective; Multinational organizations
International Personnel Management Association (IPMA), 17
Internet: financial disclosure and,
189, 205; resources on,
301–312; transparency and, 227
Internet Center for Corruption
Research, 225, 234n.1
INTERPOL, 78
Interrogations, 128
Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation, An (Bentham), 277
Iowa, ethics code of, 201
Iran-Contra affair, 106, 107, 291
Iraq: Hussein regime of, 291; National Museum of Antiquities
of, 78, 299
IRS 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) status, 9,
97n.4
Islam, 231
J
Jacksonville, ethics code of, 207
Japan, World War II, 283–284
Jim Crow laws, 56
Job description, 105
Job risk assessment, 263–264

Job vulnerability assessment,
263–264
Josephson Institute, 29, 198, 241, 242
Journals, on public service ethics,
248, 301–302
Judaic-Christian values, 29
Judaism, 272, 273, 274–275
Judmentalism, 130–132, 169
“Just Say No” case study, 242
Justice: civil disobedience and,
61–62; compassion and, 39, 42,
49, 110; corruption and, 82;
moral development and, 135;
principles of, 287; stakeholder
analysis and, 166–167
K
Kaiser Family Foundation, Henry
J., 36, 138
Kane, Parsons, and Associates, 137
Kansas, ethics code of, 201
Karma, 273
Kefauver Commission, 285
Kentucky, ethics code of, 201
King County, Washington, 190
Kiowa, 239–240
Koran, 33, 274
KPMG, 95
Kristallnacht, 283
L
Lack of Character (Doris), 298
“Late Night Surprise, A” case study,
158–160
Law Enforcement Oath of Honor,
89, 215
Le Chambon, France, 125
Leadership: creative, 170; of ethics
impact statement (EthIS) process,
260; in ethics programs, 248–249
Learning theory, 14
Legacy, public interest and, 75, 77, 78
Legal requirements: agency rules
and, 58, 114–116; for avoiding
appearance of impropriety, 87,
199–201; consideration of, in
go/no-go decision model,
64–67; consideration of, in
rules of the game, 115;
Constitutional, 54, 56–57, 61;
356 Subject Index
disobedience and, 58–61; federal conflict-of-interest standards and, 209–214, 247; force
of, 56–64; oaths of office and,
53–56; obeying and implementing, 52–72; obligations and, 33,
52; sale of office and, 81; violation of, 191. See also Codes of
ethics; Compliance; Obligations
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail”
(King), 62, 286
Leviathan (Hobbes), 275
Leviticus, 31
Lewinski scandal, 97n.1, 297
Lex salica, 166
Liberty Fund, 93–97
Lima Declaration, 295
Line, drawing the, 171–174
Linear reasoning, 137, 142
Lithuania, 223
Little League, 214
Lobbying Disclosure Act, 294
Lobbying restrictions, 202, 205, 294
Local jurisdictions: codes of ethics
of, 206–209; Internet resources
on, 307; state regulation of, 205,
208–209
Loma Prieta earthquake, 94
Los Angeles: corruption in,
264–265; ethics code of, 190,
200, 207; Police Department
(LAPD), 100
Louisiana, ethics code of, 201
Loyalty conflict, 145, 241–242
Lying (Bok), 175
M
Machiavellian tradition, 129, 134
Machine model, 11–12
Machine politics, 82
Magna Carta, 82, 275
Maine, ethics code of, 201
Mama test, 7, 157
Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, The, 14
Management theory, 11–13, 112
Managers. See Supervisors
Maryland: ethics code of, 201;
ethics training in, 203
Massachusetts: ethics code of, 201,
206, 208–209; Ethics Commission of, 208–209
“Matter of Convenience, A” case
study, 139–140, 241, 242
“Matter of One Man’s Faith” case
study, 68–72
Matter of Principle, A (Dworkin), 62
Matthew, 274
Mayflower Compact, 275
Means and ends, 111–112, 267
Media: dealing with, 92–93, 172;
freedom of the press and, 276;
privacy and, 88–93, 206; selfcensorship of, 90
Medical and insurance records,
206, 254
Medical ethics, 67, 68–72, 274
Medicare, 3
Mental models, changing, 168–170
Mentoring, 238
Merit System Protections Board,
211, 292
Michigan, ethics code of, 201
Middle East, 224
Military service: disobedience versus
legality in, 59; diversion-scapegoat tactics in, 99–100; religious
conflict case study of, 68–72;
sexual harassment or assault in,
238, 292, 299
Minnesota, ethics code of, 201, 205
Mirror test for integrity, 93, 155, 157
Mission statement, 74
Mississippi, ethics code of, 196, 201
Missouri, ethics code of, 201
Missouri Compromise, 278
Model Ethics Law for State Government, A (Common Cause), 206
Modeling, ethical, 236–238,
248–249, 250
Montana, ethics code of, 201
Montgomery County, Maryland:
Ethics Code of, 85, 207; Ethics
Commission of, 207, 216–219;
Police Chief case study,
215–219
Moral absolutism, 136, 137
Moral character: defined, 6; as
guide to action, 122–124; integrity approach and, 16–17;
need for, in public service, 270.
