Moving the Field Forward with Empathy, Engagement, Equity, and Ethics

Abstract

In the previous introduction to this special issue, we presented the new 4Es, empathy, equity, engagement, and ethics. These 4Es represent an evolution in public administration, replacing economy, efficiency, and effectiveness as central pillars of the field. Through these 4Es, we propose a movement towards a more equitable public administration, which meets the needs of the future of public administration. In this introduction to the second part of this special issue, we explore the research and teaching implications of the 4Es. Through this discussion and along with our articles in this special issue, we provide guidance on the use of the 4Es in public administration teaching, education, and practice.

Keywords:

• Empathy
• social equity
• engagement
• ethics

Empathy, Engagement, Equity, and Ethics. These are, as we have previously proposed (Meyer et al., 2022), the new pillars which should guide public administration research, education, and practice. In the introduction to the first half of this double special issue, Meyer et al. (2022) described the 4Es and why these are important for dealing with the wicked problems of public administration. Indeed, as public administrators work toward responding to issues such as inequality and global warming, among many others, a focus on the 4Es is important for creating policy and institutions that work for the people.

In the introduction to our second special issue, we will start by exploring the ways in which the 4Es can be incorporated into public administration research and education, both of which impact the practice of public administration. Though we present several ideas, these are just some of the ways the 4Es can be incorporated into public administration. To build on this discussion, we are excited to present the five articles in the second half of this double special issue. Throughout, we make the case that it’s important to not only incorporate, but center, empathy, engagement, equity, and ethics.

Incorporating the 4Es into research

The linkages between empathy, engagement, equity, and ethics are ripe for research in public administration. We caution that such research must balance considerations of granularity, breadth, accessibility, and doability. Thus, there likely are limits on the degree to which the concepts can be feasibly and meaningfully researched in tandem with one another. With this qualification in mind, we see at least three research priorities that the field particularly needs. These are to investigate: (1) how engagement and equity are linked; (2) how equity and ethics are linked; and (3) how empathy undergirds the other Es. Each of these overlaps, we argue, lead to key research questions for the future. As evident in Figure 1, these are only some of the possible combinations, and it is up to the entire field to develop and examine further combinations.

Figure 1. The New 4Es.

Engagement and equity

As noted earlier, achieving accountability for social equity involves several steps. Principle among these is that agencies must admit their role in creating, perpetuating, and extending inequities. However, admitting these issues is likely only possible only with the leadership and buy-in for agencies to adopt social equity mindsets as well as outreach with historically marginalized communities to learn about the causes and effects of inequities, expose and understand administrative culpability, and propose and enact ways forward. More directly stated, many social inequities overtly involve the intentional exclusion of people from historically marginalized populations, and such exclusion must be admitted, understood, addressed, and solved (Gooden, 2015; Johnson & Svara, 2015b).

Relatedly, admitting issues necessarily leads to engaging in outreach with populations and giving meaningful places at the table in tandem with fostering representative bureaucracies (Johnson & Svara, 2015a, 2015b). This is because the evidence is clear that community outreach improves equity. One such example is Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative (SRSJI) (SRSJI, 2019a, 2019b, 2020). The SRSJI mandates that all policies, both existing and new, must be demonstrated to positively affect equity. As part of this, engagement must occur with populations most affected by such a policy (Johnson & Svara, 2015b). Racial equity scorecards are key tools of this outreach, and the scorecards require departments to assess not only the current state of equity but also how new proposals will likely affect equity (SRJI, 2020).

Further, similar tools created by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) also note the importance of engagement to foster equity (GARE, 2021), especially GARE’s racial equity toolkit (Nelson & Brooks, 2016). This toolkit prompts public servants to: (1) improve specific programs and identify desired results and outcomes; (2) collect both quantitative and qualitative data to explore the extent, causes, and effects of inequities; (3) engage communities and find ways to expand engagement, especially with and for historically marginalized communities; (4) determine who benefits or are burdened by changes to policy and how changes will advance racial equity in particular; (5) identify who is responsible for implementing proposals; and (6) indicate how public servants should be accountable, communicative, and inclusive in reporting and evaluating results of public policy (Nelson & Brooks, 2016).

