Ethics education in public administration: An introduction to the symposium

This symposium focuses primarily on ethics instruction in university public administration programs in the United States.¹ The salience of this topic increased during the decades of the late 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and beyond as scholarly research and writing on ethics in public administration increased (e.g., Cooper, 1986; Bowman, 1981; Menzel, 1998, 2005, 2015; Rohr, 1978) and as courses on ethics began to appear in MPA programs. Professional associations like ASPA and NASPAA also began to give sporadic attention to ethics in the curriculum and multiple conferences on ethics education in public administration were held (see Bowman & Menzel, 1998). In 1996 Public Integrity Annual–subsequently renamed Public Integrity, for years a quarterly journal and now bi-monthly–was published by the Council of State Governments and ASPA. A year later Don Menzel and James Bowman and others organized the ASPA “Section on Ethics”– since 2015 known as the Section on Ethics and Integrity in Governance (SEIgov). Public Integrity became the section’s official journal in 1998.²

NASPAA encouraged public administration programs to “enhance the student’s values, knowledge and skills to act ethically and effectively” (Menzel, 1998). In 1986 NASPAA established its accreditation process and by 1989 it adopted standard 3.21 which “largely settled the question of whether ethics should be taught in graduate public affairs” (Yoder & Denhardt, 1994, p. 200). However, this standard did not go so far as to require addition of a core course on ethics, meaning that the standard could be satisfied by discussing ethics throughout the curriculum.

As pointed out by the authors of the lead article in this symposium, 23 articles have been published in this NASPAA Journal of Public Affairs Education (previously Journal of Public Administration Education) between 1995 and 2018; however, these accounted for less than 3.55% percent of the 647 articles published in the journal during this period (Raadschelders et al., 2019, p. 57). The journal editors are now giving greater attention to ethics by putting the spotlight on this topic with a special symposium. The symposium’s Call for Papers on Ethics Education in Public Administration resulted in the submission of more than two dozen proposals. The 14 authors of six articles selected for inclusion cover topics that range from attention to macro issues in ethics education and competency development in public administration to micro innovative teaching strategies with guidelines for use in the classroom or training sessions. The strategies include, among other things, fictional and real case studies that explore the links between practical and theoretical knowledge in building ethical competency.

The first article in the symposium by Jos C. N. Raadschelders and Miriam M. Chitiga stresses the importance of linking ethics education to public values and to government’s role in society. The authors’ conceptual framework builds on the well-known exchange between Carl Friedrich and Herman Finer regarding administrative responsibility, John Rohr’s distinction between the high road and low road of ethics, and Willa Bruce’s lower road or third level of ethics which implies that administrative discretion is limited by politics, laws and rules. Among other issues, Raadschelders and Chitiga raise the question, “What needs to be done to make ethics components fully integrated in the study of public administration?” Their response emphasizes the need for ethics and civics curricular education beginning in grades K-12 which is then reinforced as students continue in higher education.

The authors summarize and support various nonprofit civic and ethics initiatives, with special attention to the 2021 curriculum proposal from Educating for American Democracy. They advocate instruction that emphasizes how individual and organizational ethical codes are embedded in a social context. The authors contend that public sector ethics should be anchored in education at large and tied to issues of civics, civility, social justice and democracy–topics which should be standard elements in core courses such as human resource management, budgeting, project management, and policy making. Many of the themes in the Raadschelders and Chitiga article are further explored in the other symposium pieces.

The second article by Mark K. McBeth, Adam M. Brewer, and Jennifer Lund explores an issue mentioned by Raadschelders and Chitiga: the need to add ethics as a focal concern in the public human resource management class. The authors expand on Rosenbloom’s (1983) framework for examining decision-making in public administration–managerial, political, and legal–adding ethics as a fourth approach. Given the many ethical dilemmas encountered in human resource management, they argue that the HRM course should integrate ethics into all topics considered. They illustrate how this can be done using a fictional teaching case to examine how managers can apply conceptual material and knowledge to real situations.

