Question

In 350 words,

What are some factors that figure into the neglect of moral agency within public administrations?

Answer 1

Leadership is widely seen as having an important role in fostering ethical conduct in organizations, but the ways in which the actions of leaders intersect with formal ethics regulation in shaping conduct have been little researched. This article examines this issue through a qualitative study of the operation of the “ethical framework” for English local government, which entailed all councils adopting a code of conduct to regulate the behavior of local politicians. Studying local government provides an opportunity to examine how personal and managerial factors combine to influence ethical conduct and to analyze the ways in which ethical leadership is exercised through multiple people in leadership roles (politicians and managers). The article finds that organizations that exhibit consistently good conduct have multiple leaders who demonstrate good conduct but also act to preempt the escalation of problems and thereby minimize the explicit use of ethics regulation.

Features

? describes the unified ethic - a combination of the major strands of philosophical ethical theory - that can elucidate and enhance individual and moral identities

? Discusses moral agency in the professional fields of business, medicine, law, and higher education

? presents a critique, from both conservative and liberal perspectives, of the positions on the public administrator as moral exemplar

? offers a proposal for meeting the conditions required to establish moral agency in public administration, across professions, and in the citizenry

Ethics is a key component of good governance (Perry et al. 2014) and has significant potential to affect public trust in all forms of government (Joyce 2014). Previous research has identified a number of factors that can shape standards of conduct within an organization, among which the role of leadership has attracted significant attention (Grojean et al. 2004; Steinbauer et al. 2014). Indeed, the ethical behavior of leaders has come to assume global importance, with leaders being implicated in high?profile ethical scandals and integrity violations (Hassan, Wright, and Yukl 2014; Tonge, Greer, and Lawton 2003).

Researchers are identifying an array of beneficial outcomes arising from “ethical leadership,” including increased willingness of employees to use voice to improve their organization, greater employee job satisfaction and sense of well?being, and increased trust in organization leaders, both from employees and the public (see, e.g., Bedi, Alpaslan, and Green 2015; Hassan 2015; Wang and Van Wart 2007). Much effort has also been applied to delineate the actions and behaviors that leaders can undertake to enhance ethics, including aspects of leadership style that create a culture in which good conduct is maintained (Huberts 2014; Lasthuizen 2008). Nevertheless, analysis of the impact of leadership and its role in fostering ethical behavior remains underdeveloped (Menzel 2015), especially in the public sector (Heres and Lasthuizen 2012; Van Wart 2003; Weinberg 2014), with insufficient testing of theory against empirical research compared with business ethics (Lawton and Doig 2005; Mayer et al. 2012; Perry 2015; notable exceptions are Hassan 2015; Hassan, Wright, and Yukl 2014). Moreover, while it is widely recognized that leaders can exert influence through their character and personal conduct as well as by taking managerial actions to regulate the conduct of others (through issuing guidance or processes of sanctions and rewards), there is relatively little research that considers the causal relationships between leaders, systems of ethics regulation, and resulting standards of behavior. Indeed, Six and Lawton (2013) suggest there is little theory about the best combination of value?based and compliance?based policies.

This article responds to these gaps by examining the roles played by leaders in shaping the ethical performance of local governments in England. Local government is a vital focus for ethics research, given that local jurisdictions across the globe have democratic mandates and responsibilities for disbursing significant quantities of public funds. In addition, English local government has been subject to a period of intensified formal ethics regulation, including a reinforced role for codes of conduct. Consequently, local government in England is a valuable case study for considering our key research question: how do the activities of leaders intersect with the more formal, codified provisions of ethics regulation in promoting good conduct?

Common Ground, Common Future: Moral Agency in Public Administration, Professions, and Citizenship examines the public and private roles of the citizen as a moral agent. The authors define this agent as a person who recognizes morality as a motive for action, and not only follows moral principles but also acknowledges morality as his or her principal. The book explains that public administration is a fundamentally moral enterprise that exists to serve the values that society considers significant, and that this moral nature makes public administration a prototype for other professions to emulate, a model of moral governance in American society.

The title reflects the book's principal purpose and abiding hope: the development of a broad perspective on our individual and collective roles and responsibilities as citizens, professionals, and moral beings, with a recognition of mutual obligations to the large and small challenges inherent in the process of governance.

