Ethics education in the study of public administration: Anchoring to civility, civics, social justice, and understanding government in democracy

Figures & data

Table 1. The high road, low road, and lower road of ethics

Friedrich: administrative discretion, focus on upbringing (family, church, education) for internal morality, belief in professionalism	Finer: external oversight, external moral compass, low discretion, legislative view upon ethics
High Road: first level, moral integrity	Low Road: second level, obedience to rules
The normative perspective; the ethics of personal integrity; an ethic of impartiality; the ethics of citizenship and democratic theory; principled or virtue ethics; ethics education; philosophical theory and perspectives on governance	The formal-legal, structural perspective; deontological or ruleand duty-focused ethics; an ethic of neutrality; the ethics of public managerial practice; self-conscious study of public administration; organizational approach to ethics; ethics codes, ethics legislation, corruption; decision trees
The ethics of societal responsibility grounded in internal morality	The ethics of bureaucratic responsibility grounded in external morality
▼	▼
Lower Road: third “level,” rules of interaction
The consequentialist ethics or ethics of outcome; the ethics of interaction; ethical foundations to hiring, promoting, firing, etc. of personnel, of ethical boundaries concerning interaction with personnel, awareness of challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion, awareness of and respect for the privacy of the individual
The ethics of managerial responsibility grounded in internal and external morality

Source: Based on Rohr (1989, pp. 60–68); Bruce et al. (1995, p. 115); expanded from Raadschelders (2015, p. 82).

Rohr, J. A. (1989). Ethics for bureaucrats: An essay on law and values (2nd ed.). Marcel Dekker.

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Bruce, W., Bowman, J. S., Cooper, T. L., & Frederickson, H. G. (1995). Ideals and conventions: Ethics for public administrators. Public Administration Review, 55(1), 111–116. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/976834

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Raadschelders, J. C. N. (2015). Government: A public administration perspective (2nd ed.). Routledge.

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