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More handpicked essays just for you.
The role and importance of public administration in modern society
The role and importance of public administration in modern society
Essay on procedural fairness
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The civil service profession was founded on the belief that through the use of public funds, government would deliver efficient and effective services to its constituency in a just, fair, and equitable manner that advances the public interest (Klingner, Nalbandian, & Llorens, 2010). Operating in complex democratic arenas, public administrators have an array of responsibilities, such as: putting public interest over personal, upholding the law, exercising fiduciary responsibility, ensuring procedural fairness, and more (Svara, 2007). Public administrators operate within an authority structure, work with others to advance organizational mission, and have a responsibility to make the organization as strong, effective, and ethical as possible …show more content…
Because one’s personal ethics are our foundation, they often influence how we administer ethical codes of conduct in carrying out our organizational duties. How close to the line are we willing to go before we cross over into the unethical arena of the mandates, rules, and regulations handed down to us in our professional career? If you are raised with the understanding that stealing is wrong - no matter how big or small – should you do it? For example, do you return the ink pen that you unconsciously put in your shirt pocket and took home which can now be used for personal use? The rules say that to ensure you are maximizing efficiency and work time, agency resources should not be utilized for employee celebrations or gatherings. Nor should public time be used to hold fundraising events to subsidize them. However, to boost morale and keep productivity up, should public organizations look the other way and allow such activities even on a limited basis? Svara states that the valuable aspects of each approach should be incorporated in one’s own ethical reasoning. One should identify those traits that define his or her character …show more content…
Without vision, mission, and goals for organizations to govern themselves by, it is venerable to the personal values, or the lack there of, imposed by administrators. John Bryson states, an organization that forgets its mission will drift, and opportunism and loss of integrity are likely to spread and perhaps become rampant (Bryson, 2011). This was the case in the City of Bell scandal which focused on city officials engaged in acts of negligent and gross misappropriation of city funds for personal, gain over several years, in the late 2000’s. In addition, the residents had no standards in which to hold their Administrators and Officials
This is better explained by the public servant knowing why he is doing the job and who it is benefiting, socially, and how he is impacting and making a change for the better in their own mind, personal. In the first two “chapters” of Caught between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to
Accountable and transparent to the public it is serving is a key feature of a public manager. These two concepts greatly measures the effectiveness of government. Being accountable simply implies being answerable to your actions as a public servant. Transparent on the other hand clearly implies the act of being open to the people. Organizations should abide by law and directives issued by government. This provides accounts of their compliance (Rainey, p 105). An effective government is one that is both accountable and transparent. “Public agencies receive request for helpful, reasonable, and flexible responses to the needs of client, their activities are public business, and citizens and the media demand relative openness to scrutiny” (Rainey,
Modern Bureaucracy in the United States serves to administer, gather information, conduct investigations, regulate, and license. Once set up, a bureaucracy is inherently conservative. The reason the bureaucracy was initiated may not continue to exist as a need in the future. The need or reason may change with a change in the times and the culture needs. A bureaucracy tends to make decisions that protect it and further it’s own existence, possibly apart from the wishes of the populace. It may not consistently reflect what might be optimal in terms of the needs and wants of the people. Local governments employ most of the United States civil servants. The 14 cabinet departments in the U.S. are run day-to-day by career civil servants, which have a great deal of discretionary authority.
Over the last 20 years, there has been a significant increase in nonprofit and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in the United States. With the increase in organizations, also came an increase in scandals and in the 1990’s multiple nonprofit and nongovernment organizations lost the public’s trust due to misuse of funds, lavish spending, and improper advances to protected populations. These charity scandals not only hurt direct organization’s reputation, but also led to the mistrust of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations as a whole (Sidel, 2005). To combat these reputations, NGOs and nonprofit organizations began to self-regulate through employing morally obligated and altruistic employees, accountability practices, and lastly through
Their organizational initiatives are often self-serving; however, the emerging workforce isn’t motivated by selfish managers. This selfish behavior often turns into unethical conduct. Unethical dealings in the workplace are always wrong. It is crucial to promote ethical behavior. Everyone must understand that once caught, unethical behavior is not just a problem for those directly involved, it is everyone’s problem.
