Internal Control In Public Administration

As the public administrator moves forward from the postmodern to the modern era of public administration, there is a greater need to maintain responsible conduct within public organizations. The reasoning behind this as we move through the modern times, this era itself is beginning to change, into the Praetorian Time, which is a time of major transition from old to new. These times signify that not only has change come, within public organizations, the conversion from postmodern, modern towards the Praetorian Times resulted in throwing out the old ways of handling organizations and establishing a complete new set of rules. The question remains for the public administrator, with all these changes occurring internally and externally, what,

Yet, “they are referred to here as internal controls because of their power to shape behavior is ultimately not a matter of external regulation and procedures manipulated by someone else in the form of commands and directives but a matter of internalized attitudes, values, and beliefs,” (Cooper, 2012, p. 153). These types of controls normally are written in an organizational guidebook, but also are present in an unspoken set of rules, for everyone to follow, resulting in ethical decisions when the time comes to make a hard choice. This sort of culture although does not come overnight and requires many training sessions presented by the human resource manager, who will periodically present the public organization’s mission and who is affected by this mission to those within the public

These external controls attempt “to impose on the conduct of individual public servants constraints that originate from outside themselves,” (Cooper, 2012, p. 131). Although the public administrator expects everyone to follow the ethical “attitudes, values, and beliefs,” (Cooper, 2012, p. 153), addressed by the public organization’s internal controls, this may not always be the most effective solution for establishing and maintaining ethical conduct within the public organization. Thus, if internal controls fail it is then with the external controls that the public administrator can effectively establish and maintain ethical