Ethics In Public Life

Public service professionals government officials, those in the legal system, first responders, and investigators confront ethical issues every day. In an environment where each decision can mean the difference between life and death or freedom and imprisonment, deciding on an ethical course of action can pose challenges to even the most season

Ethical evaluation of language and action has relied historically on the western, monocultural assumptions of classical ethical theory. But persistent contemporary critiques undermine the moral force of ethical agency as individualistic, autonomous, and rationalistic. Contributors to Moral Engagement in Public Life take up the search for intellectual resources in light of these challenges by explicating twelve theorists in moral philosophy and communication ethics. Two classical theorists, Aristotle and Confucius, provide longstanding themes of ongoing relevance and serve as a point of departure for ten contemporary thinkers whose own perspectives are, in part, a response to classical thought in the current context. Together these theorists expand the conceptual domain crossculturally and internationally for understanding ethical discourse and action in practical and professional life.

This is the first book to focus solely on ethics in public service interpreting. Four leading researchers from across Europe share their expertise on ethics, the theory behind ethics, types of ethics, codes of ethics, and what it means to be a public service interpreter. This volume is highly innovative in that it provides the reader with not only a theoretical basis to explain why underlying ethical dilemmas are so common in the field, but it also offers guidelines that are explained and discussed at length and illustrated with examples. Divided into three Parts, this ground-breaking text offers a comprehensive discussion of issues surrounding Public Service Interpreting. Part 1 centres on ethical theories, Part 2 compares and contrasts codes of ethics and includes real-life examples related to ethics, and Part 3 discusses the link between ethics, professional development, and trust. Ethics in Public Service Interpreting serves as both an explanatory and informative core text for students and as a guide or reference book for interpreter trainees as well as for professional interpreters - and for professionals who need an interpreter's assistance in their own work.

Are public officials morally justified in threatening violence, engaging in deception, or forcing citizens to act for their own good? Can individual officials be held morally accountable for the wrongs that governments commit? Dennis Thompson addresses these questions by developing a conception of political ethics that respects the demands of both morality and politics. He criticizes conventional conceptions for failing to appreciate the difference democracy makes, and for ascribing responsibility only to isolated leaders or to impersonal organizations. His book seeks to recapture the sense that men and women, acting for us and together with us in a democratic process, make the moral choices that govern our public life.

For civil servants who take an oath to uphold the Constitution, that document is the supreme symbol of political morality. Constitutional issues are addressed by civil servants every day, whenever a policeman arrests a suspect or members of different branches of government meet. But how well do these individuals really understand the Constitution's application in their jobs? This book encourages civil servants to reflect on specific constitutional principles and events and learn to apply them to the decisions they make. Twenty seminal articles by a preeminent scholar seek to legitimate public service by grounding its ethics in constitutional practice. John Rohr stresses that ethical practice demands an immersion in the specifics of our constitutional tradition, and he offers a guide to attaining a greater sense of those constitutional principles that can be translated into action. Along the way he considers such timely issues as financial disclosure, the treatment of civil servants as second-class citizens, and instances of civil servants caught between executive and legislative forces. Rohr's opening essays demonstrate that responsible use of administrative discretion is the key issue for career civil servants. Subsequent sections examine approaches to training civil servants using constitutional principles; character formation resulting from study of the constitutional tradition; and the ethical choices that are sometimes posed by separation of powers. A final group of chapters shows how a study of other countries' constitutional traditions can deepen an understanding of our own, while a closing essay looks at past issues and future prospects in administrative ethics from the perspective of Rohr's long involvement in the field. Throughout this insightful collection, Rohr seeks to remind public servants of the nobility of their calling, reinforce their role in articulating public interests against the excesses of private concerns, and encourage managers to make greater use of constitutional language to describe their everyday activities. Although his work focuses on the federal career civil servant, it also offers valuable lessons applicable to state and local civil servants, elected officials, judges, military personnel, and those employed in the nonprofit sector.

The digital era has redefined our understanding of ethics as a multi-disciplinary phenomenon. The newness of the internet means it is still highly unregulated, which allows for rampant problems encountered by countless internet users. In order to establish a framework to protect digital citizenship, an academic understanding of online ethics is required. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ethics in the Digital Era examines the concept of ethics in the digital environment through the framework of digitalization. Covering a broad range of topics including ethics in art, organizational ethics, and civil engineering ethics, this book is ideally designed for media professionals, sociologists, programmers, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and students.

Since it was first published in 1991, The Ethics Challenge in Public Service has become a classic text used by public managers and in public management programs across the country. This second edition is filled with practical tools and techniques for making ethical choices in the ambiguous, pressured world of public service. It explores the day-to-day ethical dilemmas managers face in their work, including what to do when rules recommend one action and compassion another, and whether it is ethical to dissent from agency policy. This essential text explores managers' accountability to different stakeholders and how to balance the often competing responsibilities.

What does it mean to be a good professional? What is the role of courage in professional life? How do we develop the moral qualities of respectfulness, justice and care? Firmly rooted in practice, this book is a timely exploration of the nature and value of a virtue-based approach to ethics in health and social care. Skilfully drawing on relevant moral philosophical literature, Part I offers a clear yet critical account of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics bases ethical evaluations on the moral qualities or character traits of professional practitioners. This approach, the authors argue, is a vital counter-balance to the recent emphasis in professional ethics on the regulation of conduct by rules and procedures. Part II explores the key virtues of professional wisdom, courage, respectfulness, care, trustworthiness, justice and integrity. Each chapter starts with examples from practice and ends with strategies for cultivating these key virtues in education and practice. Ethics in Professional Life is a challenging and original text that is ideal reading for all students, practitioners and academics in the field of health and social care.

This thoroughly revised and updated third edition of The Ethics Challenge in Public Service is the classic ethics text used in public management programs nationwide. It also serves as a valuable tool for public managers who work in a world that presents more ethical challenges every day. It contains a wealth of practical tools and strategies that public managers can use when making ethical choices in the ambiguous pressured world of public service. The book contains new material on topics including social networking, the use of apology, ethics as applied to public policy, working with elected officials, and more.