P.A. ETH-TALK: IS IT ETHICAL?

9 Pages 2227 Words

Abstract

The study and discussion of ethics in public administration can be dysfunctional and even harmful without a sophisticated understanding of the field and ethics. This article stresses that those engaged in discussing ethics should understand epistemology, focus on the practical, and be very circumspect about imposing a particular ethical prescriptive on others.

Introduction

P.A. eth-talk (the study and discussion of Public Administration ethics) can be dysfunctional, and it is harmful to public administration practice and thinking-ethics properly being at the heart of the p.a. discipline-not to identify the criteria that can distinguish healthy from dysfunctional eth-talk. This paper illustrates these two claims by discussing three among the minimal criteria that healthy P.A. eth-talk should meet. Most of this material was published earlier (e.g., Farmer, 1995, 1999). The first criterion is that healthy P.A. eth-talk should be realistic in its recognition of the epistemological nature of the ethical, and that ethics that are unrealistic are dysfunctional. Second, healthy eth-talk should be comprehensively practical, avoiding a constricted view of practicality. Third, healthy eth-talk should incorporate a hesitant posture toward imposing ethical prescriptions on others. A practical implication of this paper is that, wonderful as the ethical revival has been in the pat decade or so in American Public Administration, we should think through the institutional need to distinguish between healthy and dysfunctional eth-talk.

The motive in raising these issues is three-fold. First, the shift toward recognizing the role of the ethical in P.A. and in related fields is accepted as a step forward. (For myself, I rejoice at the growing interest in P.A. eth-talk. My own view is that we cannot live well or think well without making moral judgments.) This shift toward recognizing the role of the ethical, affect...