Police ethics are extremely important because ethics are the typical of “fair and honest conduct” (pg 460). People may have a different definition of what is fair and what is honest, and there are different circumstances where officers may not be able to be honest; such as covert investigations. Society in general determines what our ethical standards and moral principles are. Individual morals vary among all of us as they are what we as an individual consider to be right or wrong. We also have morals that are set by society. These are what we as a society consider to be right or wrong and may go hand in hand with individual morals. Morals change as society and people change, therefore we as a country have to adapt to what the changing morals are.
Public Administration involves the development, implementation and management of policies for the attainment of set goals and objectives that will be to the benefit of the general public. Since Public Administration involves taking decisions that affect the use of public resources there is often the question of how to utilize public resources for maximum public good. The National Association of Public Administration has identified four pillars of public administration: economy, efficiency, effectiveness and social equity. These pillars are equally important in the practice of public administration and to its success. This paper seeks to explain the role of each of the pillars in the practice of public administration.
The study of public administration only continued to grow over the course of the next two decades. As the study of public administration expanded, so did the development of s...
Since its emergence as a field of study, there have been some important contributions to public administration. Its goal has always been to improve productivity which then improves workplace performance. All of the contributions have been aimed at completing the work with the highest level of efficiency and at the lowest cost.
In The Responsible Administrator, Terry Cooper states that public administrators make decisions daily according to a distinctive four-level process. The four levels are as follows:
"Ethics are personal and, at the same time, a very public display of your attitudes and beliefs. It is because of ethical beliefs that we humans may act differently in different in situations" (University of Phoenix, 2007). Poor ethical choices in the workplace can truly hurt people. Poor ethics can damage their career, happiness, and quality of living. Not only can these actions hurt the individual who has made the bad choices, but also most often it hurts the innocent. This essay will provide two actual case studies; one of positive ethical principles and the other of poor ethical principles.
In today’s fast paced business world many managers face tough decisions when walking the thin line between what’s legal and what’s socially unacceptable. It is becoming more and more important for organisations to consider many more factors, especially ethically, other than maximising profits in order to be more competitive or even survive in today’s business arena. The first part of this essay will discuss managerial ethics[1] and the relevant concepts and theories that affect ethical decision making, such as the Utilitarian, Individualism, Moral rights approach theories, the social responsibility of organisations to stakeholders and their responses to social demands, with specific reference to a case study presenting an ethical dilemma[2], where Mobil halts product sales to a garage, forcing the garage owner to stop selling solvents to young people. The second section of this essay will focus on advice that should be given to any manager in a similar position to the garage owner with relevance to the organisational strategic management, the corporate objective and the evaluation of corporate social performance by measuring economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities. It will address whom to think of as stakeholders and why the different aspect could cost more than a manager or an organisation could have imagined.
This essay discusses the radical transformation of the principles and foundations of public administration from traditional to New Public Management. Firstly the essay will attempt to define the key terms of traditional public administration and the doctrine of New Public Management. Rabin J. (2003) explains that New Public Management embodies “a process in public administration that uses information and experiences obtained in business management and other disciplines to improve efficiency, usefulness and general operation of public services in contemporary bureaucracies.“Traditional Public Administration progresses from governmental contributions, with services perceived by the bureaucracy.
Despite these criticisms, the reforms in public administration have had a widespread impact across this country and around the world. The principles underlying these reforms have enhanced government performance and accountability, public administration has employed various strategies to streamline management and enhance pubic service. It is important to keep in mind that while there may be significant improvement in productivity as a result of technological advances or reform, the most meaningful long-term gains will come about as a result of attention to the humans side of the organization. Successful public administration demands a successful balance between the concerns of the technical side of the agency and paying attention to people.
Government in general has evolved from informal collaborative networks to large hierarchical bureaucracies and back to a need for operating through collaborative networks. These collaborative networks primarily involve government agencies partnering with private and non-profit organizations that allow government to operate more effectively and efficiently. Gaus (1947) used ecological definitions and concepts to describe the relationship between human behavior and public administration structures and their influence on public administration institutions and activities. This ecological approach relies on observations pertaining to people, environments, government functions, civic attitudes, and problems, that allow public administrators to respond successfully to the demands and challenges of the external environments other organizations (Gaus, 1947). The more expansive the environment, the more complex the environment is to navigate due to an increased number of variables to consider. The effective administrator possesses the appropriate skillset to manage these complexities and achieve the end result that is best for the public as a whole (Koliba, Meek, & Zia, 2010). Overall, navigating through public administration issues today requires administrators to possess a variety of skills and abilities including the management of bureaucratic and collaborative networks.