Ethics In Public Administration: Ethics And Ethical Values

. Ethical values

Maintaining ethical conduct in Public Administration involves an individual knowing their boundaries and the level of expectations when it comes to serving the public or what we call “serving the people”. There are things such as ethics, ethical codes and principals one has to get to know and understand. An individual or a public servant is to be accountable as well and understand what is meant by accountability.

When an individual is said to be looking at ethics, we mean that the behaviour or actions of an individual should be of those acceptable to the society and most of the time societies concentrate on good morals and values of an individual (Business Dictionary, 2015. Ethics). Having good ethics and ethical behaviour

Then there are three principals of accountability which I am to look at, which are fallacy, assumption and trust. Fallacy, is when people fall pray into fallacy accountability, meaning they not only assume others are flawed, but that they can do nothing to change those flaws except to punish people when they make mistakes or failure to deliver (partners in leadership, 2009. Accountability). Then there is accountability assumption which speaks of an individual assuming that their partners or people in general are doing their level best to fulfil their expectations. And lastly there is accountability trust, and this involves an individual looking at oneself and hold his/herself accountable when things go wrong, there must be something that “I” as an individual am doing wrong.

There is then what we call Public Accountability and according to M. Bovines public accountability is the distinctive feature of modern democratic governance, therefore democracy remains a paper procedure if those in power cannot be held accountable in public for their acts and omission, for their decisions, their policies and their expectations. Therefore, in my own understanding I would say that public accountability is meant to reveal its strengths for the purpose of the municipalities, departments, institutions and public entities, their programmes of action and their resources, especially