American Society for Public Administration Code of Ethics

The American Society for Public Administration's code of professional ethics culminates in an admonition to respect, supports and even study constitutions, both state and federal. However, an understanding of constitutionalism is an often neglected or perfunctory element in the educational program for public administrators. In his influential l887 essay on public administration, Woodrow Wilson reasoned that because there is near universal agreement about constitutional principles in modern society, concentration should be chiefly on problems of effective management. The recent rebirth of concern for education in professional ethics generally and ethics in public administration in particular also reveals a tendency to approach the issues in a way that is still insufficiently connected to constitutional norms. The remedy for such difficulties is a critique of the ideological temper on the basis of what might be called an ethic of constitutional government, which to the extent that it can be elaborated satisfactorily should be an important component of the education offered to future public administrators.

Moral education, Derek Bok (1990) reminds us, once occupied a central place in the intellectual life of students and professors. Strengthening or building the character of students was part and parcel of academe, at least until World War II. College presidents and professors believed that character building contributed to educated class committed to a principled life in the service of (Bok, 1990, 66). This view and practice, Bok contends, has been largely abandoned, having lost ground to logical positivists, the growth of big science, and the spectacular advances of technology. The secularization of society also took its toll on moral education in the halls of academe. In public administration, questions of morality and ethics became captives of the Wilsonian legacy of neutral competency, which found expression in the dominant operating philosophy of public managers to get the job done. Getting the job done right meant for all practical purposes doing what was right or ethical. Professionals in the pro-state tirelessly pursued the holy trilogy of efficiency, economy, and effectiveness (Stillman, 1991). In combination with a heavy dose of clientelism and paternalism, questions of morality and ethics were largely relegated to the sidelines in the teaching and practice of public administration, even though new public administration theorists made a determined effort to inject values into the life of the administrative state. Then came Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and the Wall Street-HUD-Capitol Hill scandals of the 1980s. The near impeachment and removal of a sitting president stirred the American soul and prompted renewed public interest in governmental ethics. Thus, in 1978 President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Ethics in Government Act, committing federal employees to standards of behavior believed to be in the best interests of the American public. Six years later, in 1984, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) adopted an ethics code designed to raise the ethical standards and practices of its members. And in the late 1980s, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) incorporated language into its curriculum standards that called for public administration programs to enhance the student's values, knowledge, and skills to act ethically and effectively. These laudable efforts -- federal legislation, ASPA's code of ethics, and NASPAA's new language -- were clear signals to the public and academe that ethical behavior is needed and expected of government officials. Moreover, the message sent to public administration graduate programs was unequivocal -- ethics education cannot and should not be relegated to the curriculum sidelines. Indeed, the evidence points to the fact that MPA programs have moved steadily over the past 25 years toward the incorporation of ethics instruction and courses in their curriculums. A 1995 survey of NASPAA-member schools found that about a dozen schools added ethics courses in the 1970s, with another ten schools added to the list in the early and mid-1980s (Menzel, forthcoming). The adoption curve increased sharply in the late 1980s and 1990s following NASPAA's change in the language of its accreditation standards. By the mid-1990s, 78 NASPAA-member, MPA-degree-granting schools offered an ethics course. Among these 78 schools, one of every four requires matriculating students to complete an ethics course (Menzel, forthcoming). The purpose of this article is to extend previous research in order to address what is probably the most important but least investigated question facing faculty and public administration programs that provide ethics instruction: Does ethics education make a difference? That is, does formal ethics instruction in graduate public affairs/administration (PA/A) schools help public service professionals resolve ethical dilemmas? Stated differently, does ethics pedagogy matter? …

This article examines the ethics of honesty and deception in public administration. Building on previous research showing that public administrators rank honesty as an essential public service value but also sometimes use deception while carrying out their duties, semi-structured interviews with public employees were conducted to explore this apparent tension. Specifically, this study asks: Why is honesty important for public administrators? What is honesty and dishonesty? Under what circumstances is the use of deception by public administrators legitimate? The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Code of Ethics is used as an analytical framework to assess the cases and examples provided by participants. The article concludes with a discussion of some important implications that this research has for public administration practice, teaching, and research.