These overlaps between engagement and equity principally point to an enduring issue, namely that the meaning of social equity both conceptually and operationally takes form in the process of public service engagement, especially with populations public administration has historically marginalized. This linkage of engagement and equity is long-standing in the literature. As noted in the introduction to the first special issue in this series, social equity in public administration centers on the definition provided by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), namely that it is: “[t]he fair, just and equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by contract, and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and implementation of public policy, and the commitment to promote fairness, justice, and equity in the formation of public policy” (as cited in Wooldridge & Bilharz, 2017). This definition not only implies the need for engagement, especially through terms like “management,” “distribution,” and “implementation, as well as the phrase “serving the public directly or by contract,” but also what it means to promote social equity in the first place.

Linkages between engagement and equity bear out in other ways across modern classics in the literature. For instance, Frederickson (2010) insisted that the field must engage with examining inequities. To Norman-Major (2011), social equity is intrinsically about distribution and redistribution, leveling the playing field, and creating targeted programs, all of which necessitate reaching out to historically marginalized populations in ways the field may have resisted. Similarly, Gooden (2014) noted how fostering social equity required numerous types of engagement, especially intra- and inter-agency discussions with one another about nervousness and the importance of equity as well as engagement with constituencies most affected by particular public policies. Johnson and Svara (2015b) and Gooden (2015) commented how public service agencies must be accountable for equity, and a key component of social equity accountability is prioritizing outreach to historically marginalized populations and their having meaningful seats at the table. These pieces represent but a fraction of the work in the field linking engagement and equity.

Thus, the potential for research linking engagement and equity is profound. For example, research should examine questions as fundamental as how governments and different community actors engage (or do not engage) to define the meaning of social equity in the first place and the effects these definitions and discourses have on what public service agencies actually do. For another, research should also examine the impact of social equity tools necessitating public engagement–such as racial equity scorecards, meeting the public where they live and work, e-engagement, demonstrating the success of public interventions–on reducing disparities across a range of government and non-profit practices.

Equity and ethics

Another overlap concerns researching equity and ethics. While the discussion of administrative and government ethics is well established in the literature, equity as an ethical priority is somewhat newer to the public administration literature, partly due to social equity only officially entered the lexicon of the field in the 1960s, albeit with some, like Frances Harriet Williams (1947), writing about racial equity as early as the 1940s (Gooden, 2017). While equity is an aspect of public administration ethics, the most agreed-upon core of administration ethics is “serving the public interest.” Still, serving the public interest does not exist in isolation from equity in that serving the public interest is not achieved when policies and administrative practices intentionally and unintentionally harm persons from historically marginalized groups (Johnson & Svara, 2015a). As per Cooper (2004), an important question linking equity and ethics is, “When should we treat people equally in order to treat them fairly, and when should we treat them unequally?” (p. 402).

Considerations of “treatment” references action, and ethical principles guide administrative action (Plant, 2015; Svara, 2015). Further, equity is increasingly being codified as an ethical priority within public service agencies and professional associations. ASPA’s code of ethics, for instance, now explicitly incorporates equity as an ethical priority, albeit only recently. Multiple professional associations have specified equity within their codes of ethics, although few mention specific marginalized populations, thus raising issues about whether ethical codes sufficiently do their part to name, blame, and claim inequities (Gooden, 2014; McCandless & Ronquillo, 2020).

Several research priorities are also evident, especially in the context of more governments and nonprofits viewing equity as an ethical priority and the need to investigate how such linkages affect governance practice. For one, researchers should examine codes of ethics to better understand how and by whom codes are written, how and why codes are adopted, what codes’ content and expectations are, especially whether such codes overtly mention principles of equity, and how codes may affect administrative priorities and behavior. Relatedly, it is incumbent to examine whether agencies have enforcement mechanisms, how enforcement mechanisms work, and the outcomes enforcement has. At a more granular level, it is critical to examine what is required for both individual administrators and public service agencies to successfully incorporate equity as an ethical priority. More generally, key dimensions for the field to investigate are how ethics codes, expectations, trainings, and evaluations do or do not result in substantive improvements in outcomes for historically marginalized populations.