Leadership can be defined as “a process of social influence whereby a leader steers members of a group towards a goal” (Bryman 1992, 2), and much of the literature linking leadership to ethics falls into two broad sets. As Bedi, Alpaslan, and Green (2015) explain, attention has been given to defining the moral principles or qualities that leaders ought to demonstrate and adhere to (the goals), but they also suggest a shift in research from issues of definition toward identifying the contents and actions of those who exercise leadership over ethics and capturing the influence that they exert.

An important conceptual construct in this agenda is ethical leadership, which is most commonly defined as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two?way communication, reinforcement, and decision?making” (Brown, Treviño, and Harrison 2005, 120). Researchers have sought to further specify the concept by identifying its key components based on modes of promoting conduct, notably, being a moral person (exemplified by a leader's traits, behaviors, and how he or she makes decisions) and a being moral manager (when a leader creates moral codes for others through guidance, clear communication, and systems of rewards and discipline) (Treviño, Hartman, and Brown 2000). Similarly, De Hoogh and Den Hartog (2008) distinguish three elements of ethical leadership, consisting of morality and fairness, role clarification, and power sharing. For Hassan, Wright, and Yukl (2014), ethical leadership is made up of being an ethical role model, treating people fairly, and actively managing ethics in the organization. Overall, although grouped in different ways, the existing literature sorts the effects and actions of leaders in relation to ethics into two groups: those emanating from the nature and behavior of the leader as a person, encouraging emulation, and those arising from the systems and practices that they set up to regulate conduct on their behalf.

Although research on ethical leadership has grown rapidly, analysis in this field faces a number of issues. The first of these concerns whether ethical leadership is conceptually distinct from other leadership models such as transactional leadership or transformational leadership. The latter entails providing individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence (Bass 1990). Thus, leaders are in a position to set an example and influence the behavior of people around them as people learn by observing and emulating attractive and credible models (Bandura 1977). With transactional leadership, leaders intervene only to set parameters, reward good performance, and discipline when standards are not met. It is often characterized as a more passive style of leadership. The ethical behavior of leaders also forms a key component of other leadership theories, including authentic leadership, spiritual leadership, and servant leadership (Eisenbeiss 2012; Yukl et al. 2013). For example, “ethical leaders use transactional forms of leadership and authentic leaders don't” (Kalshoven, Den Hartog, and De Hoogh 2011b, 52). If the relationship between such leadership theories is “blurred” and overlapping (Bedi, Alpaslan, and Green 2015), this is unsurprising given that most such theories—explicitly ethical or otherwise—are essentially concerned with agency, that is, how influence over others can be achieved.

This leads to a second issue: the criticism that ethical leadership constructs remain vague because in focusing on influencing mechanisms, they do not specify normative reference points that ethical leaders can use in promoting followers to behave ethically (Bedi, Alpaslan, and Green 2015; Eisenbeiss 2012). In principle, therefore, transformational leaders can promote ethical or unethical behavior. We do not seek to define normative principles of conduct in this article, although we note that researchers might do more to connect the modes of governance of ethics to the different objects (different norms and principles) to be governed (Jessop 1997).

On a prima facie basis, one might regard the categorization of ethical leadership as a sufficient explanatory construct, in that it represents an effort comprehensively to specify dimensions of agency. However, questions remain about how leaders combine action as “moral persons” and “moral managers” to influence ethical conduct (Kalshoven, Den Hartog, and De Hoogh 2011a). Statistical analysis can tell us the explanatory power of techniques of moral management, vis?á?vis being a “moral person,” but not how leaders combine formal regulatory processes with social learning. One question in particular is that of “reach,” which concerns how far leaders can shape what happens across organizations, including in the myriad contexts in which they are not co?present with others. Such concerns direct our attention to examining the use of ethics regulation mechanisms.

The Use of Ethics Codes

A common device for regulating conduct is to draw up an ethics code, which is a written framework used by organizations to specify and then shape what is regarded as appropriate conduct. The International City/County Management Association, for example, has had an ethics code in place for more than 90 years (Svara 2014). The use of codes, with supportive guidance and mechanisms of reward or sanction, has proliferated since the 1980s. Such techniques form a component of ethical leadership as examples of the practices required for being “a moral manager” (Huberts 2014). The growth in the use of codes has not, however, been accompanied by sufficient analysis into their impact and whether ethical behavior has improved as a result (Beeri et al. 2013; Jensen, Sandström, and Helin 2009), and there remains much debate about how codes intersect with other actions and regulatory institutions for ensuring compliance (Svara 2014).

