Levels Of Ethics In Public Administration Essay

The definition of ethics and levels of ethics:

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:

The Expressive Level: At this stage a person responds to situations on a whim.

The Level of Moral Rules: This is just the beginning. The responses at this level are often built upon moral rules we have learned from friends, family, peers and experiences. Decisions on how to handle the situation are then narrowed down one by one based on what we feel is the best way to control our own personal moral bank .

The Level of Ethical Analysis: Sometimes one will run into the issue of not finding an acceptable moral to apply

A traditional starting point is to look at what can be considered textbook definitions of efficiency. The broadest or most general meaning of efficiency as used in the public administration literature is that of technical efficiency, which concerns the ratio between resources and results, or input and output. One way or another, in all cases efficiency retains the general characteristics of input–output ratio outlined earlier, and all can be regarded as tokens of technical efficiency. The meaning of efficiency in public administration literature is almost without exception defined in terms of technical

For the general public, the benefits of ethical rules far outweigh their costs. Both the drafting and administration of codes of ethics require a balancing of political, administrative and legal considerations. A central and pervasive concern should be to balance the desire for high ethical standards with the preservation of the individual rights of public servants. A major principle guiding the administration of a code in one Canadian government is that public servants 'should enjoy the same rights in their private dealings as any other citizen unless it can be demonstrated that a restriction is essential to the public interest. ' Similarly, the Australian draft code states that 'where personal behavior does not interfere with the proper performance of official duties, and where it does not reflect on the integrity or standing of the Service, it is of no interest or concern to the employing authority. '" Although some governments have paid little attention to the impact of codes of ethics on their employees ' rights, most governments have been sensitive to this problem. But the fact remains that a well-drafted and well-administered code does tend to diminish the rights of public servants compared to the rights enjoyed by their fellow citizens outside government. Perhaps the single greatest advantage of a code of