Empathy as interweaving the other Es

Empathy may be the least developed of the new 4Es, at least within the public administration literature. Some research has shown the importance of empathy within public administration (e.g., Dolamore, 2021; Dolamore et al., 2021; Dolamore & Whitebread, 2021; Fenley, 2022). As noted by Meyer et al. (2022), empathy is better developed in other fields. Public administration scholars could take cues from other fields in examining empathy in public service. In nursing, for instance, empathy and compassion are essential for high quality patient care in that these values embody person-centered approaches to promote patient dignity, health, and safety (Yu et al., 2021).

While these values are important, definitional issues are evident, most principally how to define empathy in the first place and how empathy is both related to and distinct from other concepts, especially compassion. Literature in psychology provides some of the most useful insights into how empathy could be better understood and expanded within public administration research. We rely particularly on the work of Cuff et al. (2016). In an expansive review of empathy and related concepts, Cuff et al. (2016) commented how empathy may not be a single concept or process but an umbrella term for concepts like emotional contagion, sympathy, and compassion. As context, empathy is inherently relational between at least two individuals–a target (i.e., someone experiencing an emotional state) and a recipient (i.e., another person representing the first person’s emotional state). Cuff et al. noted that to authors like Ickes (2003), empathy can be understood as existing at the mid-points of three dimensions: (1) the recipient’s cognitive representation of the target’s emotional state; (2) the sharing of emotions between the two; and (3) some identification across the two people with the “other” yet without distinctions in selfhood eliminated. Further, Cuff et al. noted that many definitions of empathy merge empathy with sympathy (i.e., marked by someone’s concern for another), compassion (i.e., marked by witnessing someone else’s negative emotional state with a motivation to help that person), and tenderness (i.e., a “warm-and-fuzzy” feeling in favor of those who are delicate and cannot defend themselves).

Given these complexities, overlaps, and the need for conceptual clarity, Cuff et al (2016). proposed that empathy could be defined as follows:

an emotional response (affective), dependent upon the interaction between trait capacities and state influences. Empathic processes are automatically elicited but are also shaped by top-down control processes. The resulting emotion is similar to one’s perception (directly experienced or imagined) and understanding (cognitive empathy) of the stimulus emotion, with recognition that the source of the emotion is not one’s own (p. 150).

To parse this definition, empathy is an ability or capacity (i.e., trait) that occurs within a specific context and interaction (i.e., state influences). Additionally, empathy, while automatically activated by perceiving another person’s emotional state, is still a state of mind subject to control by other other factors, such as reflection, emotional suppression, and avoiding situations, to name a few (i.e., “shaped by top-down control processes”) (Cuff et al., 2016). In short, from a public administration standpoint, “Empathy as a value stems from the fundamental understanding that human beings are reliant on connections with others” (Dolamore et al., 2021, p. 341).

With this definition from psychology and public administration as a baseline, we posit that empathy can be researched in public administration both individually as well as with any of the other three Es. Below, we particularly focus on the latter possibility.

At its essence, empathy involves distinctly humanizing behaviors. This means treating people as people, acknowledging their worth, treating them respectfully, and even wanting what is best for them. It is clear that such a relational dimension relates to the other Es in several ways. For another, empathy can inform how engagement occurs in that the display of empathy can mean that administrators may be more likely to take equity seriously. Empathy can also be linked to both equity and ethics in that serving the public interest, especially when considering dimensions like public service motivation, can be undergirded by personal, emotive feelings of wanting to serve the public and do what is best for them (Dolamore, 2021; Dolamore et al., 2021; Guy & Ely, 2018).

Several research potentials are evident. Given that empathy is an intentionally relational concept, it is critical to examine how empathy affects administrators’ interactions with others, both coworkers and members of the public, and the effects of empathy on such interactions. Relatedly, similar to questions of leadership, researchers should examine the degree to which empathy can be taught, whether in classrooms or training, and what the pros and cons of teaching empathy could be for public service. Additionally, when empathy manifests in administrative behavior and agency actions, there could be numerous effects on public service outcomes, especially in terms of engagement, equity, and ethics. Finally, researchers could examine which agencies are more or less likely to incorporate empathy (and the effects of such incorporation or lack of incorporation) in tandem with what can predict whether and how individual administrators are likely or less likely to display empathy and the effects thereof. These considerations could be especially important in any type of agency but especially those in the criminal-legal system, such as in policing.