See also individual integrity
Moral choice: defined, 6, 7; in
“Would I? Should I?” case, 7–9

Subject Index 357
Moral development, 134–136, 290
“Moral Dilemma,” 8
Moral imagination, 79, 80,
143–144, 155, 161, 168–170
Moral judgment: defined, 6, 7; in
“Would I? Should I?” case, 7–9
Moral malaise, 23
Moral relativism, 132, 136, 137,
232, 278
Moral superiority, 138–139
Mossad, 286
Motivation, 130–132
Multinational organizations: ethics
initiatives of, 221–222,
224–226; Internet resources on,
307–309
Municipal codes of ethics, 206–209
Municipal Finance Officers Association, 283
Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot), 270
Murphy’s Law, 113
Mutuality, public interest and, 75, 76
My Lai massacre, 99, 100
N
Namibia, 223
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), 100–101
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), 281, 285, 287
National Business Ethics Survey,
102, 117
National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks on the United States
(9–11 Commission), 108
National Environmental Policy
Act, 259
National Institute of Municipal
Law Officers, 199–200, 207
National Municipal League, 30–31,
196, 197, 199, 208
National Park Service ranger, 29
Native Americans, 239–240
Naval Ambulatory Care Center,
Groton, 68–72
Naval Bureau of Medicine and
Surgery, 70, 71
Nazi Germany, 61, 103, 104–105,
111, 125, 281, 282–284, 286
NBC News, 23
Nebraska, ethics code of, 201
Negative responsibility, 106
Negotiated agreements, 175
Nepotism
Network relationships, 244
Neutrality ethic, 111, 240
Nevada, ethics code of, 201
New Britain, Connecticut, 189
New Deal, 282
New Hampshire, ethics code of, 201
New Jersey: ethics agency of, 190;
ethics standards of, 201, 291
New Mexico, ethics code of, 201
New Public Administration, 287
New South Wales, 222
New York City: Conflict of Interest
Law of, 84; corruption in, 264;
education budget cutting in,
2–3; Police Department, 195
New York State: Department of
Civil Service, 240; Ethics Commission, 189; Ethics in Government Act of 1987, 199, 208;
ethics standards of, 201, 208
New York Times, 97n.1, 106
New York Weekly Journal, 276
New Zealand, 223
Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 254, 274
Nineteenth Amendment, 282
Nobel Peace Prize, 281, 286, 287,
294, 299
Nongovernmental organizations, 221
Nonprofit or independent sector:
codes of ethics for, 214–215,
244; employees and volunteers
in, 244; Internet listings for,
310–311; professional organizations for, 215; public interest
standard and, 73; scandals in,
93–97, 214, 265–268; scope of
public service and, 9–10
Norad, 108
North Carolina, ethics code of, 201
North Dakota: Code of Professional Conduct for Educators,
108; ethics standards of, 201
Norway, 221, 223
Not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude, 162
Nuremberg Charter, 103, 104
Nuremberg Race Laws, 282–283
Nuremberg tribunals, 59, 284
O
Oakland, ethics commission of, 207
Oath of Hippocrates, 88–89
Oaths of office, 53–56, 269; disclosure standards and, 88–89
Obedience: ethical reasoning about,
170–181; individual responsibility and, 104–106; versus legality,
58–63
Obligations, 31, 32–33; diagnostic
for values and, 38–43;
framework for decision making
and, 147–151; legal requirements and, 52–72; mapping, 36,
40–43; oaths of office and,
53–56; in public servicepersonal continuum, 38–43;
in serving the public interest,
73–97; to stakeholders, ranking,
164–166. See also Compliance;
Legal requirements; Responsibilities; Roles
Office of Government Ethics Reauthorization Act, 292
Ohio, ethics code of, 201
Oklahoma City bombing, 94,
178–181
Oklahoma City Police Department
(OCPD), 180–181
Oklahoma State: ethics standards
of, 201; Human Relations Development Department,
239–240
Olympic Athletes’ Oath, 265
Olympic Creed, 265
Olympics committee case study,
265–268
On Aphasia (Freud), 281
Open-mindedness: in ethical reasoning, 129, 136–138, 161;
global perspective and, 232; in
serving the public interest,
