Public Administration Ethics

Public administrator is entangled with several responsibilities: to superiors –principals- as they represent the rules and policies, for the conduct of subordinates –agent-, and to the citizenry in serving the public interest. This what is called the objective responsibility: “responsibility involves accountability to someone else and obligation for a particular standard or category of performance.” (Cooper, 75) To fulfill all kind of responsibilities and then measure them with the inner code and values are something truly stressful. In addition, the role of responsible public administrator is overwhelming, as he/she has to deal with three kinds of conflicts: conflicts of authority, role conflict, and conflict of interest. (Cooper, 94) The administrative role gets even more difficult when dealing with unethical superiors and organizations.
The principal/agent relationship is a sensitive kind of relation. The agent has the obligation to obey the rules that are formed by the principals, direct the actions to achieve the organization’s goals, create public value, and be loyal to the principals by not performing according to self-interest. However, the agent is responsible to conduct ethical behavior while doing the required job. Agent is accountable also to serve the public according to their expectations, yet agent has to be ethical in applying the rules. The problem in the principal/agent relation starts when the principal is not ethical as it might seems serve self-interests instead of serving the public or might cause some harm to others. Thus, the principal is having the higher authority and the agent is having the obligation of following rules and at the same time maintains the public trust. This situation is considered to be ...

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...consequences of his/her behaviors on his life and his own family and their future while making decisions. Putting in mind creating public value, public administrator must try to use parallax to judge others deeds and think of different alternatives in fighting corruption. The public pressure on administrative organization is powerful and has unethical influence.
But, how about the relationship between public administrator and the citizens? Will they loose trust in the administrator if they know about the misconduct? This kind of relationship must be built on transparency, good communication, and partnership. As Storlazzi says: “ every organization in order to create value must integrate harmoniously with its surrounding environment and therefore establish a network of the relationship so as to know and interpret the expectation of its citizenry.” (Cox III, 185)