The Responsible Administrator: Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role

"This is an important work, especially in these times when administrative ethics are getting more attention. It is readable and timely."
--The Journal of Academic Librarianship

Since its original publication, The Responsible Administrator has become the standard resource for public administrators seeking to systematically confront and address ethical issues and incorporate them into their decision-making and management choices. In administrative ethics courses, according to the Working Group on Ethics Education of the American Society for Public Administration, the single most commonly used book is Terry Cooper's The Responsible Administrator.

In this thoroughly revised and updated fourth edition, Cooper expands on and uncovers many current issues relevant to administrative ethics. He presents a design approach to administrative ethics, emphasizing the connection between decision making and actual practice within an organization. Cooper offers new insight on postmodernism, explaining how the problems organizations now face have been intensified by postmodern conditions, and describes the relationship between ethics and the emerging principal-agent theory. The new edition also features a large number of up-to-date case studies and examples.

The theoretical framework presented in this powerful resource is clearly grounded in practice. Featured techniques help managers consider all the factors involved in a decision, ensuring that they balance professional, personal, and organizational values. The case studies and examples in this edition illustrate the techniques that work and those that don't.

The Responsible Administrator helps both experienced and novice public managers become effective decision makers, providing them with a solid understanding of the role and importance of ethics in public service-and the framework to incorporate ethical and values-based decision making in day-to-day management.

TERRY L. COOPER is The Maria B. Crutcher Professor in Citizenship and Democratic Values at the School of Public Administration, University of Southern California. During 1988-1989, he was a Fulbright professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he lectured and conducted research on the anticipatory responses of Hong Kong senior civil servants to the transfer of sovereignty to the People's Republic of China in 1997.