78–80; stakeholder analysis
and, 161
Oppression, 76, 77
“Oprah Winfrey Show,” 70
Options: assessing, 153–154; for
handling unethical conduct,
170–178
Oregon, ethics code of, 201

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), 22, 197–198, 220,
221, 222, 224, 248, 262, 263,
295; on conflict of interest, 227,
228–229, 230, 299; Convention
on Combating Bribery, 296;
Ethics Checklist of, 224, 226; online ethics information center of,
297; Public Management
Group (PUMA) of, 248, 295;
“Trust in Government” by, 297;
values of, 36–37
Organization for Security and Cooperation (Europe), 221, 224
Organization of American States
(OAS), 221, 224, 225, 248, 295
Organizational culture, pressures
for conformity and, 102–106,
116–117
Organizational ethics: in agencies,
235–268; codes for, 185–219;
global and multinational,
220–234; rules of thumb for,
255, 256–257
Ottoman Empire, 282
Oversight. See Compliance; Controls and oversight
Oversimplification, 149, 158
P
P.A. 96–303, 56
Packard Commission, 291
Pan Am Games, 266
Parkinson’s Law, 113
Participation, 115, 153
Partisanship, 82, 195
Partnerships: ethical issues in,
244–247; scope of public service and, 9–10
Party boss, 82
Peloponnesian War, The
(Thucydides), 53
Pendleton Act, 279, 280
Pennsylvania, ethics code of, 196,
199, 201
Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 277
Pennsylvania Packet & General Adviser, 276
Perfection versus perfecting, 113
Performance standards, 112–114
358 Subject Index
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 298
Personal dissent, 61–72; abuse of
public office for, 61–62
Personal integrity. See individual integrity
Personal role: conflicts of interest
and, 33–43, 80–88, 215–219;
defined, 30, 31–32; ethical
dilemmas of, 139–140,
151–155, 215–219; family and,
33–34, 39, 81; obligations of,
39; privacy issues and, 88–93,
206; stakeholders and, 162–163,
170; stakeholders and need for
expansive reach, 162–163
Peru, Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of, 299
Peter Principle, 113
Pew Center for the People and the
Press, 25
Philadelphia, ethics code of, 253
Philippines, 223
Philosophical perspectives,
121–130, 161
Philosophy of Moral Development, The
(Kohlberg), 290
Philosophy of Right (Hegel), 278
Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde), 144
Platonic tradition, 129
Plausible deniability, 107
Pledges, 53–56
Plessy vs. Ferguson, 285
Police chief case study, 215–219
Policy decisions, discretion in,
109–110
Political responsibility, 30
Political Science Quarterly, 281
Politics, partisan, 82, 195
Polygraph tests, 206, 254
Postmodern perspective, on dialogue in public interest, 76–77
Poverty Reduction and Economic
Management, 248
Power: bureaucracy and, 103, 267;
of information, 108; obligations
and, 52–53; serving the public
interest and, 73
Practical wisdom, 111
Pragmatism, 79, 80, 139, 154, 255
Pravda, 99
Precautionary principle, 75
Presidential office: importance of
character in, 123; oath of, 54
Presidential pardon, 133–134, 288
President’s Commission on Federal
Ethics Law Reform, 138,
193, 292
President’s Council on Integrity and
Efficiency, 206, 263, 264, 293
Prince, The (Machiavelli), 105, 275
Princeton Survey Research Associates, 94–95
Principle-based (deontological) approach, 121, 123, 125–126,
127; combined with results-oriented (teleontological) approach, 126–129, 136,
144–146; stakeholder analysis
and, 161, 167, 170
Principled yes, 150–151
Principles of Art of War (Sun Tze), 273
Principles of Ethical Conduct for
Government Officers and Employees, 22
Priorities: competing claims and,
29–31, 147–151; ranking, for
decision making, 147–151
Prison abuses, 99–100
Prisoner’s dilemma, 195
Privacy: concerns about vigilante
ethics and, 254; disclosure standards and, 88–93, 206; ethical
dilemmas of, 5–6; information
handling and, 108; international
initiatives on, 227; obligations
and values of, 39; public duties
and, 31, 88–93
“Private Gain or Public Victim?”