Teaching empathy, engagement, social equity, & ethics

When George Frederickson and Phil Rutledge integrated social equity into public administration in the late 1960s, it is doubtful that they would have also conceived that teaching empathy to the nation’s MPA and Public Administration Doctoral students would have been the thing to do. However, it has never been more important to teach empathy, engagement, equity, and ethics. A quick survey of the public administration education journals, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE) and Teaching Public Administration (TPA), show a strong history over the past twenty years of how to teach social equity in the field of public administration, whether over the whole curriculum (i.e., Gooden & Myers, 2004a, 2004b; McCandless & Larson, 2018), as well as in particular courses, such as Human Resources Management (Gooden & Wooldridge, 2007), Introduction to Public Administration (Svara & Brunet, 2004), and Ethics courses.

The teaching of empathy has been shown to be effective and useful for undergraduate medical students (Batt-Rawden et al., 2013). From the field of social work, Gerdes et al. (2011) suggest cultivating empathy in many different ways, including mindfulness, role-plays, advocacy, and social action, using this to build better social workers. In the public administration literature, there are many creative ways to teach empathy (e.g., Edlins & Dolamore, 2018).

This is an area, though, ripe for research and discussion. As difficult conversations become a part of public administration pedagogy, around issues such as social equity and race, professors can encourage their students to critically engage with the world around them (e.g., Love, Gaynor, & Blessett, 2016), especially with these 4Es guiding them. With new textbooks coming out specifically focused on teaching social equity (e.g., Guy & McCandless, 2020; Johnson III & Meyer, 2022), it is important for the field to think about how equity, along with empathy, engagement, and ethics should be taught in both individual classes and throughout the curriculum. We propose moving these conversations into every class.

There are many ways these pillars can be included into classes which are part of the public administration curriculum, including Human Resources, Budgeting, and Organizational Assessment and Evaluation. These are only three options in the ways that the 4Es can be incorporated into public administration education. Integrating these pillars can help students be the public administrators needed in the 21st century. While below are only three examples, also found in Table 1, ethics, equity, empathy, and engagement should be added to the full public administration curriculum.

Table 1. Incorporating the 4Es into the public administration classroom.

Class	Empathy	Engagement	Equity	Ethics	Activities
Human Resource Management	How can HR procedures and policies meet the needs of the employee as a person?	How can HR connect with employees to support them through their career?	Policies and procedures that promote equity and justice within the organization.	Support the creation of policies and procedures that encourage individuals to act ethically and to inform their employers when there are ethical oversights.	Have the students bring in policies and procedures from their organization. How can their organization change these policies in a way that is more empathetic, engaged, equitable, and ethical?
Budgeting	How can those in budgeting be more empathetic to their clients and constituencies when making budgeting decisions?	How can multiple stakeholders, who represent the clients and the constituencies of the organization, be part of the budgeting process?	How do budgets impact groups differently within the community? Gender responsive budgeting can help provide tools for creating more equitable budgets.	What policies and procedures need to be in place to make for conflicts of interest in the budgeting process?	Using gender responsive budgeting (e.g., Marks Rubin & Bartle, 2005; Viswanath & Mullins, 2021), have the students create a budget for a community or a state. What would they do to make this budget more equitable?
Organizational Assessment & Evaluation	What are ways that evaluators and quality assurance providers can show empathy to those they are talking to? How can empathetic questions and responses be part of our assessment?	Who is in charge of collecting and analyzing the data? How can underrepresented groups be part of the organizational assessment and evaluation process from its inception to the data disbursement? How can data collected be used to support communities instead of just supporting institutions?	How do organizations collect data in an ethical manner? What does it mean to store sensitive data and to ask difficult questions of clients and constituents?	What are the ethical obligations for those collecting data for their community, constituency, and organizations?	Using a fake nonprofit (or a real nonprofit or organization), create a plan to do an organizational assessment. Have the students come up with a plan to include these 4Es into every step of the assessment and evaluation process.

• Human Resource Management: Many of the tasks under human resources connect with these four pillars. Teaching social equity includes how to have policies and procedures that are equitable to employees and meet their needs. Empathetic human resources can include discussions into creating policies and procedures to meet the full needs of the employee, including health and wellness programs and flexibility based on the realities of the workers lives. Activities can include looking at specific policies within public and nonprofit organizations and ask students to use the 4Es to guide changes and improvements to these programs.