ESA's Sixth Decade (1966–1975)

Kenneth Kernaghan and Canadian Public Administration: Editor's Note and Remembrances

What was the value in changing ASPA's Code of Ethics? Until recently, the Code of Ethics of the American Society for Public Administration symbolized the confusion in the field rather than its insights. The fine content of the former code was lost in numerous, unequal categories and discursive language. The new code has five principles or decision-making sources upon which public administrators should draw. This article demonstrates how the five sources are prominently discussed in the literature and arc useful for practitioners. Even more, the new code should provide an authoritative framework for the field. At an elementary level, the code prohibits egregiously unethical behavior. At a more sophisticated level, the code recognizes that the really tough administrative decisions occur when two or more of the legitimate decision-making sources compete. Thus the code is far more than a list of legalistic prohibitions. It is a powerful tool for decision analysis on the one hand and an aspirational call for excellence in the profession on the other. The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) recently streamlined and substantially revised its Code of Ethics so that it would be more useful for practitioners and better reflect the literature on public sector ethics. The new code collapses 12 categories of unequal importance into 5 overarching principles. In this article I provide the intellectual and scholarly background used in the selection of those five organizing principles. Historical Background of ASPA's Code of Ethics ASPA adopted a loose set of ethical principles in 1981. In 1984, ASPA approved a formal Code of Ethics which was expanded the next year to include implementation guidelines. When published in small type, the Code and Implementation Guidelines were two full pages. In 1993, ASPA's leadership encouraged the Professional Ethics Committee to revise the Code of Ethics. Although no specific charge was given, the following complaints were noted by the committee: 1. The highlighted principles did not distinguish between overarching principles and subordinate concepts and were too numerous to remember easily. 2. Despite good content, the code rambled and had inconsistent styles. 3. Because of the weak organization, it was difficult to find a specific point without reading the document from the beginning. The Professional Ethics Committee drew heavily on the previous 1985 code in its revision but decided to (1) use broader categories that would be recognizable to the scholarly community and memorable for the practitioner community; (2) consolidate the code into a dense, one-page document; and (3) number and display principles and points for ease of use. A subcommittee redrafted the code in the spring of 1994, then the full committee edited it, and a preliminary draft was shared with the National Council. In the fall, a draft was published in PA Times with a request for comments. After revising it based on the comments received, the revised Code of Ethics was unanimously adopted at the 1994 December meeting. Problems in Identifying Sources of Decision Making Which Are the Key Sources or Roles? One of the most commonly agreed-upon notions in the field is that administrators have numerous roles, or value sets, which are sources for the decisions they make. For example, an administrator may concentrate quite appropriately on legal issues at one point, organizational issues at another, and personal interests at still another. Although there is widespread agreement that these roles and their concomitant value sets exist, that agreement quickly dissipates when one tries to identify and name which roles or value sets are crucial for public administrators. Researchers have divided up an administrator's major roles in many ways. Some researchers are famous for specializing in a single area, even though their views are broad, such as Rohr's (1989) concentration on regime values (law and legal tradition) and Frederickson's (1990) attention to social equity (public interest), but many researchers have consciously divided the roles to cover all the major decision-making bases. …