case study, 215–219
Private-sector recruits, 242–243, 267
Privatization, 168, 206
Procedural justice, 135
Procurement fraud, 244–247
Productivity: individual competence
and, 112; as public service
value, 39, 40, 112
Professional associations: with credos, 17; disclosure standards
and, 89–90; Internet listings of,
302–303; for nonprofits, 215;
oversight and enforcement by,
32–33; universal codes and, 208
Professional legacy, 15

Subject Index 359
Professionalism, 1; codes of ethics
and, 192–193; competence and,
112–114; conscientious dissent
and, 62–63; information handling and, 107–108; medical
ethics and, 67, 68–72; personal
integrity and, 38; professional
role and, 30, 32, 33; public interest and, 8–9, 77; public service and, 37–38
Program evaluation and review
techniques (PERT), 257
Program on Public Management and
Governance (PUMA), 248, 295
Promises, impossible, 114
Prosecutorial enforcement, 211–212
Prospect Theory (Kahneman and
Tversky), 142
Prudence, in ethics programs,
254–255
Prudent Person Rule, 86
Psychological contract, 103
Psychological perspectives, 14, 281,
296
Public Administration Review, 248
Public Broadcasting Service, 46
Public choice theory, 195
Public Integrity, 248, 270, 295
Public interest: across conditions,
78–80; across time, 76–78; concept of, 74–75; conflicts of interest for, 33, 73–74, 80–88;
ethics for, 13–15, 21, 25–28;
facets of, 74–80; global perspectives on, 229–230; professionalism and, 8–9, 77; self-interest
and, 73–74, 129, 162, 169; serving the, 73–97; standards of
serving, 73, 83–88; value of, 39;
values included in, 75
Public interest organizations,
303–304
Public opinion Web sites, 309–310
Public policy analysis, 168
Public service: competing claims in,
29–43, 147–151; ethics as disabling versus empowering in, 11;
ethics track record of, 11–15;
higher standards for, 25–28; history of ethics in, 22–23, 27,
82–83, 185, 186, 209, 220–221,
245–246, 247, 264–265,
272–300; importance of ethics
in, 21–33, 269–270; philosophical perspectives on, 129–130;
power in, 52–53; roles and duties in, 31–43; scope of, 9–10;
special calling of, 10; values in,
28–29, 36–37, 38–43
Public service-personal continuum,
9–10; conflicts of interest in,
80–88, 215–219; privacy issues
in, 88–93, 206; values and
obligations in, 38–43,
162–163, 170
Public service role: competing
claims on, 29–43, 147–151; formal obligations of, 32–33; private life and, 88–93
Public trust and confidence: appearance of impropriety standard and, 84–85, 91–92; in
democracies, internationally,
227; disclosure standards and,
91–92; downturn in, 23–25, 26,
42; in federal versus state and
local governments, 25, 26; index
of, 23, 24; need for ethics and,
22–25, 227; obligations and, 53;
personal integrity and, 38
“Public Works” case study, 90
Publicity and public perception: appearance of impropriety standard and, 84–88; handling,
92–93, 172; nonprofit sector
ethics and, 93–97; private life
and, 88–93
Publicity test for accountability and
appearance, 93, 144, 149,
155, 157
Punishments, 191, 212–213
Purity: versus pluralism, 136–138;
versus receptivity, 130–132,
136–138
Pursue the Public Interest tool, 316
Q
Quandaries game, 203, 312
Quinnipiac University, 49
R
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (RICO), 287
Rank Responsibilities tool,
149–150, 316
Rational-actor model, 142
Rationality, 74, 142
Rationalization, 127, 131, 137
Ratting, 176
“Read All About It” case study, 82–83
Reagan administration, 23, 28. See
also NAME INDEX: Reagan, R.
