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

ABSTRACT

In this symposium, attention is primarily focused on ethics education in public administration programs in colleges and universities. We argue that teaching ethics should be not only limited to specific ethics courses in higher education nor just embedded as an element in various core courses in public administration programs, but also anchored in a thoughtful K-12 curriculum that relates ethics to issues of civility, civics, social justice, and understanding the position and role of government in democratic political systems. Most recently, the Educating for American Democracy (2021) has developed such a K-12 program. While this article will focus on the American context, the ideas presented about a continuous ethics education from elementary school up to college are relevant and important to all democracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Public sector ethics
• ethics education
• civics
• social justice
• democracy

… the evidence is mounting that the current cadres of public-sector careerists are […] immature in their comprehension of the ethical-moral democratic values that are integrally related to the notion of public service. (Gawthrop, 1998, p. 19)

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. (Adichie, 2009, around the 13th minute into her TED-talk)

The need to include normative theory, ethics, public values, and social justice in the study of public administration was recognized at least as early as 1968 at the Minnowbrook conference. Some of its papers were published 3 years later in an edited volume (Marini, 1971). The topic became the center of attention in the slipstream of the Watergate Scandal (Cooper, 2004; Rohr, 1989; West & Bowman, 2015). In many introductory texts of public administration ethics was initially a chapter toward the end, but has since moved to the front of many textbooks. There are several good teaching resources, such as the books by Cooper (1998), Svara (2006), and West and Bowman (2015). There is likely not one best way to teach ethics (Menzel, 1997, p. 230), but some elements are clear.

Ethics courses are often combined with legal issues. The link between ethics and law is perhaps prompted by the extent to which ethical-moral values are increasingly defined by lawmakers (Gawthrop, 1998, p. 39). Similarly, there seems to be a general inclination to define morality and ethics in legal terms (FMG, 1996). Most professional schools have a course on ethics (e.g., ethics for lawyers, for medical professionals, for realtors, for social workers, and so on), and we present the field of public educational administration by way of example. It has emphasized the study and incorporation of ethics in both formal graduate education and professional development of educational leaders. Almost all accredited master’s and doctoral programs in educational leadership devote at least one three-credit-hour course to the teaching of ethics. In the United States, most, if not all, of the educational administration professional associations – like local education agencies, school boards, and the state departments of education – require that public educational administrators demonstrate evidence of successfully mastering the ethics requirements, which are steeped in the associated standards. For example, the Code of Ethics for the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) lists 12 statements to which educational leaders should subscribe, with the second one reading: “Fulfills all professional duties with honesty and integrity and always acts in a trustworthy and responsible manner” (AASA, n.d.). Correspondingly, at the state level, for example, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI¹) requires the school district executive – the superintendent – to exhibit “high standards in the areas of honesty, integrity, fairness, stewardship, trust, respect, and confidentiality.” Similarly, Ohio’s Standards for Superintendents state, “Superintendents [must] engender trust through competence, integrity, ethics and high expectations” (Ohio State Board of Education, 2008). The common emphasis on ethical and moral dispositions and conduct is essential to both effective transformational leadership and to building public trust in public leaders. There is a general consensus that it is vital to develop ethical public leaders who can transform educational workplaces, including schools, districts, and higher education institutions for the advancement of students and the communities that they serve (Chitiga, 2018, p. 76); the same can be said about public and nonprofit professionals in general.

Ethics education must include attention for issues that are internal to a public organization, such as diversity and inclusion, performance appraisal, personnel management, conflict mediation, hiring and firing, promotion, subordinate-superior interaction, and servant leadership. It should also include attention for issues concerning the interface between citizen and public/nonprofit organization, including service delivery, participative and deliberative decision and policy making, and collaborative governance. However, whether ethical challenges and questions are internal or external to public organizations, they can really only be addressed if linked to and embedded in deep understanding of the democratic and societal context in which those questions and challenges arise. Ethics education becomes meaningful when it builds upon understanding the importance of (a) civility, civics, and social justice to democracy, of (b) the position and role of government in democracy, and of (c) the rights and duties citizens in democracy can exercise and explore via various types of participation in public and nonprofit endeavors.

In this paper, the question is: What needs to be done to make ethics components fully integrated in the study of public administration? We certainly need more research into the various questions identified by Menzel, but he observes that we know little about the effectiveness of ethics education, and that we need to explore the links between practical and theoretical knowledge in the pursuit of becoming ethically competent (Menzel, 2015, p. 364). Further, we still need much more empirical research into teaching ethics in the contexts of K-12 education (EAD, 2021; Finkel & Ernst, 2005), of higher education in general (e.g., as a required general education course), and in the study of public administration (Bowman & Menzel, 1997).

