emerging concerns in promoting public ethics and responsibility

Emerging Concerns in Promoting Public Ethics and

Responsibility

Yammie S. Palao PA 202 04/09/23

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Values Administration Theory

Introduction Ethics is define as ‘the discipline dealing

with what is good and bad, or right and wrong, or with moral duty and obligation, a group of moral principles or set of values and the principles of conduct governing an individual or a profession.’ Also, ethics is ‘character or the ideals of character manifested by a race or people (from the Greek ethos).’


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Analyzing priority Factors:

Integrity – consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcome

Integrity in ethics

Ethical meanings of integrity used in medicine and law refer to the wholeness of the human body with respect for “sacred” qualities such as a sense of unity, consistency, purity, unspoiledness and uncorruptedness.


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“Ethics are as important for the public servant as blood for the body”

(Van der Waldt & Helmbold, 1995:170)

The public sector, like individuals, is constantly changing through new leadership, environmental influences and socio-political development. Government and society cannot promote and enforce ethical behaviour solely through the utilization of ethical codes of conduct or through the promulgation of a plethora of legislation.

Social mindsets are often still entangled in a micro-ethic paradigm. People tend to equate moral values and moral norms with values and norms, which apply only to personal relations structures within which they interact.

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Yammie S. Palao PA 202

According to Denhardt (in Hondeghem, 1998:29):

“Ethics are not a set of rules or values waiting to be discovered, that provides all the answers. In the complex world of public administration, norms and values rarely provide clear-cut answers to difficult problems. Ethics should be thought of as helping to frame relevant questions about what government ought to be doing and how public administration ought to go about achieving those purposes” (Denhardt, in Hondeghem, 1998:29).

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Norms defined:

"Norms are standards of behaviour within the organization which serve as a guide to all its members" (Barton & Chappel, 1985:333).

For example, one of the earliest norms in public administration was that of neutrality, meaning that public officials should be a political policy implementation functionaries rather than policy-makers. Within the context of public administration, the emphasis on norms is associated with the recommendation of certain values that are viewed as desirable by their promoters (Ferreira, 1996:143).

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Heyns (1986:02), writes that values are basic perceptions of the relative importance of our elements of existence. These perceptions always have to do with priorities, whereas norms are the function which direct and evaluate human attitudes and actions.

The common denominator of nearly all people problems is to be found in the area of values. It is widely recognized that values often differ widely from person to person and from culture to culture. The influence of values on people's thinking, acting and behaviour is underestimated.

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According to McMurry (1977:315), the influence of values on the individual is powerful because:

(i) They principally determine what he/she regards as right, good, worthy, beautiful and ethical.

(ii) They provide the standards and norms by which he/she guides his/her day-today behaviour.

(iii) They chiefly determine his/her attitudes toward the causes and issues such as political, economic, social and industrial with which he/she comes into contact daily.

(iv) They determine which ideas, principles and concepts he can accept, assimilate, remember and transmit without distortion (McMurry, 1977:315).

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The Nolan Committee’s seven Principles of Public Life (Chapman, 2000:230-231).

1. Selflessness: Public officials should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family or their friends

2. Integrity: Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties.

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3. Objectivity: In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make their choices on merit.

4. Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions ands actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.

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5. Openness: Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest demands it.

6. Honesty: Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.

7. Leadership: Holders of public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.

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Transparency

Transparency – is a broad term that, quite literally, means something that can be seen through. When we talk about transparency in terms of government spending, we are referring to government opening its books to the public so that taxpayers can see exactly where their money is going.

You pay for your government, and you deserve to know how it spends your money.


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Public trust

the concept of the public trust relates back to the origins of democratic government and its seminal idea that within the public lies the true power and future of a society; therefore, whatever trust the public places in its officials must be respected.

Enforcement how our policy being implemented. We have so many laws made by the law making bodies (congress and house of senate) but the output is quite blurred except it has a budget.


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Administrative Theory

is major emphasis of the Traditional Public Administration and the new Public administration. One of the primary objectives of administrative theory has been the establishment of the good society. “The past decades has witnessed an increasing willingness to examine and critically question the normative assumption that underline contemporary administrative thought and practice” (Billone and Nigro, 1980:52). Administrative exercise has been most focused on the role of the individual in the realization of the organizations objective.


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Relevant to the needs of Public Administrators

It should be concerned with theories that are designed to change the existing undesired situations into preferred ones.

