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Graduate Training in Public Service Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

Latheef N. Ahmed*
Affiliation:
U. of Missouri, Kansas City

Extract

Educating and training professional administrators in public service ethics is complex. Just one of the many questions is whether ethics can be taught in the classroom at all, particularly to graduate students at a late period in their lives. Essential life patterns of our MPS and MBA students have already been established during their formative years, and their jobs and other adult experiences influence their thinking, feeling and acting. What is “practical” administrative behavior vs. high sounding ethical prescriptions and codes? Recognizing such caveats, the following account documents the author’s classroom teaching experience.

The unique student body involved combined MPA and MBA students, who were all part or full time practitioners and mature individuals. This setting provided an opportunity for government-business cross study and dialogue on administrative ethics.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1985

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References

Notes

1. See William C. Scott and David K. Hart, Organizational America, 1979, and Robert Presthus, The Organizational Society, 1978, as examples for the realities of organizational pressures on administrators.

2. Waldo-Hennigan's original paper, prepared for inclusion in a planned book, An Empirical Ethic For Public Sciences, editors, David F. Cox et al., was used in the course with the personal permission of Dwight Waldo. The map has since appeared in Dwight Waldo, The Enterprise of Public Administration, Chapter 7. “Public Administration and Ethics: A Prologue to a Preface,” pp. 99-115, 1980. The ASPA Workshop, 1979, is a product of the deliberations of ASPA's Professional Standards and Ethics Committee since 1974 and has been endorsed by NASPAA. The author was a participant in the committee's dialogue for a while as a committee member. A second, improved edition of the Workbook has appeared from ASPA. The third source was developed under the auspices of the School of Public Administration, University of Southern California, under a contract with the Urban Management Curriculum Development Project, the National Training and Development Service, Washington, D.C., funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; no date is given.

3. Such as those discussed by Ann Marie Rizzo, and Thomas J. Patka, John C. Honey and Dennis P. Wittmer in the volume on Education for Public Service, 1979, editors, Guthrie S. Birkhead and James D. Carroll, with an Introduction by Dwight Waldo, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 1979. See also a recent article by Mark S. Frankel, Project Director, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, “Professions: Ethics, Politics and Public Policy,” NEWS, American Political Science Association, Fall 1981, No. 31 , pp. 3-4.

4. Organizational Psychology: An Experiential Approach, 1979.

5. Harlan Cleveland, The Future Executive: A Guide for Tomorrow's Managers, 1972.

6. See Rizzo, Patka, Honey and Wittmer, note 3.

7. Latheef N. Ahmed, An Essay: The Multiple Loyalties Hypothesis and The International Civil Servant, Occasional Paper, The Bureaucrat, Inc., 1977.

8. A related literature source for the military officers in this class was. Military Ethics and Professionalism, editors, Sam C. Sarkesian and Thomas S. Gannon, Sage Professional Papers, Volume 19, No. 5, May/June, 1976.