To what extent is ethics education in higher education linked to civility, civics, equity, social justice and to understanding the position and role of government in society? How many (under)graduate programs have an ethics course as one of the core requirements in a degree program? Jurkiewicz mentioned in 2002 that some 64% of accredited program offered a freestanding ethics course; at the NASPAA annual conference 15 years later she reported a drop to only 11% (Jurkiewicz, 2002; the drop reported in Svara & Baizhanov, 2019, p. 86). Also, to what extent are ethical challenges integrated in other core courses such as on budgeting and finance, human resource management, policy making, and so on?

Following some general concerns about (a) the decline of civility, civicness, and ethical understanding, (b) the limited understanding of the meaning of social justice (section two), and following some general observations about education and training in ethics for the public sector (section three), the assumption discussed in this article is explored at three levels. At the individual level civility, civics, social justice, ethics, and impartiality are cornerstones of people’s behaviors in the public realm, and this topic has been an issue of continued attention since ancient times. At the organizational level it is important to understand how difficult it is to balance the demands of efficiency with those of democracy, and to recognize the societally shared norms and values that people grow up with (section four). We can also think about ethics in terms of levels of analysis is based on John Rohr’s notion of a high and a low road (1989) and Bruce et al.’s (1995) concept of a lower road of ethics. Thus, in the first section we will briefly outline the conceptual framework for this paper and provide some definitions of some key concepts.

Conceptual framework and key definitions

Most conceptual discussions of ethics and ethics education start with the exchange between Carl Friedrich and Herman Finer in the 1930s and early 1940s. Both wrote about administrative responsibility, but came to quite different viewpoints. The German-born Friedrich had studied in Germany and the United States, became a lecturer at Harvard in 1926 (and professor there in 1936 until 1971), and decided to naturalize as an American after Hitler had come to power. He firmly believed in the internal moral compass that all public officials should have. This internal compass was part a function of upbringing, and part one of socialization in a particular profession. Having experienced the emergence of totalitarianism (he received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1930) he shied away from prescribing in legalistic detail the boundaries of administrative discretion. More importantly, like Goodnow, he recognized that the boundaries between politics and administration were fluid: “Politics and administration play a continuous role in both formation and execution [of policy], though there is probably more politics in the formation of policy, more administration in the execution of it.” (Friedrich, 1940, p. 6; also as cited in Finer, 1941, p. 343)

In contrast, the Romanian-born British political scientist Finer (who taught at the London School of Economics, 1920–1942; and at the University of Chicago 1946–1973), firmly believed that “ … the servants of the public are not to decide their own course; they are to be responsible to the elected representatives of the public.” (Finer, 1941, p. 336) Thus, he very much favored a stricter separation of politics from administration. In his mind, the notion of an “inward personal sense of moral obligation” was characteristic for totalitarian systems (ibid.). He also repudiated Friedrich’s reliance upon “the fellowship of science,” believing it could lead to “a new despotism.” (Finer, 1941, p. 340)

The Friedrich – Finer contrast maps nicely to the so-called normative and structural perspectives upon ethics (Gilman & Lewis, 1996, p. 520). The normative perspective assumes an upbringing in moral integrity² and alerts to the challenge of inculcating ethics and integrity in organizations. The structural perspective is more concerned with explicit formal-legal frameworks for actions. It also is visible in John Rohr’s distinction between a high and a low road of ethics. The high road is mainly concerned with social equity and studied in political philosophy and humanistic psychology (Rohr, 1989, pp. 64–68). This high road is reminiscent of Lawrence Kohlberg’s post-conventional or principled morality where behaviors and actions are rooted in universal ethical principles. Rohr’s low road circumscribes an ethical behavior that is reduced to “staying out of trouble” (Rohr, 1989, pp. 60–64) and, thus, harking back to Kohlberg’s pre-conventional and conventional moralities. Pre-conventional behavior and action are determined by immediate consequences (reward or punishment and/or self-interest) and is characteristic for children. Conventional level behavior and action are rooted in a sense of right and wrong that derives from what is socially (un)acceptable. Rohr argues that the high road does not offer a good foundation for public sector ethics education and that it would be better to take regime values as a starting point. Those regime values are similar to what David Rosenbloom more recently called “mission-extrinsic public values.” (Rosenbloom, 2014)

Building upon Rohr’s contrast, in a review essay of three books (Bowman, 1991; Cooper, 1994; Frederickson, 1993) Willa Bruce argues that much of the PA literature addresses low road or second-level ethics that is focused on compliance with rules, law, and duty (Bruce et al., 1995, pp. 112–113). She convincingly argues that attention for a lower road or third level of ethics is necessary and ought to be concerned with the various rules of interaction in the workplace (Bruce 95, 115). She specifically mentions human resource examples such as hiring, supervising, and firing employees, as well as challenges of diversity and inclusion. Nowadays we can easily add awareness of and respect for the privacy of the individual as well as race, social equity, and social justice (Gooden, 2014).

Both high road/first level ethics and the low road/second level ethics feed into this lower road/third level ethics (see Table 1). This means, for instance, that an ethic of impartiality and an ethic of neutrality are both important. Impartiality, a notion and desire that has very ancient roots, is placed in the high road column as this underscores the view and desire that all people ought to be treated with respect and not taken advantage of. Neutrality is a concept embraced in the context of the emerging preference for a politics – administration dichotomy in the late nineteenth century, and fits best in the low road column as that concept implies that administrative discretion is constrained by the primacy of politics and by rules.