The setting for the case study is a small community experiencing social, economic and political change and the ethical dilemmas confronting decision makers. Both the course and the case are designed to enable students to identify and engage with ethical themes when confronting a complex HRM situation. Students are encouraged to assess the tradeoffs between the ethical approach and other approaches. The authors also administered a survey in two different MPA programs to measure students’ normative preferences and subsequently compare their normative perspective to students’ responses to the decision-making case. Survey results also report the extent to which “students worry about the managerial, political, legal and ethical implications of their choice.” The case and survey enable the authors to demonstrate a theoretically based design for the teaching of public HRM with a frequently used ethics component. The design could also be adapted to other courses.

The third article by Charles Szypszak expands on another sub-theme from the lead article: the central role of law when considering ethics in public administration. The author focuses on real cases from court decisions and how they can be used to engage students to think about ethics issues. Using the Socratic Method, the instructor can create an intense analytical dialogue with a student that promotes critical thinking and expression about ethical considerations. In doing so, the dialogue may review the elements of the major ethical theories–deontology, utilitarian, and virtue approaches. A series of illustrative cases are considered to show how cases from the U.S. appellate system can be helpful for examining unethical conduct in public administration.

Case law shows how rules are interpreted and applied in practice. Szypszak draws on his experience teaching ethics to public administration students. He examines a host of ethical issues emerging from court decisions, including, for example, the difficulty in balancing free speech rights of public employees as citizens, their pursuit of the public interest by speaking out on wrongdoing in their organizations, and the employers’ need to avoid distractions that prevent effective implementation of appropriate policies. Other issues in case law like conflict of interest, public disclosure requirements, gifts and benefits, misuse of public power to receive personal benefits, and interpretation of the “appearance of impropriety” standard are discussed. Szypszak provides readily available resources to help instructors find appropriate cases dealing with ethical matters.

Johannes Himmelreich and Joshua Cohen, authors of the fourth article, focus on using fictitious and real ethics cases to build moral reasoning skills with special attention to the Trolley Problem, which is “perhaps the most famous thought experiments in moral philosophy” (Edmonds, 2013). The article provides a carefully designed teaching approach with a sequence of thought experiments grounded in normative theory. The study contains pre-prepared teaching materials, learning objectives and outcomes, and assesses the risks and benefits of using this pedagogical approach. Each thought experiment–three versions of the Trolley Problem (driver, bystander, and bystander with three options), the Transplant Surgeon, the Captain’s Offer, and real cases–is designed to give students/trainees a greater appreciation of moral reasoning, moral theories, and moral dilemmas and offer instructions on how to teach the cases.

The cases all ask, “What is the right thing for you to do? Why?” prompting discussion of important distinctions among the cases between consequentialist and non-consequentialist considerations, between “doing and allowing,” and between fictional cases and real-world dilemmas (e.g., allocating ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic). They spur thought about justifying choices based on fairness and integrity. Instructors will appreciate the lesson plan organized for presentation (in a two-hour, 15-minute session), taught either as part of a semester-long ethics class or a module in another core course or training session. While the work’s primary purpose is practical, the connections to ethical theory are discussed.

In the next article, Pailavi Awasthi and Sharon H. Mastracci argue in favor of including the role of emotion in public administration education, making the argument that emotion should be integrated into NASPAA’s Universal Competencies to promote effective public service (Competency #1) and cultural sensitivity (Competency #5). The authors’ central contention is that emotive competencies should be interwoven throughout the MPA core curriculum. As it relates to this symposium, they maintain: “To graduate student from MPA programs without emotive capacities is to leave them poorly equipped for the practice of public service and to do so would be unethical.”

Awasthi and Mastracci emphasize that “embodied knowledge” goes beyond cognitive aptitude and encompasses feelings and perceptions, but maintain that public administration education has been slow to embrace this broader understanding. The authors’ framework for emotive competencies in public affairs education includes embodied knowledge, specifically emotive labor, emotional intelligence, and empathy. In calling for a shift in the relative priority given to cognitive vs. emotive skills, the authors discuss the competency training done in India that stresses emotional competence in public service and provides the basis for NASPAA to take a broader view of the knowledge required for effective and affective public service education.