Realism, 79, 80
Receptivity versus purity, 130–132,
136–138
Reciprocity, 161, 170
Reconciliation, 136–138
Record, going on, 92
Recruits, new, 242–243
Recusal, 175–176
Red Cross. See American Red Cross
Red River flood, 94
Red tape, 14, 252–253
Reference point, 142–143
Regional agreements, international,
224
Regulations. See Rules and regulations
Regulatory process, federal, 43–44
Regulatory review, 168
Reinventing Government (Osborne and
Gaebler), 293
Religious accommodation, 70–71
Religious beliefs: conflicts of public
service and, 67, 68–72; global
perspectives and, 231
Repression, 76
Research organizations, 303–304
Resignation, 177
Respect for others, stakeholder
analysis and, 161, 170
Responsibilities, 31; framework for
decision making and, 147–151;
ranking, 149–150, 316. See also
Obligations; Roles
Responsibility-taking: versus blaming
others, 98–102, 105–107; competence and, 98, 112–114; for
conscientious dissent, 62–63;
decision making and, 155–156,
157; for ethics impact statement
(EthIS), 261; individual, 98–117;
information handling and,
107–109; organizational pressures and, 102–106, 116–117;

Responsibility-taking (continued)
for processes and means,
109–112; ritualistic compliance
versus, 251–252; substantive, 98;
supervisor-subordinate relationship and, 104–107, 116–117,
241–242
Responsible Manager, The (Rion),
146–147
Results-oriented (teleological) approach, 121, 123, 125, 126,
127; combined with principlebased (deontological) approach,
126–129, 136, 144–146; moral
imagination with, 144; stakeholder analysis and, 161,
167, 170
Reversibility, 170. See also Empathy
Revolving-door statutes, 202
Reward, of ethical behavior, 252
Rhetoric, 131
Rhode Island, ethics code of, 201
“Right at Ground Zero” case,
43–51, 168
Right-versus-right decisions, 124. See
also Decision making; Ethical
dilemmas
Risk, ethical analysis and, 79
Ritualistic compliance, 251–252
Rock, The (Eliot), 193
Role Diagnosis tool, 32, 33, 40, 314
Roles: competing claims and,
29–43, 147–151; inconsistent
ethical reasoning and, 131;
mapping values and obligations
and, 39–43; philosophical perspectives and, 130; ranking, 149
Roman republic, 221
Romance, in workplace, 158–160
Rule of law, 52
Rule utilitarianism, 126, 127
Rules and regulations, agency: conflict-of-interest, 209–213, 247;
enforcement of, 211–212; federal, 209–214; individual responsibility and, 114–116;
training on, 202–204, 211;
weighting of, 58. See also Codes
of ethics; Legal requirements;
Obligations; Statutes
Rules of the game, 115
Rules of thumb, 255, 256–257
360 Subject Index
Rural Recovery Administration, 285
Russia, nineteenth-century, 236
Rwanda, 294
S
Sabotage, 175
Sale of office, 80–83
San Diego wildfires, 94
San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 188
Sand County Almanac, A (Leopold),
284
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 13, 298
Savings-and-loan scandals, 200
Scandals: in agency-contractor relationships, 245; appearance of
impropriety and, 200; confidence gap and, 23, 42; corporate, 13; corruption and, 82;
media reporting of, 88, 90,
93–97; in nonprofit sector,
93–97, 214; private life and, 88,
90; as triggers for ethics codes
and standards, 197, 214, 221,
227, 246. See also Corruption;
Unethical conduct
Scapegoating, 98–102
Scenarios, Internet resources for,
311–312
Scientific management, 11–12
Scoping, for ethics impact statement, 259–260
Secular-rational values, 231
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 13, 298
Seek Inclusion tool, 320
Selectivity, 131, 171–174
Self-expression values, 231
Self-interest: not-in-my-backyard
(NIMBY) attitude and, 162;
obligation to serve public interest versus, 73–74; public interest
versus, 129; stakeholder interests
and, 162, 169
Self-protection, 66–67, 92
Self-righteousness, 130–132, 169
Self-sufficiency, 121
Self-testing, 155–156, 157–158
Self-victimization, 113–114
Senior Executive Service file
disclosures, 212–213
September 11, 2001: American Red
Cross fundraising for, 93–97;
Commission report on, 108; legislation resulting from, 298; Victim’s Compensation Fund
(VCF) for, 43–51, 127, 168
Sexual harassment or assault, 238,
292, 299
“Should the Agency Head Resign?”