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).

Impartiality can easily be linked to civility, a concept that is associated with individual virtues and behaviors, such as tolerance, self-restraint, and respect toward others (Evers, 2010). Thus, civility has to do with how people behave toward one another in general, and in their various personal and professional roles. Civicness is associated with state, citizenry, and citizenship, and has been defined as “the capacity of institutions, organizations, and procedures to stimulate, reproduce, and cultivate civility.” (Brandsen et al., 2010, p. 11) Acting with civility, and understanding what it takes to be a citizen in the public realm, requires understanding of right and wrong. That is where morality and ethics come in. We cannot dive into a discussion of various definitions of morality and ethics, because this article is not a philosophical exploration of these concepts. Some scholars argue that morality is about customs of group and society; others say morality it is about individual behavior. In the eyes of some, ethics concerns individual conduct, while others believe it to reflect the values of group and society as a whole. Whichever it is, for the purposes of this article it is sufficient to point out that both concepts concern principles of right and wrong. People may know what is right and wrong, though, but they also have come to doubt the sincerity of the behaviors, actions, and words of others. Indeed, there are grave concerns about the decline in civility and civicness in American society in general and this is, among other things, expressed in declining trust in government. Among scholars there is concern about the extent to which ethics and integrity are understood by those who work in the public sector (e.g., Waldo, 1980; Gawthrop, 1998, 2017; see also next section). There is also substantial evidence that income inequality has been increasing rapidly in the past 40 years or so (for overview see Piketty, 2014) and that places social justice, which concerns the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society, firmly in any discussion about civicness, civility, ethics, and so forth.

Concerns about decline in civility, civicness, and understanding ethics

For millennia, government had been simply an instrument in the hands of the few, and government was perceived as situated above the multitude that was treated as subjects. As long as government was treated as if an instrument that could be manipulated to the advantage of those in and with political and economic power, the distinction between a public and political realm on the one hand and a private, economic realm on the other was non-existent. In that situation, government and its bureaucracy served the desires and whims of the powerful. It is only in the past 250 years or so that governments in democratic political systems are seen as a container and an enabler of citizen desires, that government is an institutional arrangement by, with, among, and for the people as citizens (Raadschelders, 2020b). Once that is the case, people differentiate between a private, economic and a public, political sector in the modern sense, and civility, civicness, social justice, and ethical behavior become important components of how people are expected to behave in that public realm.

In the massive imagined communities of contemporary democracy trust in others in general is perceived as having declined since the 1970s (Leahy, 2016; Morgan, 2014) and this spills over into declining trust in government as well. To be sure, when people are asked about specific public servants and services they generally express trust (Goodsell, 2015), but, when asked about government in general there is increasing distrust. This distrust is, in our view, especially fueled by the manipulative behaviors and decisions of some political officeholders and by those who aspire to political office. People are also aware of the fact that politics is captured by special interests (such as business corporations, associational groups) that seek to eliminate, or at least dilute, regulation. Various (often large) companies, often through political campaign finance, target government policy makers, wish to weaken the enforcement of regulation, and hopes to set prices and rates of consumer products without oversight (Etzioni, 2019, pp. 50–54). Various terms are found in the literature that aptly coin what is happening: repatrimonialization (Fukuyama, 2014, p. 28), regulatory capture (Stiglitz, 2013, p. 59), and corrosive capture (Hacker & Pierson, 2016, p. 93). The privatization of profit and the socialization of risk is then “secured” through substantial financial support of political campaigns.

Let it just be said that the experiment in democracy can only succeed when all participants and stakeholders display restraint in the pursuit of personal interests. This restraint is especially important to all incumbents of political office as they, as a collegial body, are invested with the authority to make binding decisions for the jurisdiction as a whole. As it stands, the political system in democracies has shown to be vulnerable to populism to an extent not thought possible in the immediate post-World War II decades. Furthermore, political officeholders, in some countries more than in others, seem to regard politics as an instrument for personal advancement. The many factors that contribute to this lack of trust in one another and in politics cannot be the subject of this article, but the way to reverse this trend of declining trust is via education. That education starts with understanding the basics about government. In 2008 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute reported that 44% of high school graduates and 57% of college graduates failed the civic literacy test administered to those who desire to become an American citizen. In a follow-up report they noted that greater civic knowledge trumps a college degree as the leading factor that encourages civic engagement (ISI, 2011). In 2018, 22% of students in the 8^th grade had teachers who reported to have primary responsibility for teaching civics and/or U.S. government to their class.³ The US Agency for International Development has sponsored civics education in various emerging democracies in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Research into the outcomes of such education at the high school level in South Africa showed that civics education did increase political knowledge and awareness, but that success depended upon whether students found their instructor charismatic, prepared, engaging, etc. (Finkel & Ernst, 2005). However, based upon our reading of this article, it appears that civics education in South Africa in the late 1990s was organized as a one-course program. Below we will argue that good civics education needs to be embedded and connect a variety of issues (as suggested in the title of this article).

