Ethics in Public Administration

Abstract

The modern world has seen an increase in interest in the areas related to the ethics of the sovereign good. A
number of studies have focused on this subject matter and several academicians have exposed a number of
ethical and philosophical dilemmas related to the concept of ethics in public administration. Despite the
increasing number of studies that have focused on the importance of administrative ethics, there has been
very little effort spent on identifying what exactly constitutes the crux of ethics in administration. The
objective of this paper is to review the implications of the basic principles of ethics for public administration in
the context of new public governance and discuss their impact on different administration imperatives which
in turn act as the determinants of ethics in public administration. This review will also focus on the importance
of ethics in new governance practices (privatization, decentralization, debureaucratization, devolution of
budgets etc.,) with reference to the push and pull of ethics and administration and how ethics mindsets and
basic approaches to administration and governance can be changed.