Martini’s view is worth mentioning at this point when he said that

“Public administration must abandoned its hold upon procedures and theories derived from earlier stable periods and must concentrate upon creating theories public units appropriate for turbulent (Martini:1971-350)”


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At present Administrative Theory subscribes to certain models of value formation, transmission and change which are referred to the position or objective theory of values. This perspective treats values as social facts. As social facts, values are by product of the individual’s environment mainly through the process of socialization. The objective of positivist view of values connotes that:


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“The fact that individuals, perceive attach meaning to and respond to objects is explained I terms of social causation. The individual acquires values as a “reactor”. Through socialization and learning processes, people respond, internalize and act on values, but do not actively re-create or change them. This viewpoint explains the existence of values in technological or financial terms. Carried to its logical conclusion, it defined the human mind as controlled by, and a carrier of defined realities. A person’s values are “made” by their socio-cultural universe (Billone and Nigro 1980:40-41)”


The fact that the Public Administration subscribes to the positivist view of values may be justified by two explanations:

First, Public Administration theories are borrowed extensively from sociology, anthropology, political science and economics. Billone and Nigro explains that:

The system and concepts employed in modern administrative theory have been drawn from the modern social science traditions. The tradition explain values as the products of “system” requirements, structures, and processes. This approach, used extensively in sociology and anthropology, has been adopted by modern organization theory (Ballone and Nigro, 1980:41)


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Secondly, the logical positivist view of values reinforced the disciplinary status of public administration. On other words, it incorporated a theory of values that supported it as an intellectual; and applies effort to efficiently attain the present goals of institutionalized politics. Henceforth, “Public Administration has accepted a theory of values that emphasizes the role of socio-cultural system, in human cognition, emotion response, and behaviors.” (Bellone and Nigro, 1980:41)


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On the other hand, relying completely on the objective concept of values would limit the innovative capacity of administrative theory. In view of the above contention. Bellone and Nigro proposed a more productive approach which includes the following characteristics of values:

Values as Human Creation: We would start by proposing the values and the realities they imply are created, maintained, and changed by human beings. Be doing we can deal with the human mind as a co-equal, rather than a superior of inferior variable. We can do also attempt to learn how human values created and changed, not simply how they functions and are transmitted.


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Values Creation As Social – Psychological process. Conceptually, the creation of values should be considered a social-psychological interaction. By viewing values are the products of interaction between people we avoid having to choose between subjective and objective creation.

Values as Object – Oriented Activity. We have defines values as attributes to phenomena. It is possible for human beings to attribute meaning to phenomena because they are able to threat phenomena as objectives of cognition and emotional response. If people could not objectify phenomena, they could not create meaning. And meaning is the essence of values.


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THEORIES OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

BEHAVIORBehavior is a means of adapting to

environmental demands; capacities have evolved during each species’ history because they facilitated adaptation and survival.

Behaviour and mental processes are affected by the social and cultural environments in which we develop and live.


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MOTIVATION

Set of internal and external force that causes an employee to choose a course of action and engage in certain behaviour. Motivation requires discovering and understanding employee drives and needs, since it originates within an individual.

Positive acts performed by the organization-customer satisfaction through personalized services. Employees will be more motivated when they have clear goals to achieve: needs, reinforcement, goals expectancies and equity.


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Principles of Motivation

Encourage open communication by maintaining a positive mental attitude.

Show interest in others by being a good listener.

When you are pleased by the behaviour or action of others, respond by praising the person for favourable behaviour or action.


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Process of Motivation

Acknowledging a greeting or giving a pat in the back inspires the subordinates.

Complimenting an employee for a good job promotes his self-esteem.

A positive gesture from a supervisor boosts employee’s morale.


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Administrative Theory (Fayol)

Developed at same time as scientific management, Scott notes that administrative theory "emphasized management functions and attempted to generate broad administrative principles that would serve as guidelines for the rationalization of organizational activities" p. 36

Administrative theorists developed general guidelines of how to formalize organizational structures and relationships. They viewed the job as antecedent to the worker. Primarily these principles were broad guidelines for decision making.


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Administrative theory was attacked by other rational theorists, especially Simon, who considered them not theory, but merely truisms or contradictory statements.

These principles or "truisms" (depending on your perspective) included the following. Under coordination activities, Fayol and others suggested:

Scalar PrincipleRecommends and emphasizes the hierarchical, pyrimidal structure of control relations (Scott p. 36)


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Exception PrincipleRecommends that all routine matters be handled by subordinates leaving superiors free to deal with exceptional issues where existing rules are inapplicable.

Span of Control PrincipleSpecifies that superior should have no more subordinates than they can effectively oversee.


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Unity-of-Command Principle

Emphasizes that no subordinates should receive orders from more than one superior. Parsons and others have argued that this often doesn't happen effectively in most organizations (often the excecutive isn't qualified to handle more than external relations and thus delegates responsibility to more capable underlings).


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Under the category of specialization issues, which are decisions about how activities are to be distributed among organizational positions and how to group positions into work groups and subunits, they suggested:

Departmentalization PrincipleActivities should be grouped to combine related activities in the same administrative unit. Related activities could be based on similarity of purpose, process, clientele, or place.


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Thank You!

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emerging concerns in promoting public ethics and responsibility

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