Empowering Public Administrators

✍ Scribed by Amanda M. Olejarski (editor), Sue M. Neal (editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 402
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Public administrators need to be empowered to make difficult decisions. Acting in the public interest often means doing what is ethical even when it is an unpopular choice. Yet, too often, public servants at the local, state, and federal levels internalize the notion that their hands are tied and that they are limited in their ability to effect change. Empowering Public Administrators: Ethics and Public Service Values provides a much-needed antidote to inaction, offering a new lens for viewing administrative decision-making and behavior.

This book makes a case for bringing historically significant theories to the forefront of public service ethics by applying them to a series of current ethical challenges in practice. Exploring administrative discretion as modern bureaucrats govern public affairs in a political context, this collection builds on the normative foundations of public administration and provides readers with a scaffold for understanding and practicing public service values. Questions for discussion and applications to practice are included in each chapter making this collection of interest to public affairs master’s and doctoral students as well as public service practitioners.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Endorsement Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 Ontology and Epistemology
Chapter 1 Ethics and Public Service Values: Ontological and Epistemic Frameworks for Study and Practice
Chapter 2 Autonomy as Public Service
Chapter 3 Call the Budget Police!: How the Public Service Values of Ontology and Epistemology Can Support Public Administrators in a Gray Budgeting Environment
Chapter 4 The Ethical Voids of the Principal Agency and Stewardship Approach
Part 2 The Public Interest
Chapter 5 How Public Administrators Empower Themselves
Chapter 6 Political Polarization, Transcendent Values, and the Urgency of Moral Leadership among Campus Leaders as Public Administrators
Chapter 7 The Ethics of Public Employees’ Disparaging Private Social Media Use, Erosion of Trust, and the Advancement of the Public Interest
Part 3 Bureaucracy in a Democracy
Chapter 8 Principle Organizational Dissent and Public Service
Chapter 9 The Influence of Public Service Values on Implementation and Performance: Evidence from the Housing Policy
Chapter 10 The Institutionalization of Integrity Policies and the Management of a Growing Ethics Bureaucracy
Part 4 Balancing Politics and Administration
Chapter 11 Balancing Politics and Administration: Dangers of Administrative Discretion
Chapter 12 Ethical Codes, the Politics–Administration Dichotomy, and Public Financial Managers
Chapter 13 Discretionary Ethics and Governing Public Affairs in Jails and Prisons: Upholding Constitutional Rights to Health and Safety
Part 5 The Hollowing of Government
Chapter 14 Mending the Fragile Credibility of a Hollow State with Storytelling
Chapter 15 Gaming the System: Ethical Constraints in Implementing Co-production
Chapter 16 Sports as Mirrors: Athletes and Agenda Setting in a Hollowed-Out State
Part 6 Transparency in Reporting
Chapter 17 Public Service Values and Financial Reporting in U.S. Local Governments: Reconciling Transparency in External Financial Reporting with Political Expectations
Chapter 18 Transparency in Preserving and Administering Sites of Collective Memory
Chapter 19 New Public Management Reforms, Ethics Training Programs, and Ethical Conduct of Public Servants in Tanzania
Conclusion
Index