Public Administrators and Ethical Decision-Making

Public Administrators and Ethical Decision-Making

Ethical decision-making is the conscientious and pro-social choice. A moral individual employing problem-solving and decision-making skills will depend on honesty, integrity, values, and pro-social undertakings to make correct decisions (Johnson, 2017). The opposite of this will be described as unethical decision-making. Therefore, a public administrator who acts or decides without employing integrity, honesty, or values can influence the community. An example is when public administrators receive or admit kickbacks or transfer funds to chase their interests. For instance, an administrator can use public funds to build himself a home. In such a case, the public administrator uses public money for his benefit, not the community. This means his political authority can influence the community members as they are under his governance.

Public administrators can influence events, processes, decisions, and material things within the organization, and administrators can exercise different types of influence in the general organization. They include legitimate influence, forced influence, and professional influence. Evident corruption, like embezzlement of public funds or something vaguer, such as permitting party politics to affect decision-making or how general guidelines are applied, can be an unethical decision by the public administrator. Christensen and Wright (2018) insist that public administrators use influence to make immoral decisions because it assists them in swaying supporters to look in the opposite direction. This idea of persuasion utilized to convince others is authority and reciprocity. Reciprocity is the idea that people are disposed to return favours, while authority is when people collaborate with persons in an authoritative position. For instance, if a city manager accepts a bribe and the city council members realize it, the manager can use the principle of reciprocity to keep the council members silent about bribery.

Additionally, administrators will likely make unethical decisions in employment facilities (Jahiri & Hetemi, 2020). For instance, they can use it when influencing choices like hiring and promotions. As such, a public administrator can utilize their influence and ask for a bribe to determine who is hired or promoted.

References

Christensen, R. K., & Wright, B. E. (2018). Public service motivation and ethical behaviour: Evidence from three experiments. Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 1(1).

Jahiri, L., & Hetemi, D. (2020). Role of ethics in better performance of Public Administration. KNOWLEDGE-International Journal, 43(5), 979-983.

Johnson, C. E. (2017). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow. Sage Publications.

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Public Administrators and Ethical Decision-Making

Describe a situation in which a public administrator might make an unethical decision, and the role influence plays in that situation.