lecturer: prof. justice nyigmah bawole, ugbs contact ... · college of education school of...

College of Education

School of Continuing and Distance Education 2014/2015 – 2016/2017

Lecturer: Prof. Justice Nyigmah Bawole, UGBS Contact Information: [email protected]

2016 / 2017 – 2017 / 2018

Session Overview

• This session explains specific ethical responsibilities of managers of public organizations and individuals public officials. The session discusses why public officers should take responsibility in promoting ethics.

• Three directions towards future ethical behaviour in relation to specific values and standards in public service are explained.

PAHS 414-ICDE Slide 2 PAHS 414-ICDE 2018-Prof. Justice Nyigmah Bawole

Session Objectives

By the end of this session, students should be able to:

• Understand why public officers should take responsibility in promoting ethics

• Explain the track record of public administration

• Explore individual responsibility

• Discuss three roads to the future of ethical organizational environment

• Outline ethical values and standards in public service

PAHS 414-ICDE 2018-Prof. Justice Nyigmah Bawole

PAHS 414-ICDE Slide 3

Session Outline

The key topics to be covered in this session include:

• Why public officers should take responsibility

• Public administration track record

• Individual responsibility

• Three Roads to the future

• Values and standards in public service

Slide 4 PAHS 414-ICDE 2018-Prof. Justice

Nyigmah Bawole PAHS 414-ICDE

Introduction

• Public managers’ morale, identity, and capacity for decision making and innovation are entangled in ethics.

• Public services are social instruments for managing complexity.

Slide 5 PAHS 414-ICDE 2018-Prof. Justice Nyigmah Bawole

PAHS 414-ICDE

Public Administration’s Track Record

Understanding the nature of ethic in public service helps us to understand where we are now, what it means and how we arrived.

Process underpinned by management theories:

• Business backdrop

• Rediscovery of the ethical enterprise

• Professional Legacy



Why me?

• Public confidence

• High standards

• Public service values



Individual responsibility

Searching for Demons:

• Dodging difficult issues by finger pointing and using a person as escape hatch: victim or villain.

• We cant hide behind our boss or desk to escape responsibility.

• We cant hide behind our subordinates

• We cant hide behind our ignorance



Three Roads to the Future

The law road of compliance:

• The approach to ethics is designed to spur obedience to minimum standards and legal prohibition.

• It involves prescriptive, coercive, punitive and even threatening route.



The high road of integrity:

• Relying on moral character, the route counts on ethical managers individually to reflect, decide, and act.

• Involves normative, voluntary, and persuasiveness. No external inducements or penalties.



The fusion route:

• Managers cope in the gray areas: between minimum standards and voluntary moral character.

• Legitimate but competing values and principles.



Values and standards in public service



What counts? Types of values and standards

Productivity Democracy

Hard economy, efficiency, competence, expertise, merit, Hamiltonian, bureaucracy, technical implementations

Soft, accountability, representativeness, citizen access, policy advocacy, Jeffersonian bureaucracy, volunteerism, public demand

Counting others? How individuals are treated

Justice Compassion

Uniformity, standardization, rules, neutrality, stability, precedent, 14th Amendment to US constitution

Responsiveness, equity, circumstance, flexibility, 16th Amendment

Who counts? Unit for analysis for identifying and ranking interest/stakes

General Individual

Rights, overarching public good, cost-benefit analysis, allocational issues, future generations, global ecology

Liberty, client, claims, majority interest, distributional issues, private property, privacy

Counting source? Primary role-generating obligations

Public service Personal

Law, public interest, regulations, chain of command Self-interest, career, family

Conclusion

We conclude this session with the following remarks:

• The roles of both public managers and individuals have key responsibilities in promoting high ethical standards in public sector.

• Understand why public officers should take responsibility in promoting ethics



ACTIVITY

• Why and how can individual citizens be responsible in promoting ethics?

• What values and standards are required for promoting the ethical values and ethos of the public sector?



END OF SESSION 13



lecturer: prof. justice nyigmah bawole, ugbs contact ... · college of education school of...

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