The 21st century has brought changes to the way public administrators conduct their duties. The paradigm shift in thinking has resulted to the public administrator being held accountable for their actions. This is in a sense has created the dual role of the public administrator. Where the public leader has to be held accountable for their actions or their duties, the concept of leadership is clearly shown. Actions of the public administrators are guided by their duty to the citizens. The public administrators, acting on this basis, portray what is ethical leadership. In the post-modern way of thinking what matters most in making decisions is whether they are ethically accountable.
Not so many people know how to separate work from home duties. In a work-setting, your professional duties should come first whereas, at home, your parental duties should come first. The idea of applying ethics in decision making makes a great impact in fulfilling ones role, in both scenarios. For one to be able to make ethical decisions, objective responsibility and subjective responsibility play an important role. Public officials are normally confronted with role conflict before making decisions. The superior authority and professional governing body may demand the public official to act in a certain way as was the case in the concert case.
In most situations where there is unethical conduct in an organization, the superiors try to shift their lack of ethical responsibility to their subordinates. Performance of such organizations is low. Subjective responsibility has a greater influence in the way ethical decisions are made compared to objective responsibility. The idea of conflict of interest arises due to personal desires. When the personal desires go against professional duties, there is bound to be conflict of interest.
The post modern society is much controlled by the influence of the internet. This has led to the lack of separation of work and home life. Since, in most work settings especially for public professionals, there is bound to be ethical dilemma situations. Roles and responsibilities of each employee allow handling such ethical dilemmas without much difficulty. Application of scientific applications in public administrations become more objective and makes it difficult to handle situations that require ethical responsibility.
