The Moral Heart Of Public Service

Now more than ever, public servants must consider and reassess how to keep moral courage in public life alive. With ethical expectations and needs changing and government policies under increasing moral scrutiny, Claire Foster-Gilbert of Westminster Abbey Institute gathers a series of essays and lectures by herself and others, exploring the meaning of 'moral code' in today's public service, and how it can be rekindled in practice. Timely and timeless, the book is founded on traditional values of honesty, moral rigour and neighbourliness, and discusses how to champion stability, peace, community and virtue in contemporary public life. The authors, including eminent figures such as the former President of Ireland Mary McAleese, historian Peter Hennessy, former First Secretary of State William Hague and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, explain how realistic compromises can be balanced with clear goal-setting for ideal results. Forward-thinking and authoritative, this book will be a precious resource to anyone seeking to boost the circulation of integrity throughout all aspects of public life.

Public service values are too rarely discussed in public administration courses and scholarship, despite recent research demonstrating the importance of these values in the daily decision making processes of public service professionals. A discussion of these very tenets and their relevance to core public functions, as well as which areas might elicit value conflicts for public professionals, is central to any comprehensive understanding of budget and finance, human resource management, and strategic planning in the public sector. Public Service Values is written specifically for graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration, wherever a discussion of public service ideals might enrich the learning experience and offer students a better understanding of daily practice. Exploring the meaning and application of specific values, such as Neutrality, Efficiency, Accountability, Public Service, and Public Interest, provides students and future professionals with a ‘workplace toolkit’ for the ethical delivery of public services. Well-grounded in scholarly literature and with a relentless focus on the public service professional, Public Service Values highlights the importance of values in professional life and encourages a more self-aware and reflective public practice. Case studies to stimulate reflection are interwoven throughout the book and application to practice is cemented in a final section devoted to value themes in professional life as well as a chapter dedicated to holding oneself accountable. The result is a book that challenges us to embrace the necessity of public service values in our public affairs curricula and that asks the important questions current public service professionals should make a habit of routinely applying in their daily decision making.

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.

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.

Ethics—in all its exemplary and exhausting forms—matters. It deals with the most gripping question in public life: “What is the right thing to do?” In Public Service Ethics: Individual and Institutional Responsibilities, James Bowman and Jonathan West examine individual-centered and organization-focused ethics, applying ideas and ideals from both to contemporary dilemmas. The authors take on controversial issues—from whistle blowing incidents to corruption exposés—to explain how they arise and suggest what can be done about them. They start with the conceptual tools students need to evaluate an ethical dilemma, then analyze individual decision making strategies, and go on to assess institutional ethics programs. The emphasis is not only on the “how to,” but also on the “why.” The ultimate goal is to bolster students’ confidence and prepare them for the ethical problems they will face in the future, by equipping them with the conceptual frameworks and context to approach thorny questions and behave ethically.

Headlines of public service corruption scandals are painful reminders of the need for continuing education in the subjects of ethics and integrity. Public service professionals employed as government officials, forensic scientists, investigators, first responders, and those within the legal and justice systems, face daily decisions that can mean the difference between life or death and freedom or imprisonment. Sometimes, such decisions can present ethical dilemmas even to the most seasoned of professionals. Building on the success of the first edition, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition serves as a single-source resource for the topic of ethics and ethical decision making as it relates to government service. While incorporating an examination of the history of ethics, codes and legislation, the book exposes the reader to the challenges faced by today’s public service professionals and administrators in incorporating ethics within daily decisions, procedures, and duties. Key features include: Current controversies in police, forensic, and other public service sectors including: racial profiling, evidence tampering, disaster response, and audits Important new mechanisms of accountability, including use-of-force reporting, citizen complaint procedures, and open government Contemporary news stories throughout the book introduce the reader to a broad range of ethical issues facing leaders within the public service workplace Chapter pedagogy including key terms, learning objectives, end-of-chapter questions, a variety of boxed ethical case examples, and references Ripped from the Headlines current event examples demonstrate actual scenarios involving the issues discussed within each chapter This in-depth text will be essential for the foundational development and explanation of protocols used within a successful organization. As such, Ethics for the Public Service Professional, Second Edition will help introduce ethics and ethical decision-making to both those new to the realm of forensic science, criminal justice, and emergency services and those already working in the field.

"Denhard presents a sensible organizational framework that includes (a) the individual administrator and the organizational context; (b) the distinction between process and content ethics, and (c) the dichotomy between deotological and teleological moral claims." Choice

Serving the public interest with integrity requires a moral perspective that can rise above the day-to-day pressures of the job. This book integrates Western philosophy's most significant ethical theories and merges them with public administration theory to provide public administrators with an explicit moral foundation for ethical decision making. Ethics in the Public Service reviews moral thought through the ages, from Plato to Rorty, and makes the philosophies of the more difficult thinkers accessible to both students and practitioners. Unifying seemingly disparate ethical positions, including those of Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, the authors defend the idea of objective moral truth and critique subjectivist views, refuting postmodernism and ethical relativism. Using their integrated objective approach, they tackle such dichotomies in public administration theory as bureaucracy vs. democracy, and they also examine a case study in an administrative setting. Offering a better understanding of moral dilemmas rather than a formula, this book presents scholars and practitioners with a framework that is both objective and flexible, theoretical and practical. This original synthesis provides a comprehensive basis for administrative thought and action.

This book, by a group of specially selected scholars, focuses on topics of current debate in the field of public service ethics. The subjects covered include codes of ethics, how ethics can be taught, the dilemma of tragic choices, administrative discretion and the protection of human rights, the interests of the state, secrecy and freedom of information, the democratic environment, and the relevance of the law and trade unions.

In a down-to-earth review of the often-contentious subject of ethics, Public Sector Ethics: Theory and Applications presents personal accounts of individuals who faced moral dilemmas and how they resolved them. It moves the study of ethics away from a box checking exercise of what to do/not to do to a discussion that creates understanding of existe