Teaching public service ethics: a critique of some current approaches
| Date | 01 September 1983 |
| Author | Gatian F Lungu |
| DOI | 10.1177/014473948300300202 |
| Published date | 01 September 1983 |
TEACHING
PUBLIC
SERVICE
ETHICS:
A
CRITIQUE
OF
SOME
CURRENT
APPROACHES
GAT
IAN
F
LUNGU
INTRODUCTION
The
need
for
training
public
administrators
for
ethical
responsibility
has
been
widely
acknowledged
in
recent
years.
Frequent
revelations
of
corruption
involving
public
officials
in
many
Third
World
countries,
and
scandals
like
Watergate
in
developed
countries
have
stirred
considerable
academic
and
public
interest
in
the
conduct
of
public
officials.(l)
Prompted
by
these
problems,
schools
and
institutes
of
public
administration
have
restructured
their
programmes
to
include
ethical
issues.
Questions
have
been
raised
regarding
the
efficacy
of
public
administration
education
that
emphasises
theories
and
techniques
of
modern
manage-
ment
to
the
exclusion
of
ethical
considerations.
Lilla,
for
example,
is
critical
of
current
quantitative
approaches
to
the
teaching
of
public
administration:
'The
value
of
this
sort
of
training
for
government
service
is,
I
think,
great.
Economics,
statistics,
and
mathematical
reasoning
all
help
the
official
use
his
discretion
more
responsibly
by
building
his
intuition
about
the
second
and
third
order
effects
of
government
policies,
and
in
this
sense
an
education
in
public policy
is
a
far
superior
preparation
for
government
service
than
was
the
old
public
adminis-
tration.
But
however
inadequate
the
old
public
admin-
istration
was
in
analytic
sophistication,
it
did
embody
an
ethos
which
prepared
the
student,
through
informal
moral
education,
to
take
place
within
a
democratic
government.
Public
policy
has
no
such
ethos,
if
it
has
any
at
all
it
is
a
scientific
one
wherein
the
main
virtue
is
efficiency.
'(2)
In
response
to
concerns
such
as
this,
courses
on
and
research
into
administrative
ethics
have
been
mounted
by
colleges,
universities,
and
institutes
of
public
20
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