• Budgeting: Budgets are not politically neutral, and the 4Es can be used in a budgeting class to help students understand how to create a budget that is equitable and empathetic. Instead, they are the discussion of why A gets budgeted instead of B (Key, 1940). Social equity has been explored in the ways that budgeting can be used to use budgeting to build a more equitable world. For example, gender responsive budgeting can be taught to explore ways that budgets can be more empathetic to the needs of women (Viswanath & Mullins, 2021). Engagement, through participatory budgeting, can be used to disrupt power dynamics and question hierarchies (Su, 2017). Activities for students can include analyzing local budgets and nonprofit budgets to explore how to make them more equitable, and coming up with plans to engage underrepresented communities into the budgeting experience. Instead of being seen as a neutral process, empathy can be used to create equitable budgeting process.

• Organizational Assessment & Evaluation: Equity approaches are not new to assessment and evaluation (Gipps, 1995). Indeed, assessment can be used to address racial and ethnic disparities (Hill & Curry-Stevens, 2017). Building an assessment and evaluation program that not only takes an equity approach, but also engages with the local community can help strengthen the organization. Indeed, ethical organizational assessment and evaluation includes questioning the use data collected and making sure that vulnerable information.

Articles in this section

To start the second half of this double special issue, Sweeting (2022) writes “Strategies to Foster Engagement, Empathy, Equity, and Ethics in Public Service: A Conceptual Model for Public and Nonprofit Administrators.” Using a model of 8 action-oriented initiatives, Sweeting presents steps which individuals and organizations can take to make meaningful social change. This article moves forward the practice of public administration and helps leaders understand the practical changes they can make within their organizations.

Next, Scott et al. (2022) wrote “Toward a More Reflexive and Deliberative Public Affairs: A Critical Reimagining of Doctoral Training.” Scott and colleagues present a way to use the 4Es to rethink doctoral training through core coursework, pedagogical training, and professional development. This article questions the professional norms of public administration and academia. In this paper, Scott and colleagues reimagine doctoral education in a reflexive way to meet the democratic needs of public service.

Mumford’s (2022) article “Building MPA Student Competence in the New 4Es through Teaching Cases” presents how case studies can be used to teach the 4Es within public administration programs. They provide guidance on how to use case studies in the public administration classroom and identify relevant cases for each of the 4Es. This article provides not just an exploration of how the 4Es can be used in the classroom, but also how professors can use case studies in an effective manner.

Feit and Sandberg (2022) wrote “The Dissonance of ‘Doing Good’: Fostering Critical Pedagogy to Challenge the Selective Tradition of Nonprofit Management Education.” Identifying the difference between wanting to do good and the realities of trying to do good, Feit and Sandberg provide a critical analysis of nonprofit history, which tends to be focused on white American and European perspectives. Through this critical engagement, nonprofit management is able to provide a sense of belonging for those who have been excluded from power structures and create a praxis of emancipation for those receiving a nonprofit management education.

Finally, Irizarry (2022) presents “Integrating Mindfulness in Public and Nonprofit Education Programs to Foster Social Equity.” In his work, Irizarry shows us the importance of mindfulness in public administration education. Used in other fields, mindfulness is a way that can professors of public administration can teach equity. Providing step-by-step guidance and additional tools, Irizarry shows the field of public administration how mindfulness can be an important part of public administration pedagogy.

Conclusion

Through these 10 articles in this special double issue, we have provided a discussion of the new 4Es, empathy, engagement, equity, and ethics, as well as a way these 4Es can be used for both research and teaching within public administration, encouraging a practice of public administration that is more empathetic, engaged, equitable, and ethical. In this journey, we have provided guidance on how these 4Es can be incorporated into all aspects of public administration, as well as how the field can move forward with these 4Es. This is a discussion we hope will continue beyond the covers of these two issues of Public Integrity and, instead, be included in the work we do as public administrators and researchers of public administration. These 4Es provide us with the guidance needed to tackle the wicked problems of the 21st century, such as income inequality, climate change, racism, among others. Indeed, these 4Es will create a public administration which is better informed not only of the programs and policies they create, but about the people who they are impacting. The 4Es allows us a forward facing public administration and one that will truly make the world a better place.