" The paper deals with the role and importance of the code of academic ethics as a tool of education and management in modern educational environment, it also reviews the challenges associated with development and introduction of the code in the academic environment. The outcomes of the study of the procedure of developing and introducing the code of ethics in HEI’s management are presented as the main document underlying the formation of corporate culture in any educational institution. The study was based on the results of surveys on Code of Ethics in Academic Environment conducted among the staff and students of Public Administration Academy of RA, and The Effects of the Current Emergency Situation on the Daily Tasks of the Staff of Armenian Scientific and Educational Organizations. The analysis of the attempts to create a Code of Ethics allows one to conclude that although such codes are needed as regulators of relationships among all participants of educational process, there are no unified approaches or suggestions for their formation. The analysis has revealed that the legislation on education in Armenia is lacking provisions on code of ethics or ethic rules: the imperfection of mechanisms of applying these provisions is obvious. Legal provisions related to regulation of ethical dilemmas as well as building efficient framework for their supervision need to be developed. It is worth noting that the Draft Law on Higher Education and Science has added a number of provisions to be addressed in this article."

Norma M. Riccucci was born in Torrington, Connecticut, and is currently a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, Newark, in the School of Public Affairs and Administration. Riccucci has published broadly in the areas of social equity, employment discrimination, diversity management, and human resource management. Some of her award-winning publications include: Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry and Philosophies of Knowledge (American Society of Public Administration Research Section 2012 Best Book Award), and How Management Matters: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Welfare Reform (American Political Science Association Best Book Award 2009). She is the recipient of many honors and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. In 2005, she was inducted into Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars and received the 2006 American Society for Public Administration's Charles H. Levine Award for Excellence in Public Administration Research, Teaching, and Service. She is also the recipient of the American Society of Public Administration Section on Women in Public Administration's Rita Mae Kelly Award for Research Excellence and served as the president of the Public Management Research Association from 2007 to 2009. Riccucci received her doctoral degree in public administration in 1984 from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and is a graduate of the University of Southern California (Master of Public Administration) and Florida International University (Bachelors of Arts in public administration).

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of administration, but the broad field of public administration has had difficulty articulating clear and meaningful standards of behavior and developing a means of upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of specialized professional associations in public service adopted codes, starting with the International City/County Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960, the full range of public administrators did not have an association to represent them until the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939. Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the first code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994, but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other professional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical responsibilities to society of all public administrators.

Disparities in outcomes are evident in emergency management interactions, in acute circumstances, like hurricanes or natural disasters, or routine interactions involving first responders, such as traffic stops or patient transport. Women and people of color are disproportionately represented in experiencing adverse effects. In light of observed inequities, this analysis investigates whether codes of ethics articulate the value of equity as a guiding principle. After presenting background evidence on the manifestation of inequities, we reviewed literature on the general nature of codes of ethics and their context in Public Administration and Emergency Management, giving consideration to social vulnerability and cultural competence. The purpose of this inquiry was to examine codes of ethics in various professions comprising the broad field of emergency management and first response within the United States—including that of the American Society for Public Administration—to determine whether they take race and gender into account. As disparities in outcomes are broadly observed, we hypothesized that the terms would be underrepresented. We found that only a small minority of codes make explicit mention of race or gender, and the majority do not mention equity. We also discovered a stronger emphasis on professionalism than on outcomes within the populations served.

The article is devoted to a critically important, in the author’s opinion, issue of the ethical regulation of public servants’ official behavior. He considers the complex of ethical-legal mechanisms as one of the most effective ways in order to correct the obviously unsatisfactory current situation of public life in this field. As long as it is not only Russia’s trouble and many other countries pay considerable attention to ethical aspects, the author reflects the situation in the frames of a broader theoretical position and also addresses the international experience. In particular, he gives much attention to Canada, where the ethical regulation of public service is developed sufficiently well and the country has achieved serious success in this respect. Ethical codes are considered as "moral navigators" in the contemporary complicated world, because vitality and legitimity of a political system much depends on whether political institutions and behavior of high rank public officials correspond to the prevailed public values and ideals, accord with the norms and standards of public morality, or they do not. A degree of public trust to holders of public posts depends critically on it. The administrative ethical codes of different levels and the "ethical infrastructure" that provide their fulfillment have been thoroughly analyzed. Special attention is paid to the role of the leader, to moral self-restrictions of public servants and to exercising control over them. The balance between moral and legal norms has been considered in details, as well as the modern situation of Russia in this field.