With regard to civics and civility, there are hundreds of efforts throughout the United States to improve and enhance these in centers located at universities as well as through many nonprofit initiatives. By way of example, The Ohio State University has a Center for Ethics and Human Values in its Department of Philosophy and it organizes workshops, colloquia, and distinguished lectures (e.g., Amartya Sen). Kansas State University has an Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy in the Department of Communication Studies and it organizes community dialogs and various activities for middle and high school students. In 2011 former presidents George W.H. Bush and William (Bill) J. Clinton took the initiative to start a National Institute for Civil Discourse, housed at the University of Arizona. It is through that Institute that former State of Ohio representative Theodore (Ted) S. Celeste started the National Network of State Legislators that organizes the Next Generation Workshops.

In the nonprofit world there is the Kettering Foundation (est. 1927) that, among many other activities, organizes annually a Deliberative Democracy Institute in Dayton, Ohio, with nominated participants who are teachers, journalists, lawyers, and other professionals. The Kettering Foundation also collaborates with the National Issues Forums, a network of civic, educational, and other organizations created in 1981 that seeks to promote dialogue (in contrast to debate and discussion) about various pressing public policy issues. The Institute for Civility in Government is a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization, headquartered in Houston, Texas, also actively promoting dialogue in various ways.

This is just a small listing of initiatives and there are many, many more. It is not clear whether an overview exists of these initiatives and activities in higher education and in the nonprofit world, but it is uplifting to see there are so many people, as providers and as consumers, involved in efforts at turning the tide of declining trust and civility. However, is all this effort still too dispersed and only reaching a portion of the population nowadays? People can pick and choose which information they care to receive and absorb and that happens – as we argue below because it is not anchored to a core. That core, we believe, has to reside in public education. To be sure, we do not advocate some kind of centralization or standardization of initiatives. Instead, we seek something that can anchor the exposure of people at large to issues of civility, civicness, trust, ethics, social justice, in relation to understanding the position and role of government. And it just so happens that the only institution that all people come in contact with at ages 4 to 18 is school, and thus public schools – at least – should provide students with the education that helps become aware, responsible, and engaged citizens. Most recently, a proposal for K-12 civics education was published that addresses and connects the various issues mentioned in this article (EAD, 2021). A large group of educators from kindergarten up to higher education institutions were involved in the development of (in our view: excellent) age/grade appropriate concepts and questions around seven major themes (Roadmap EAD, 2021). When looking at that curriculum, it is clear how much ethics and civics education benefits from starting small, branching out, and moving from concrete to more and more abstract. It is that type of K-12 education, i.e., a continuous civics education just as mathematics and language is taught at all grade levels, that, then, prepares for more in-depth public sector ethics education in colleges and universities.

Public curricular education in K-12 about civicness, civility, social justice, and the position and role of government in democratic society (inclusive of those basics covered in the civics program that needs to be completed for acquiring American citizenship), will go a long way in preparing students for continued education at college and university levels. Ethics education at institutions of higher learning is necessary, if we are to believe various comments made since the Second World War. In 1951 US Senator Paul H. Douglas, chair of the Senate sub-committee on Ethical Standards in Government, wrote in a little volume that was based on his Godkin Lectures at Harvard University in 1951 that “ … the present standards of behavior are by no means good enough and need radical improvement. The increasing importance of government makes this all the more necessary. […] … our government is now so huge and affects our lives so directly that we cannot be content with merely a moderately decent level of behavior on the part of our public officials” (Douglas, 1952, p. 19). Whether the state of ethical behavior in government was such in his time that it prompted his attention is unclear, but the government had been growing at local, state, and federal levels since the late nineteenth century and, thus, opportunities for unethical and corrupt behavior must have increased. He specifically mentioned the revolving-door problem, where leading members of government resign and get into well-paid private sector jobs because of their previous involvement in and knowledge of government. He asked: “Why should we fence off government as an unmoral field into which the voice of experience should not enter? We should rather treat the whole area of government as a vital part of the ethical life which we should try to conduct on the highest possible level. To this end, guiding principles and codes backed up by certain social sanctions can be of great aid to the troubled navigators on the stormy sea of life” (Douglas, 1952, p.  102). He did not support laissez-faire, but expected that a partial swing back to principles of free market would decrease opportunities for corruption (ibid., 35). He could not have foreseen the extent to which the corporate sector would advocate and take advantage of the deregulation since the 1980s.