case study, 107
Signature test for personal
responsibility, 93
Simulations, 203
Sixteenth Amendment, 36, 39
Slavery Abolition Act (British), 278
Slavery and anti-slavery events, 278,
279, 285
Slippery slope, 174
Slovakia, 225
Slurs, 175
Sniper case, 215–219
Social conscience, 79–80
Social contract, 275, 276, 287
Social Contract (Rousseau), 14, 276
Social equity, as public service
value, 39, 40
Social learning theory, 238
Social Security, 9
Social service recipients, ethical behavior toward, 236
Socialism, 279
Society of Friends, 278
Society of Professional Journalists,
ethics code of, 89–90
Sociological perspectives, 14
Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 281
South Africa: apartheid, 284, 289;
ethics programs of, 223, 227,
229–230; post-apartheid, 292,
294, 295; Public Service Commission of, 229–230; Truth and
Reconciliation Committee of,
294
South African Students’ Organization, 289
South Carolina, ethics code of, 201
South Dakota, ethics code of, 201
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, 286
Stability Pact, 224
Staffing, of federal agency ethics
functions, 210–211

Subject Index 361
Stakeholder analysis, 161–181; amplications and uses of, 167–178;
cost-benefit analysis and,
167–168; diagnostic for,
164–166, 319; in emergency
management, 179; moral imagination and, 168–170; philosophical perspectives of, 161, 167
Stakeholder Diagnostic, 164–166,
319
Stakeholders: in ethics industry,
211; external and direct, 164;
external and indirect, 164;
friends and, 152; internal, 163;
ranking obligations to, 164–166;
self as, 170; types of, 163–164
Standard operating procedures
(SOPs), 110, 179, 180, 181,
249, 255
Standards: need for higher than average, 25–28; performance,
112–114. See also Codes of ethics
Standards of conduct. See Codes of
ethics
Starr Report, 97n.1
State codes of ethics, 192, 196–202,
241; Internet resources on,
306–307
State University of New York, 189
Statutes: conflict-of-interest, 188,
191, 208–213, 247; model, 206;
revolving-door, 202; scandals as
triggers of, 246. See also Codes of
ethics; Legal requirements;
Rules and regulations
Stereotyping, 103
Stewardship, 33, 75, 76, 79, 130
Stockholm International Forum on
the Holocaust, 297
Stoicism, 274
Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere, The (Habermas), 286
“Study of Administration, The”
(Wilson), 281
Subordinates, hiding behind, 106–107
Sue, waiver of right to, 43, 44
Suffragist movement, 279, 280
Sullivan Principles of Corporate
Social Responsibility, 289, 297
Supervisors: disclosure to, 176; ethical modeling by, 236–238,
248–249, 250; hiding of, behind
subordinates, 106–107; loyalty
to, versus taking individual responsibility, 105–106, 116–117,
241–242; protection of subordinates by, 92; role of, in shaping
ethics, 235–238; time abuse
and, 241–242
Supplier relationships, 244–247
Survival values, 231
Sustainability, public interest and,
75, 77
T
Taft administration, 177
Tailhook scandal, 292
Tammany machine, 264
Tao Te Chin (Lao-tze), 273
Taoism, 273
Team ethic, 243
Teapot Dome scandal, 282
Teleological approach. See Resultsoriented approach
Temptation, 264–265
Ten Commandments, 56, 272
Tennessee, ethics code of, 201
Terrorism, 61. See also Oklahoma
City bombing; September 11,
2001
“Test Ethical Decisions” case,
157–158
Testing, 206
Texas, ethics code of, 201
Theologico-Political Treatise (Spinoza),
275
Theory of Justice, A (Rawls), 79, 287
Theory of Moral Sentiments, The
(Smith), 276
Thomas More Center, 71
Three Seductive Ideas (Kagan), 296
Threshold test, 150–151, 154, 317
Through the Looking Glass (Carroll),
158
Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche),
280–281
Tiananmen Square, 291
Tiering, 260
Time, 49
Time abuse, 240–242
Time loss, 240
Time pressure, decision-making
framework for, 146–147
Tip-off dilemma, 7, 8–9
“To Obey or Not to Obey!” case
study, 60
To Serve with Honor (President’s Commission on Federal Ethics Law
Reform), 193, 292
Tort claims, 46
Total Quality Management, 112
“Tough Call” case study, 124
Tower Report on Iran-Contra, 291
Trade-offs, in collective action, 162
Traditional values, 231
Trail of Tears, 279
Training, ethics, 202–204, 211
Transparency: of democracies,
221, 227; international
emphasis on, 227
Transparency International (TI),
221, 224–226, 231, 293
Treatise of Human Nature, A (Hume),
276
Trust. See Public trust
Trust in Government, 224
Trust in Government Index, 23, 24
Trustee principle, 75, 76
Trustee role, 121, 130
Truth-telling, 92
Tutsis, 294
Twenty-fifth Amendment, 288
Two Treatises of Government
(Locke), 275
Tyco, 13
U
Uganda, 223
Ulysses (Joyce), 15
Unabomber, 124
Uncertainty, 29
Underground Railroad, 279
Unethical conduct: decision making
about, 170–178; disobedience
and, 58–61, 104–106; filtering,
171–174; impact of training on,
204; responses to, options for,
171. See also Corruption; Scandals
Uniform Code of Military Justice
(UCMJ), 59, 69
United Nations: Anti-Corruption
Convention, 80–81, 221–222, 226,
229, 298, 299; Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 296;

United Nations (continued)
Economic and Social Council,
294; Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 77, 78; General Assembly, 34, 221, 284; Human
Rights Award, 286; International Criminal Tribunals and
Court, 293, 294, 296, 299; Security Council, 78; Supplementary Convention on the
Abolition of Slavery, 285
United States, Duplantier vs., 254
U.S. Air Force, 59
U.S. Air Force Academy, 238, 299
U.S. Army, 99–100
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
167–168
U.S. Attorneys, 210, 211–212
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2, 46
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 46, 82
U.S. Code of Conduct, 223
United States Code (U.S.C.), 16, 54,
55; 18, 202, 209, 212, 246, 280,
286
U.S. Congress, 3, 88; ethics committees of, 190; federal ethics
legislation and, 56, 210, 211,
285, 289, 290; U.S. Olympics
Committee and, 267; Victim
Compensation Fund and, 45,
47, 49
U.S. Constitution, 36, 71, 82, 135,
163, 195, 277; oaths of office
and, 54, 56–57, 58, 61; preamble to, 269
U.S. Constitutional Convention, 277
U.S. Declaration of Independence,
276, 279
U.S. Department of Defense
(DOD), 3, 81, 100, 245, 263, 292
U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, 3
U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD), 198
U.S. Department of Justice, 16, 43,
203, 266, 285; Public Integrity
Section, 210, 211–212
U.S. Department of the Treasury,
209, 277, 278
U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
266, 268n.1, 281, 289
362 Subject Index
U.S. General Accounting Office,
210, 211–212, 247, 263–264
U.S. government: conflict-of-interest
prohibitions in, 209–213; ethics
offices and standards of,
209–214; Internet resources on,
305, 307; moral stage of, 135;
utilitarianism in, 126. See also
Agencies
U.S. history: accountability preoccupation in, 16; codes of ethics
in, 185, 186; conflict-of-interest
statutes in, 209, 247; corruption
in, 264–265; ethics and public
trust in, 22–23, 27; procurement fraud in, 245–246. See also
Chronology of ethics in public
service
U.S. House of Representatives, 58,
222; Committee on Standards
of Official Conduct in, 195
U.S. Information Agency, 293
U.S. Internal Revenue Service,