The final article by Bruce J. Perlman, Christopher G. Reddick, Tansu Demir, and Suzanne M. Ogilby ties back to themes in the opening piece by examining ethics training provided in U.S. local governments. Using national survey data, the authors seek to determine whether training emphasizes the compliance (low road) or the integrity (high road) approach and whether there are significant differences based on size of jurisdiction, region or form of government. They also seek to determine whether targets for ethics training are managers, staff or both.

Survey findings confirm prior research showing that the compliance approach focusing on rule enforcement (conflict of interest, nepotism, political activity Internet usage, outside employment, social media) more often defines training content than the integrity approach stressing ethical norms and leadership (oaths, conduct in the workplace, values, use public resources, public interest). This “defensive posture” to stay out of trouble suggests that more needs to be done on affirmative training that instills public values and builds moral character. Partnerships between local governments and university public administration programs might be developed to provide this broader integrity-based perspective. Other findings show no statistically significant differences based on city size, some differences based on geographic region, and a weak relationship between form or government and training topics. Regarding training targets, managers and employees receive the same ethics training content.

To summarize, some of the major ideas from the articles suggest the need for:

• Ethics and civic education to begin in grades K-12 and then be reinforced in higher education in order to fully integrate ethics concepts into the study of public administration;

• Emotive capacities to be integrated into NASPAA’s universal competencies because failing to do so leaves students poorly equipped for professional public service work and would be unethical;

• Developing a better balance of ethics training between the compliance (low road) approach and the integrity (high road) approach emphasizing public values, moral principles and moral character;

• More effective use of both fictional and real case studies and thought experiments to promote critical thinking and encourage appreciation of moral reasoning, moral theories, and moral dilemmas;

• Broadening traditional decision making frameworks in public administration by integrating consideration of ethics to them; and

• Greater appreciation of the central role of law, court decisions and ways to engage students in an intense dialogue.

Some of the innovative teaching strategies provide guidelines for instructors:

• A step-by-step sequence showing how to lead an analytical dialogue with students about a law case with questions for generating discussion, ways to link cases to ethical theory, and resources for finding cases;

• A demonstration of how to develop a theoretically based design for teaching a MPA course using fictional case studies with ethical components;

• An analytical framework of emotive competencies including emotional labor, emotional intelligence and empathy useful in designing graduate curricula, teaching, and assessing course assessment strategies; and

• A set of ready-made class materials with instruction on how to teach fictional and real ethics cases with clear learning objectives, expected outcomes, a lesson plan, handouts, and guiding questions.

This symposium provides new and helpful insights on ethics education and training in U.S. public administration. However, contested issues continue to be debated. Among them are current details on the “what, why and how” of ethics instruction, the need for greater attention to behavioral ethics, a single stand-alone class and/or teaching ethics across the curriculum, ethics education and current events, and the elusive value of ethics training. All or most of these issues arise in other fields or disciplines as well. A broader perspective on this topic is currently under development thanks to the leadership of Richard Jacobs (in press), editor of a forthcoming edited book titled, Educating in Ethics Across the Professions, where scholars from architecture, engineering, business administration, medicine, military, nursing, and public administration each share what they have learned about teaching of ethics. This will enable a cross fertilization of ideas with the potential to enrich ethics education in multiple fields and disciplines.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan P. West

Jonathan P. West, is Professor of Political Science and MPA/MPP Director at the University of Miami. He has published nine books and more than 150 scholarly articles on human resource management, public service ethics, local government, and public policy.

Notes

1. While this symposium focuses primarily on ethics education in graduate programs in the United States, it is important to recognize that it is only a segment of important ethics education and training efforts. Some of these efforts are outside of the public administration community in departments of political science, philosophy, psychology and sociology. However, the majority of the work of providing ethics education and training comes from non-academic programs, such as professional groups, nonprofit organizations, and governments at all levels in the U.S. and around the world.

2. Portions of this paragraph and the one that follows draw on West (in press).