Almost 30 years after Douglas, Dwight Waldo, a professor of public administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, observed in one of his farewell lectures that “The 20th century has hardly been distinguished either by its observance of agreed moral codes or by its concentration on ethical inquiry. On the contrary, it has been distinguished by a ‘decay’ of traditional moral codes, a widespread feeling that morality is ‘relative’ if not utterly meaningless, and a disposition to regard ethical inquiry as frivolous, irrelevant. These currents of thought and feeling have been associated with a ‘falling away’ from religious belief and a concomitant rise of ‘belief’ in science and its philosophical or anti-philosophical aura.” (Waldo, 1980, p. 112) Considering the climate of political partisanship, especially at the federal level, Waldo’s observation has not lost any of its relevance. Waldo mentions that this decay of moral codes is partly the result of a process of secularization and partly of an increasing belief in science as the basis for decision-making. In the past decade, however, scientific research and evidence-based knowledge has come under scrutiny and is questioned. Where some people believe climate change to be a hoax, covid-19 to be not as dangerous, and lots of news to be fake, it does not help that trust in science and evidence has also been eroded by the fact that some scholars have been caught to have manipulated data, plagiarized publications, and are “for sale.”⁴ While the actual rates in absolute numbers are low, plagiarism in scholarship has been rising in the past 20 years (Pordon, 2020, slides 3 and 11).

Toward the end of the twentieth century, public administration scholar Louis C. Gawthrop focused in a wonderful little study (Gawthrop, 1998) on the relationship between public service and democracy and had specific attention for the individual public officeholder. He lamented the lack of understanding about democratic ethical-moral values among public servants (see first epigraph). He also wrote that “ … far too often the appearance of a commitment to duty is sufficient to fulfill the demands of service, and as a consequence the individual who is successful in appearing to be a dutiful public servant is most frequently viewed as an exemplary bureaucrat.” (ibid. 41; italics, LG) On the same page he noted that “ … in attempting to maintain the artificial appearance of duty, many public administrators have sought to link their commitment of service to the amoral pretense of detached objectivity, neutral competence, and dispassionate loyalty.”

What catches attention in the Douglas quote is the word “unmoral’ and in the Gawthrop quote the word “amoral.” One of the plagues government suffered from in the past is that of not being objective enough, an inheritance of the pervasive influence of politics in administration during the nineteenth century (see above) and it is a collective memory hard to shake off. Likewise, the study of public administration suffered from not being scientific enough and too much focused on educating (we prefer that term over “training”) future administrators in being impartial and neutral in the execution of their duties. As far as we know, Michael Harmon was the first to question the doctrine of administrative neutrality in a paper at the Minnowbrook-1968 gathering: “Because of its commitment to the doctrine of separation of powers and legislative supremacy, the traditional American view of democracy affirms the ethics of administrative neutrality in matters of substantive policy.” (Harmon, 1971, p. 175) Along lines reminiscent of Finer he argued that as administrators are not elected by the public they should not have the freedom to act as policy advocates and certainly not allow personal values to influence their policy work (ibid. 176). In Harmon’s paper it appears that the civil servant is a passive actor, one who is forced to be impartial and neutral because of the primacy of politics.

More than a decade later Christopher Hodgkinson advances a more active role to the administrator/civil servant as one who has a natural tendency to resolve value conflicts at the lowest level, and seeking to avoid moral issues (Hodgkinson, 1982, p. 116). In his view, “ … an aim of bureaucracy [is] to rationalize and routinize procedures for the resolution of value issues at the level of least organizational cost. He explains the administrative-managerial preference for the avoidance of ‘moral issues’ or contests of principle by the fact that lower-level resolutions may be amenable to compromise and persuasion, whereas higher-level conflicts may be irreconcilable, not only moral but also mortal.” (ibid. 117). Indeed, he notes that moral issues can easily be avoided through avoidance or retreat mechanisms, such as withdrawing into managerialism, resorting to bureaucratic rationality and impersonality, and relapsing into skepticism or positivism. But, “Administrators need a technique for resolving value conflicts which is superior to the methods of avoidance, least resistance, or lowest principle.” (ibid. 146) There is some evidence that career administrators indeed find guidance when developing policies and budgets, first, in law, then in the political program and platform(s) of political officeholders, and, as last resort, in personal morality (Franklin & Jos, 2004 [2005]), but we need much more empirical research into this.

People at large may not be aware of how challenging the job of career civil servants actually is. Let the words of Gawthrop testify to this: “Public-sector managers are expected by chief executives, legislators, and the body politic to be efficient in their administrative capacities and effective in achieving the goals and objectives of the programs assigned to them. Moreover, they are expected to be responsible to their executive branch superiors and accountable to the appropriate legislative bodies and responsive to the needs of their clientele groups. Finally, they are expected to be dedicated to the standards of their professions and politically astute enough to appreciate the pragmatic political realities of life and committed fully to a life of service in the name of democracy.” (Gawthrop, 1998, p. 130, italics LG)

In the course of the twentieth century several sources of guidance emerged, such as codes of ethics (which can be understood as an effort to legalize morality; FMG, 1996), decision trees, and mandatory certifications of completion. The earliest codes of ethics date back to the nineteenth century and appeared in the medical, legal, and accounting professions (Backoff & Martin, 1991). The one issued by the International City Managers Association (nowadays: International City/County Managers Association) in 1924 is among the earliest in the public sector (Svara, 2015, p. 260). The ICMA-code was followed by examples and guidelines of each of those codes in 1972. In 1999 the ICMA published a training package titled Ethics in Action. In the past 40 years, many public organizations, nonprofit organizations, and professional associations have a code of ethics, and sometimes they are displayed on the wall in the offices of organizational leaders.