87, 285
U.S. Military Academy, 99, 100
U.S. Naval Academy, 298
U.S. Navy, 68–72, 292
U.S. Office of Government Ethics
(OGE), 87, 189, 190, 197, 202,
209, 210, 212, 248, 249, 251,
291; Agency Ethics Program
Questionnaire of, 263; federal
employee survey of, 252–253; financial disclosure to, 212–213;
history and role of, 209–210,
211, 221, 222, 289, 292; international involvement of, 293;
Monitoring and Compliance
Division, 212–213; on time
abuse, 241
U.S. Office of Management and
Budget, 210
U.S. Office of Personnel
Management, 209
U.S. Office of Special Counsel, 3,
197, 210, 218, 283, 290
U.S. Office of the Independent
Counsel, 97n.1, 197
U.S. Olympic Committee, 93, 214,
265–268; case study of,
266–268; Ethics Oversight
Committee of, 266–267
U.S. Organized Crime Control Act,
287
U.S. Postal Service, Code of Conduct for, 185, 186, 278
U.S. Senate, 99–101, 109–110, 130,
263, 267; Armed Services Committee, 99–100; Commerce
Committee, 101; ethics code
and committee of, 193, 222; financial disclosure and, 212
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations, 13, 292
U.S. Supreme Court, 56–57, 58, 59,
62, 130, 198, 254, 285, 287
United Way of America, 214
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, 34, 80, 284
Universality, 153, 170
University of Arkansas, 133
Urban Institute, Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, 93
USA PATRIOT Act, 298
USA Today, 67, 124
Utah, ethics code of, 201
Utilitarianism, 126, 127, 136, 167,
170, 279
Utilitarianism (Mill), 279
V
Vacation time, 240
“Valor, Compliance, and Compassion” case study, 178–181
Values: in ancient traditions, 28–29;
authoritative allocation of, 73;
competing, in public service-personal continuum, 38–43; competing, in “Right at Ground
Zero” case study, 43–51; in
democracy, 29, 39, 76; diagnostic for obligations and, 38–43;
global commonalities in, 227,
229–233; mapping, 40–43;
moral character and, 6; in public service, 28–29, 36–37, 38–43;
in serving the public interest, 75
Values and Vision for the TwentyFirst Century tool, 270
Vermont, ethics code of, 201
Vertical equity, 45
Victim’s Compensation Fund
(VCF), 43–51, 127, 168

Subject Index 363
Video games, 203
Vietnam War, 99, 100, 105, 175–176
Vigilante ethics, 138–139, 254
Violations, 191
Virginia, ethics code of, 196, 201
Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 276
Virtu, 26
Virtue ethics, 122
Virtues, moderating, 139
Visceral test, 93, 145, 155–156, 157
Volcker Commission, 112, 114,
123, 195
Volunteer ethics, 244, 245
Voting Rights Act, 287
Vulnerability: client, 236; job, 263–264
W
Wall Street Journal, 23, 122
Wannassee Conference, 283
“War on Poverty,” 79
Washington Post, 36, 67, 95, 96,
138, 218
Washington State: ethics code of,
201; Supreme Court, 89
Watergate scandal, 23, 106, 174,
175, 197, 221, 288
West Virginia: Ethics Act of, 83,
251; ethics commission of, 251;
ethics standards of, 201, 206
Western bias, 232
Whistle Blower Protection Act, 292
Whistle-blowing, 3, 176–177, 178;
federal protection of, 210, 277,
292; state codes of ethics on,
200–201
White-collar crime, 263–264
Whitewater scandal, 97n.1,
293, 297
Why Not The Best? (Carter), 13–14
Wilmington, North Carolina, 189
Wisconsin: ethics agency of, 190;
ethics standar

Lewis

ds of, 201, 205
Wise Giving Alliance, 94–95
Women’s rights movement,
279, 280
Work norms, 242–243
Workforce diversity, 238–240
World Bank, 221, 222, 224,
248, 295
World Bank Institute, 248
World Heritage Convention, 77
World Values Survey (WVS),
230–231, 232
World War II, 283–284
WorldCom, 13, 298
“Would I? Should I” case, 7–9
Wyoming, ethics code of, 201
Y
Yale University, 104