Adventures in ethics and politics: tales told by professional public administrators

Abstract

Four professional public administrators returned to their alma mater to serve as role models, offer guidelines and cautions about working in highly political environments, and pose hypothetical case studies drawn from their own and others' experiences in such a setting. Counseling that the gravity and complexity of ethical dilemmas increase as one’s career advances, they suggest that the tensions between politics and policy figure among the more serious sources of ethical challenges facing professionals in the public sphere. While proposing that the professional’s duty in part is to empower elected officials to make the right decision with the best information and most useful tools, they note that some frustration is unavoidable in this complex environment; there are no easy answers because the issues themselves are not easy and perspectives about what is right and important vary. Centering on the duty of serving the public interest, their cases focus upon mixed allegiances, clashing loyalties, multiple perspectives, truthfulness and candor, privileged treatment, the appearance of impropriety, and accountability

Citation

Lewis, C.W., Hess, A.M., Jakubowski, J., Occhiogrosso, R. and Potamianos, P. (2003), "Adventures in ethics and politics: tales told by professional public administrators", International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-06-03-2003-B004