Practical Ethics in Public Administration - Softcover

Geuras, Dean; Garofalo, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567262953 ISBN 13: 9781567262957

Publisher: Management Concepts, 2011

Synopsis

Ethically problematic cases occur everywhere, but rarely can the implications be as wide-reaching or the consequences as serious as with those in the arena of public management. Most people working in the public sector want to do the 'right' thing, but the issues involved can be complex, and sometimes the answers are anything but easy. This third edition of Practical Ethics in Public Administration offers, at its core, the tools, techniques and methods needed to clarify difficult or problematic ethical situations and to determine the best course of action.

Designed for use as a text on public administration and professional ethics courses, or as a reference book for those working in the public sector, Practical Ethics in Public Administration is an engaging and informative blend of theory and practice. The authors introduce established ethical theories and, using real-life and hypothetical examples, develop a unified ethical approach that can be applied to everyday situations. Readers will learn the ethical nature of questions such as whether to fire an employee, how to allocate departmental funds and how to evaluate an employee's performance in a yearly appraisal.

New material in this edition also covers the emerging ethical issues related to private-public partnerships, the shift from compliance-based to moral-based integrity and the context of moral complacency.

About this title

About the Authors

Dean Geuras is Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University. In addition to articles in his own field of philosophy, Dr. Geuras has authored several interdisciplinary publications in the fields of theology, counseling, and, in collaboration with Dr. Charles Garofalo, ethics in public administration. Their previous book, Ethics in the Public Service: The Moral Mind at Work, was selected among the top academic titles of the year 2000 by Choice magazine.

Charles Garofalo is Professor of Political Science at Texas State University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration ethics, public policy, business-government relations, and comparative public administration. His research focuses on administrative ethics, with recent publications including Ethics in the Public Service: The Moral Mind at Work (with Dean Geuras). He also has published in a number of journals, including the American Review of Public Administration, the International Journal of Public Sector Management, the Innovation Journal, the Journal of Management History, and Global Virtue Ethics Review . His career also includes both governmental and university administration.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Practical Ethics in Public Administration

By Dean Geuras, Charles Garofalo

Management Concepts Press

Copyright © 2011 Management Concepts, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-56726-295-7

Contents

Preface, 
CHAPTER 1. The Real World, 
CHAPTER 2. Ethics in the Public Sector/Ethics in the Private Sector, 
CHAPTER 3. What Is Ethics, Anyway?, 
CHAPTER 4. Raising the Right Questions: Ethical Approaches to Five Important Cases, 
CHAPTER 5. The Real World Revisited, 
CHAPTER 6. Who Am I? Who Do I Want to Be? What Do I Want?, 
CHAPTER 7. Making Choices, 
CHAPTER 8. Problems That Might Arise and How to Analyze Them, 
CHAPTER 9. Developing an Ethical Style: How Would You Analyze Problems That Might Arise?, 
CHAPTER 10. Addressing Public Ethical Conflict by Means of the Unified Ethic, 
CHAPTER 11. Leadership Development and Moral Agency in Contemporary Governance, 
CHAPTER 12. Perspectives on Contemporary Reform: Reinventing Government and the New Public Management, 
CHAPTER 13. Ethics, Quality, and Performance, 
CHAPTER 14. Ethical Dilemmas in Hybridization and Outsourcing, 
CHAPTER 15. The Competent Moral Agent, 
CHAPTER 16. Wrap-Up and Key Points, 
Afterword, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Real World

Different people at different levels of different public organizations define their work environments in different ways. If you are at or near the top of a health or human services agency, you tend to see things in one way. If you are in the middle of a public works hierarchy, then you probably see things somewhat differently. If you are just starting your career in an environmental bureaucracy, you probably see things in a still different way. But public managers, veterans and novices alike, live in what is often called "the real world" — a world of agendas, budgets, and meetings, a world of strategies, internal and interagency political games and power plays, a world of turf battles and empire building. It is a world of relationships with private contractors, interest groups, citizens' organizations, and the media. It is what academics might call an instrumental world, characterized by goal-setting, priorities, and deadlines. It is a world in which you may sometimes need to sit with your back to the wall in order to survive. It is a world of climbers, jungle fighters, and even statesmen and women. It can be exciting, tedious, fulfilling, monotonous, inspiring, or dull, depending on the day, the people around you, the mood you are in, the conversation you just had with your boss, or any number of other things. It is, in other words, the world of work in American public service.

But what makes this world real? Or to put it another way, real compared to what? Is the reality of this world based on the fact that there are consequences that go with decisions and actions, consequences that affect people's lives or agencies' futures? Is it based as well on the explicit and implicit power relationships that tend to govern behavior? Does it also include the focus on getting the job done?

If these are at least a few of the relevant considerations in determining what makes the administrative world real, then we must note that these characteristics can be found in other worlds as well. For example, despite its image as a protected and placid environment of navel gazers, even the academic world is replete with the very attributes associated with so-called more practical settings. On university campuses, the issues of accountability and responsibility are real and enduring in the lives of students and academic staff, a

Edition details

• Publisher: Management Concepts
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567262953
• ISBN 13: 9781567262957
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 440