Ethics codes in the public sector were encouraged by the 1978 Ethics in Government Act. All federal departments and agencies were to implement its stipulations. For instance, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a Joint Ethics Regulation (JER) in 1993, last updated in November 2011. DoD also has a lengthy Standards of Conduct in Office document. DoD also provides an ethical decision making plan (accessed July 31, 2020 at www.defenselink.mil.dodgc/defence_ethics/ethics_regulation/jer1-4.doc, and on its pages 120–121 you can find the decision-making plan; the updated JER can be found at https://tigs-online.ignet.army.mil/Guides_Ref/d55007p.pdf). Sometimes such a decision tree is part of a larger programmatic effort at making personnel aware of the importance of integrity. By way of example, in the 1990s the Dutch national government promoted the development of integrity programs. One such program was developed at the Tax and Customs Administration of the Treasury Department, and one element was a decision tree (Van Blijswijk et al., 2004, p. 723). Finally, in the past 15 years or so, those who work in positions where they deal with confidential information and/or are in direct contact with consumers need to complete certification. In the case of sexual harassment, such certification may well be required every year. Whether these programs and trainings are effective is unclear. That one has completed integrity training, implicit bias training, or completed certificates on handling sensitive data, on diversity and inclusion, and on sexual misconduct does not guarantee appropriate behavior afterward. How often are such in-person and/or online trainings simply viewed as a “one-off” and “going through the motions” as if it is nothing more, nothing less than a ritual we have to comply with (see below)? Equally important: to what extent are ethics and integrity training programs related to issues of civicness, civility, social equity and justice, and impartiality? Indeed, fairness, equity, respect, and (social) justice are among the top four values in several ethics codes (McCandles & Ronquillo, 2020, p. 476).

Attempts at codifying ethics started in the public sector. In the past 20 years, attention has also been increasing for ethics and morality in the private sector following scandals in various companies (e.g., WorldCom, Enron, etc.) (The New York Times, 2006; see also Shareef, 2008, p. 285) and under the recognition that ethics education concerning the private sector in business schools has in the past 40 years or so pretty much dropped the attention for ethics it had in the late nineteenth century (Khurana, 2007). However, in this article we focus on education and training for (future) public sector professionals, but acknowledge that what we propose is relevant for nonprofit leadership.

Education on and training in individual ethical behavior for the public sector

More than 20 years ago Louis Gawthrop lamented that career civil servants have little understanding of what it takes to operate in a democratic policy (see first epigraph). Throughout the book Gawthrop points to the extent to which democracies seek to codify or legalize morality and ethics, for example: “ … the current attention assigned to ethics in bureaucratic circles can be viewed as a supplement to the organizational manuals of standard operating procedures. In the United States, at least, workshops, seminars, and conferences on political and administrative ethics currently abound in such variety that it is virtually impossible to keep abreast of the upcoming tide. From procurement to accounting to budgeting to personnel ad infinitum, ‘ethical’ maxims come at the professional managers from all directions.” (1998, 88) He noted that this resulted in a ritualization of moral life, and in moralization of the ritual. Similarities in laundry lists of ethics are more striking than the differences. Seldom noticed is, however, that ethical-moral values inherent to democracy (e.g., social equity and justice, fairness, impartiality, civility, civicness) should come first; it is not sufficient that they are implicit in the ethics codes (1998, 89).

As much as attention for civics and civility has declined in public schools, scholarship on public sector ethics and public values is substantial. With regard to ethics scholarship there are several references throughout this article. With respect to public values, the literature has expanded in the past 15 years and there are at least three symposia (special issue American Association of School Administrators, n.d.; symposium in The American Review of Public Administration 2015; special issue International Journal of Public Administration 2016). This Journal of Public Affairs Education has published a variety of articles on teaching ethics, but it was only 3.55% (i.e., 23) of the 647 articles published between 1995 and 2018 (Raadschelders et al., 2019, p. 57).

What is offered in higher education regarding ethics education and training? In 2002 it was reported that 23% of accredited and non-accredited MPA programs had a mandatory ethics course; another 39% reported to have elective courses (Jurkiewicz & Giacalone, 2002, p. 57; Jurkiewicz & Nichols, 2002, p. 103). Based on the ethics education literature, it seems that a case-study approach dominates. That is, we suspect that most free-standing ethics courses will familiarize students with some conceptual framework, and then move into an analysis and discussion of several cases. Indeed, students need to learn how to recognize circumstances that pose ethical dilemmas before they can appreciate the usefulness of codes of ethics (Kennedy & Malatesta, 2011, p. 163). Ethics education includes attention for public values, for recognizing public failure (Bozeman, 2002), and for recognizing the tipping points between ethical and efficient public management on the one hand and unethical administration on the other (Shareef, 2008, p. 293). Students report to appreciate the hands-on involvement with identifying various types of ethical challenges (Jurkiewicz & Giacalone, 2002, p. 67).