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the quality of Code of Ethics from the point of view of employees. In particular, the research aims to investigate which are the companies’ characteristics that influence the publication of a Code of Ethics and the Code of Ethics Quality from the employee perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use Italian listed companies and perform a manual content analysis on their Code of Ethics based on keywords related to the stakeholder employees. The authors perform regression models to investigate the determinants, using financial reporting data and companies’ information (i.e. industry).FindingsThe findings show that Code of Ethics are developed among large firms. A healthy and safe environment and a clear leadership are developed by firms with high grow rates. Equal employment opportunities and competent leadership are developed by firms with low financial distress. The need of effective communication for consensus seems more visible in Public Administration. Private sectors pay more attention to competent leadership, while firms in Trade take care on equal opportunities for employees.Originality/valueAt present, much of the codes of ethics’ research are focussed on the content and the effectiveness of codes of ethics, on the reasons, on the benefits and limitations of this tool, but few studies investigate the quality of codes of ethics and, even fewer the specific stakeholder employees. This study aims to improve the debate related to the elements affecting quality in codes of ethics, with particular attention to the rules that guide the relationship between companies and their employees.

Integrity is one of the moral principles related to moral uprightness. Recently, there are a lot of issues discussed regarding the integrity in public sector administration especially in public sector. Currently governance in public administration has been exposed to public criticism due to the governance failure, fraud, corruption and poor internal control. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between factors of good governance and the practice of integrity in academic institution. The factors of good governance include ethical leadership, financial resources and asset management. The study was carried out by using questionnaire and simple random sampling was chosen. The questionnaire survey was distributed to 98 academics from two academic institutions in Malaysia. Such sample was chosen since this study was focused on the academic’s perspective on integrity practice in academic institutions and none of the research has been done in term of good governance and integrity in academic institutions Malaysia. This study found that all three factors of good governance which are ethical leadership, financial resources and asset management have significant relationship on integrity practice in academic institution. The findings of this study can assist academic institutions in Malaysia to improve their governance system and also code of ethics in their organization. In order to improve future studies, it is recommended that the data collection made to be more extensive. This can help in observing the variation of practice of good governance and integrity in academic institutions.

The public administration reform in the Czech Republic set off with a reform of the territorial public administration at the end of the 90s. The reform established a joint public administration model in the territories, power decentralization, and de‐concentration of operative functions from ministries to regions and municipalities. The reform outcomes largely depend on the quality of human resources in public administration, their ethical values, and status in the society. The public sector always needs to solve a traditional ethics dilemma whether public officials serve citizen or politician purposes. The paper is aimed at ethical values in the Czech public administration, ethics dilemmas in the public sector, and human resource management in territorial self‐governments supporting ethical behaviour. An abnormal situation comes into being in the Czech Republic as public officials incline to serving neither citizens nor politicians. Some municipal authorities strive to improve public administration ethics by designing and implementing new HR practices, codes of ethics and anticorruption programmes.

Defined in the simplest and the most comprehensive framework, decision-making is the process of choosing between alternatives, and it is affected by various factors. Ethics, which is regarded as one of the signifi cant elements among these factors, influences the decision-making process at organisational and individual levels. The subjects of ethics and ethical decision-making are becoming highly crucial in public policy making and implementation processes. Moreover, topics such as the circumstances that have an impact on the decisions of public administrators, and the ethical codes or institutions that help public administrators are major research areas in recent public administration literature.It is within this framework that this paper analyses the efforts to create an ethical policy, which will contribute to the ethical decision-making process of the public administrators in Turkey in terms of legislation, institutional dimension and ethical codes. This study reveals that even though Turkey has taken promising steps to generate an ethical system for public administration and service, there are still essential points to be reassessed regarding the expected transformation in combating corruption and unethical behaviours.