The role of leaders is important here. At a basic level, in the private sector, it will fall to senior managers to decide whether to introduce ethics codes and what their form and content will be. Leaders may be aware that the adoption of an ethics code can be effective in increasing awareness of ethical principles and a useful management tool in fostering an ethical climate within an organization (Beeri et al. 2013; Treviño et al. 1999). However, how leaders effect the implementation of ethics codes warrant as much attention as adoption decisions (Svara 2014), and here the limited research available suggests a rather nuanced set of processes at work. In their meta?analysis of ethical leadership outcomes, Bedi, Alpaslan, and Green (2015) usefully unpack the “transactional” dimension of being a moral manager, embracing (1) active management (based on monitoring conduct, issuing rewards), (2) passive management (taking action after a problem), or (3) leaders adopting a more laissez?faire approach. They found negative correlations between ethical leadership and (3) but also (2) and some positive correlations with more proactive measures.

The sense emerging from ethical leadership research is that passive transactional approaches to influencing conduct, relying on regulation, are unlikely to be adequate (Eisenbeiss 2012), a finding that chimes with wider research on ethics codes. Codes have been criticized as being too abstract, coercive, and unworkable while producing red tape and restricting practical options (OECD 1996). Codes of ethics are also seen as insufficient to achieve change or govern conduct without other social processes. Ultimately, the success of codes is dependent on the culture of the organization (Ethics Resource Center 2005), “where people naturally do the right thing when faced with dilemmas” (Back 2006, 9). Leaders can play a significant role in helping set this ethical culture (Hassan, Wright, and Yukl 2014), as they have the scope formally to waive or less formally to ignore ethics codes (as with Enron; see Tonge, Greer, and Lawton 2003). Attention to the potential role of leaders shows that codes do not “act” unless interpreted and translated into actions by human agents.

Leaders, Codes, and Agency in Complex Organizations

Much of the research on ethical governance and leadership has taken a rather simplistic view of organizations. Those who are the leaders is assumed to be clear. They are few in number and occupy a clear hierarchical position of authority within an organization from which influence on conduct can be exercised. Indeed, in response to the potential existence of a multiplicity of ethical cultures in organizations, the role of leaders is to create a “unified climate,” playing different roles at different levels and providing strategic leadership. There is some evidence to suggest that if leaders across different levels of the organization convey similar messages through training, this will create shared cognitions (Grojean et al. 2004). However, this simple and rather linear view of how agency is exercised faces two problems.

One is that organizations can embrace multiple normalization processes, acting on and through human agents positioned within heterogeneous networks. Local government, for example, embraces political and managerial leaders, and norms for judgment may emanate from conceptions of electoral mandate, party, and constituency (for politicians) or from professional values or divergent goals such as efficiency and delivery (for managers) (Cowell, Downe, and Morgan 2014). Thus, the enhancement of conduct across an organization can be seen not just as a simple issue of implementing a single code of ethics but also as a struggle to assert the importance of a particular set of principles in the face of other bases for judgment. In shared?power worlds, multiple norms must be navigated (Crosby 2010).

The Classic public administration theory Civil service bureaucracies emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a period characterized by rapid change associated with the industrial revolution. A meritorious, well-trained public service was a powerful instrument for promoting economic development and building a modern state: it contributed immeasurably to the success of countries undergoing industrialization (Bresser-Pereira, 2005). The Classic model was founded upon a number of conventions, including a strict separation of political and professional activities, public service anonymity and political neutrality. The public service was governed by precisely prescribed rules and accountable to elected officials: thus, it was expected to exercise minimal discretion in executing its tasks. The power structure was vertical and hierarchical. It valued and encouraged impartiality, compliance and predictability (Kernaghan, 2002). The public service, as we know it today, owes much to the public administration theory that prevailed at the beginning of the twentieth century including:

? Respect for the rule of law.

? A commitment to serving the public good.

? An expectation that public servants will exhibit integrity, probity and impartiality in serving the public trust