It is important to note that ethics training is often focused on individual behavior, and that has its roots in ancient Egyptian and Babylonian instruction literature about the ideal relation between ruler and ruled and between supervisor and subordinate (Raadschelders, 2020a). Codes of ethics in the modern world still include guidelines for individual behavior, but also provide codes and ethical guidelines for the organizational level. Furthermore, contemporary codes of ethics are expected to reflect the values of society at large.

Focus on organizational behavior and societal context: The classical dilemma of governing and the societal context of commodification

The three E’s of efficiency, effectiveness, and economy are often contrasted with the values of fairness, due process, and equity. In the words of Peter Self, the classical dilemma of public administration is to balance the tensions between effective executive action on the one hand and the requirements of responsibility or accountability on the other (Self, 1979, pp. 277–278). We could call that the dilemma about balancing efficiency and democracy.

The values of efficiency are mission-intrinsic values. Efficiency is assessed through, for instance, cost-benefit analysis, and effectiveness through means-goals analysis. Once a policy is implemented, it is through performance measurement that we seek to assess how successful a policy was and whether some recalibration is needed. The values of democracy are mission-extrinsic and much harder to assess, although Barry Bozeman’s public failure framework offers a nice set of criteria by which the value of public policy can be assessed (Bozeman, 2002, pp. 150–151).

What do we teach our students about governing in a democracy? Especially in American society it is difficult to emphasize that government plays an indispensable role in maintaining and shoring up democracy. More than 400 years ago, the political economist avant-la-lettre Antonio Serra pointed out that the well-being of society depended upon a diversified economy (i.e., in his time: agriculture, manufacturing, and trade), upon an enterprising population that is willing to learn, and upon infrastructure that would encourage connectivity between different localities (Serra, 1613/2011, pp. 123, 249). What do our students know about the position and role of government in the past and at the moment (Raadschelders, 2020b)? What do they know about the origins and development of American government? What do they know about the rights and duties that come with being a citizen in democracy (rather than a subject in an authoritarian system). What do they know about the opportunities for citizen engagement in public and nonprofit activities? And, what about the challenges of governing in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society? We should make room in curricular programs for such studies as those by Nancy Isenberg on the origins and development of class in the US (Isenberg, 2017), by Amitai Etzioni on the rise of populism (2019), by Ibram Kendi (2019), Isabel Wilkerson (2020), and Park Hong (2020) on class and race in the US, by Victor Ray on racialized organizations (2019), by Robert F. Durant about the compensatory state (Durant, 2020), and by Thomas Piketty (2014) on rising income inequalities. All these studies probe aspects of the larger societal environment in which public sector ethics unfolds, and help students develop the critical skill of understanding that how people perceive the world around them varies greatly. Indeed, we need to help our students to step out of their comfort zone (Chitiga et al., 2011). Students will have to learn that individual and organizational ethical codes are embedded in a social context.

There is another element highly relevant to ethics education, and that is awareness of living in a society where activities and outcomes are calculated in monetary and/or numeric (ranking) terms. This started in the eighteenth century and is what Max Weber referred to as the shift from value to goal rationality (Weber, 1946a [1919], p. 120; Raadschelders, 2019). We live in a society where people not only commodify material goods, but also human activities (such as invited keynote speeches), ideas, and services (Raadschelders, 2020b, pp. 173–177). Even certain public services have been commodified: public schools face competition from charter schools; public utilities are contracted-out or even privatized; incarceration is no longer only a government-run enterprise. Weber captured how important calculation has become in Western democracies: “The ‘objective’ discharge of business primarily means a discharge of business according to calculable rules and ‘without regard for persons. […] The peculiarity of modern culture, and specifically of its technical and economic basis, demands this very ‘calculability’ of results.” (Weber, 1946b, p. 215) To be sure, there is nothing wrong with calculating outcomes, but commodification and calculation invite rent-seeking behavior, i.e., actions aimed at manipulating political and economic outcomes for personal gain. The attention for public sector ethics, public values, and for business ethics and values (but see Khurana, 2007) in the past 30 years or so serves as a counter-point to this development.

Anchoring public sector ethics in education at large and to issues of civics, civility, social justice, and democracy

As in many fields of study, public administration research is driven by “productivity” norms and citation scores in Web of Science and Google Scholar. It leads scholars away from asking big questions (Raadschelders, 2019). Big questions can be addressed through using quantitative-statistical and mathematical methods with qualitative methods in the analysis of data. But, big questions also need to be contemplated, weighed, debated, and pondered. The big question in this article is: What needs to be done to make ethics components fully integrated in the study of public administration?

