Practical Ethics in Public Administration

Discover how sound ethical theories can be applied to everyday situations and decisions in public administration.

Ethical questions arise every day in the normal course of your work, such as whether to fire an employee ... how to allocate departmental funds ... how to rate an employee on a yearly evaluation. You intend to take the best course of action, but how can you determine what that is?

Practical Ethics in Public Administration helps clarify difficult or problematic ethical situations. It will help you improve your skills so you'll be better prepared to handle ethical issues, decide them with greater self-assurance, perform your duties in a more ethically justifiable manner, and be able to explain your actions more reasonably.

The authors have drawn together numerous examples, guidelines, and hypothetical cases to help you work through these problems with the best information and understanding possible. In addition, the book addresses other personal and professional issues in public administration such as stress, new public management, and creating public value.

Key Features of the book include: Application of a unified ethical theory to practical cases in public administration; Use of hypothetical examples for practice in applying the theory; Balance of theory and practice; Analysis of the essentially ethical nature of public service.

Dean Geuras is Professor of Philosophy at Southwest Texas State University. In addition to articles in his own field of philosophy, Dr. Geuras has authored several interdisciplinary publications in the fields of theology, counseling, and, in collaboration with Dr. Charles Garofalo, ethics in public administration. Their previous book, Ethics in the Public Service: The Moral Mind at Work, was selected among the top academic titles of the year 2000 by Choice magazine.

Charles Garofalo is Professor of Political Science at Southwest Texas State University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration ethics, public policy, business-government relations, and comparative public administration. His research focuses on administrative ethics, and he has published in a number of journals, including the American Review of Public Administration, the Innovation Journal, the Journal of Management History, and Global Virtue Ethics Review. His career also includes both government and university administration.