American Society for Public Administration - Vol. 28 No. 7 - July 2005

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Stephen J. Smith

Few students or practitioners of public administration would argue that conducting the people's business has ever been simple. Still, most would agree that the field has become increasingly complex, and will continue to grow more so. Today's public managers face increased demands for effectiveness and efficiency from a citizenry more distrustful of government. Add the factors of dwindling resources, rising costs and high stakeholder expectations, and the demands can become overwhelming.

The current state of affairs may cause one to wistfully long for a simpler time "back in the day," when things were slower, decisions were easier and relationships were more predictable. In those times, a person's "word was his bond," and the trust generated by that ethic provided the foundation for relationships.

Clearly, times are not going to get any simpler. It is possible, however, that the ethics, which framed relationships in earlier times, are the key to making public administration more effective today. Said another way, a societal revival of traditional values alone will not likely be enough to make government more effective. Rather, an infusion of those values into contemporary governance structures is needed to usher the field of public administration to the next level. Whether one approaches the issue from the deontological or utilitarian perspective, focusing on ethical administration makes sense today.

Key Trends

A few key trends help make the case for ethical administration. The first and most disturbing is the rise of citizen distrust of government. Studies have shown that the population in the United States trusts government and government officials less now than decades ago, and that trend may be accelerating. This is poisonous to democratic forms of government, in that distrust leads to apathy, apathy to cynicism and cynicism to citizen disengagement. At the extreme end of this deterioration, democracy no longer functions.

The obvious antidote to this slide is to build citizen trust in government. One tool that has arisen to accomplish this is performance management. Many organizations at all levels of government have begun to pursue results-based reforms, perhaps best embodied by the federal government's National Performance Review. The goal in sum of these initiatives is to deliver observable value for taxpayer dollars spent. They also tend to make for more transparent and accountable government.

It is reasonable to think that using performance data to make management decisions would result in better decisions. It is also reasonable to think that making performance data and the resulting decisions readily available to citizens would enhance their trust in government. Of course, the officials posting that information would have to be credible in the eyes of the citizens for this approach to enhance citizen trust. That is, they must seem trustworthy.

Another important trend is the reduction in resources available with which to deliver costlier public goods and services. This has given rise to new governance structures, which are the cutting edge in government. These structures include public-private partnerships, non-profit contracting, interdisciplinary task forces, networks and a host of non-traditional forms that seem to be the future of delivering public goods and services.

These new forms promise what citizens increasingly demand, greater effectiveness and efficiency, but they do pose a danger. These more complex contemporary structures can blur organizational boundaries, weaken oversight responsibilities and reduce transparency. This can damage accountability and credibility, especially if real or perceived mismanagement takes place in them. Trust generated over years can be severely damaged in one instance of impropriety.

The necessary ingredient to enhance citizen trust in government and make tools like performance management and contemporary governance structures work optimally is ethical administration.

Ethical Administration

Terms like "ethics" and "ethical administration" can mean different things to different people. This article takes the term "ethics" broadly to mean standards of conduct, and "ethical administration" to mean the standards of conduct to which an administration adheres in the discharge of its duties. The goal is a high standard of administrative conduct, which both achieves the organization's mission and does so in a fashion that comports with accepted practices in the society served. In short, it is administration that gets the job done, and in a way the people want their government to act.

In its most elemental form, the root of ethical conduct is integrity, wherein one's words match one's stated beliefs. The public manager should believe in the values of the public service and act accordingly. Herbert Kaufman described the values of classic public administration as representativeness, politically neutral competence and executive leadership. ASPA's own Code of Ethics offers a more comprehensive set of principles to guide the public service today.

An important manifestation of such principles in action is the way a public manager deals with stakeholders, both internal and external to the administration. An ethical administrator deals forthrightly with all stakeholders, sharing information honestly and appropriately. Such conduct inspires trust and offers added benefits that make the more complex contemporary tools and structures more likely to succeed.

Thomas Jones proposed a synthesis of ethics and economics in formulating Instrumental Stakeholder Theory. He considered the contract, defined broadly, as an appropriate metaphor for the relationship between the firm and its stakeholders. The public manager today finds herself more involved in both implicit and explicit contracts than ever before in the structures of the new governance. Jones posited that ethical solutions to commitment problems, like shirking and opportunism, are more efficient than formal mechanisms without an ethical component. Thus, managers who interact with their stakeholders in mutual trust and cooperation will have an advantage over those who do not.

This is not to say that ethical administration is a substitute for contracting. Public administrators are likely to be involved in more contracting relationships, not fewer, in the years to come. Rather, the relationships founded on ethics tend to have lower contracting and monitoring costs, since the relationship of mutual trust becomes a strong implicit mechanism encouraging good behavior from all involved. Additionally, formal contracts cannot easily spell out all facets of expected behavior among multiple parties in today's complex arrangements. Ethical administration sets a baseline of conduct, fills in the gaps, and provides a failsafe for those facets of a relationship that are hard to capture and articulate in a contract.

Thus, applying traditional values to modern governance tools and structures appears to be the best way to revive waning citizen trust of government and deliver public goods and services more effectively and efficiently. Increasingly, ethical administration is not just the right thing to do, but it is the only way to do administration right.

ASPA member Stephen Smith is a special assistant to the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections, and an adjunct faculty member of the University of Alaska-Anchorage MPA program. E-mail: stephen_smith@correct.state.ak.us

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