We believe the answer is to anchor it in a continuous educational effort that starts in early grades, is continued in high school, is reinforced in higher education, and discussed through experiential learning programs for working professionals in the public and nonprofit sectors. Recognizing that “schools are microcosms of their societies […] communities [of cross-disciplinary scholars should] come together to transform those societies that are mirrored by [our] failing schools whose cultures alienate many [people]” (Chitiga, 2017, p. 118). We believe that the sustainable, targeted curriculum proposal of EAD (2021) will, if and when implemented, help transform civics and ethics education and systematically incorporate measurable learning outcomes focused on the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that encourage ethical leadership for social justice. At all levels, the civics curriculum ought to age-appropriately transcend the traditional “stamps, flags, and coins” of the three branches of government, of how a bill becomes a law, of elections, of the political process, etc.

As implemented in the Performing Arts for Effective Civic Education (PAECE) project curricula in South Carolina, civics and ethics can be successfully introduced at the elementary school level (Chitiga, 2014). Early grade students can learn the basics about the role and structure of government and how to identify and critique ethical practices, for example. Middle school curricula should incorporate creative ways of helping students learn about the essentials of civility, ethics, civics, and about what it means to be productive citizens in a functioning democracy. That would include awareness of the fact that the world’s realities cannot be captured in single stories (Adichie, 2009; Brooks, 2016) and that we should not reduce complex political issues and choices to black-and-white, either-or binary propositions. At all levels of education dedicated course teachers are essential, for the cementing of core civics knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)’s Nation’s Report Card findings indicate that only 22% of the participating grade 8 students had teachers whose “primary responsibility [was] teaching civics and/or U.S. government.” But, as we suggested above, it would be important that students at all grade levels (K-16) receive civics and ethics education from various instructors, in an effort to maximize the diversity of ideas.

High schools need to substantially revamp the curricula on the position and role of government in societies, to include more on active citizenry and holding public officials accountable for ethical and democratic leadership. Thus, high school education should include analyses of the differences between “government above subjects” (totalitarian) and “government among, with, by, and for citizens” in a democracy. They should know that government can be an instrument of power in the hands of the few (which is the case for most of history), and it can be a container and enabler for the aspirations and dreams of the many (which is the case in a functioning democracy) (Raadschelders, 2020b). High school curricula should also include the introduction of topics on ethics, social justice, and civility; special attention should be paid to the development of civil discourse norms and to the differences among debate, discussion, and dialogue, for example. The PAECE program offers illuminating examples of how the K–16 community can use multiple genres to successfully help students learn about and increase their affinity for ethics, civic engagement, and social justice foci (Chitiga, 2014).

In higher education there should be a general education class that is about the position and role of government in a democratic society (not just about American government as a political system). We should also strive to include issues of civility (including diversity, equity, and inclusion), civics, ethics, equity, impartiality, and social justice as standard elements in the core courses. Students should learn at this point that difficult policy choices cannot be reduced to simple contrasts. What we propose is an ethics education that is not limited to the study of public administration, but will provide the kind of basis that citizens and (future) public administrators and leaders in nonprofit organizations can build upon. Living in an age where material and immaterial things are calculated in money and/or in rankings, it becomes very important to rekindle attention for the morality, integrity, social justice, civics, civility, and ethics of public office. With respect to higher education specifically, a civics/ethics course should be a mandatory general education class, while in the study of public administration issues of civics and ethics should be an integral part of the core courses in human resource management, budgeting, project management, and policy making. Given the drive across the US to strengthen attention for issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we have hope that the subject matter of this article will become more common at least in PA-programs and in the pre-college curriculum.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jos C.N. Raadschelders

Jos C.N. Raadschelders is professor and associate dean for faculty, John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University. His research interests include administrative history, comparative government, the study of public administration and the nature of government, citizenship and ethics.

Miriam M. Chitiga

Miriam Chitiga is a Tenured Full Professor and interim Department Chair of Educational Leadership and School Administration at Fayetteville State University, a Constituent of The University of North Carolina System.  With a PhD in Educational Administration from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, Miriam’s professional experiences include working across the formal education spectrum in Southern Africa and the USA.  Through intersectionality lenses, her multi-methods, cross-disciplinary research focuses on investigating transformational ways for leaders to enhance diverse student learning, inclusion, and social justice.

Notes

1. North Carolina Standards for Superintendents https://files.nc.gov/dpi/north_carolina_superintendent_standards_2.pdf, accessed February 22, 2021.

2. Menzel (1997) reports that several of his respondents commented that their sense of ethics “had been molded by their upbringing which, for better or for worse, was what mattered the most when they were faced with a dilemma.”

3. See https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/civics/2018/, access February 22, 2021.

4. For instance, the sugar industry paid two scientists around 1965 to publish articles that claimed that not sugar but saturated fat was the main cause for heart disease. More recently, Coca-Cola paid three scientists to write that obesity is a function of lack of exercise, not of the consumption of sugary sodas. See Lustig Robert (2018), 277–278).