“Objectivity” as a bureaucratic virtue

Abstract

ABSTRACTAcross bureaucratic contexts, “objectivity” is a dominant conception of appropriate conduct. But what does it mean for bureaucrats to work “objectively”? For staffers of the Israeli government's Committee for Health Care Services, objectivity is understood as a key bureaucratic virtue, one that promotes the ethical goal of fair resource allocation. To them, objective decision‐making is based on adopting an “unemotional” attitude. Aware of the life‐and‐death implications of committee decisions, they attempt to work “unemotionally” by engaging what I term a moral sensibility for unemotionality, a tendency to avoid exposure to patients’ subjective experience. Cultivating this sensibility has concrete effects on the committee's decisions and on patients’ place in medical decision‐making. Examining “objectivity” as a morally desired disposition, rather than as a static construct, yields its reconceptualization as an enduring intersubjective achievement. This approach offers another way to examine the workings of power and politics in state bureaucracies. [objectivity, bureaucracy, virtue ethics, morality, emotion, social welfare, health care, Israel]