Ethics Essays Examples

Terry Cooper’s, Integrating Ethics with Organizational Norms and Structures, and Louis Gawthrop’s, A Vision of the Common Good, offer illuminating discussion on the moral and ethical premise that need to inform the public worker’s mindset. The nexus in the two authors’ arguments lies in their recommendation that the public administrator ought to pursue the common good of the citizenry. It is this line of thought that is captured by Gawthrop’s coverage of the energized governance system adopted upon the election of Roosevelt to the presidency. Indeed, what pervaded the public administration at that point in time was the need to serve the citizenry. Service entails solutions to the common problems that citizens face.
In a similar twist, Cooper examines the solution of the problems from a case study point of view. The more interesting case concerns the conflict that faces medical physicians in relation to natural death. Interestingly, the law may have imposed upon the medical personnel to get their patients into singing their natural death certificates. However, their (medical personnel) own internal drive prevents them from doing so given their medical objective of prolonging lives. On the surface, this analogy makes little sense. However, when examined in perspective, it reveals the difficulty that faces public service providers on a day to day basis. There often is the need to implement the law and policy which has to be balanced hand in hand with personal and internal beliefs and convictions. It is often the case that a public administrator may be required to implement what in real sense he does not believe in. Within that context, it is this paper’s contention that public servants may be categorized into two broad groups.
The first group entails the administrators who work as robots. They merely implement the law and policy by the letter. They never stop to question the consequences and ask whether they themselves would have vouched for the same. They act mechanically and are often in pursuit of the money in public service rather than the necessity to serve the public (read citizenry). On the other hand, there is the group that works by their internal conscience. They often stop to think of the consequence of their actions. They would rather disappoint their appointing authority and impress on the citizenry. Indeed, these two groups are as diverse as they are conflicting. It is this kind of conflict that informs the authors’ arguments.
It is the postulation of Gawthrop that action often needs to benefit the citizenry. This explains his admiration for the thinking government under the leadership of Roosevelt. On the other hand, Cooper believes in integration of personal ethics with the organizational norms and structures. In other words, Cooper demands of administrators not to act merely mechanically and or address issues robotically in pursuit of the implementation of the law. The enforcer must stop and interrogate the likely consequence of his or her likely action. The same must be on the overall good of the community and or the consumers of the same. In that context, Cooper argues that administrators should strive to benefit the public in every activity they do undertake. Interestingly, Cooper mentions some of the internal drives that inform the internal controls of public administrators. These include personal skills, virtues and the moral qualities. It is these that in a cumulative nature inform the ability of the administrator to implement the public good over the minority’s selfish interests.