Article critique
The article “Ethics in American Public Administration: A Response to a Changing Reality” seeks to address current pressing issues such as climate change, immigration, among others. The article employs ethical lenses to address these issues.
Moreover, it recognizes the fact that American public administration ethics have not evolved in a vacuum. I agree with the author’s stand that administrative ethics have changed over a period due to being influenced by technology, legal, political as well as social forces. For this reason, I concur that ethics have not evolved through omission but rather have evolved by addition.
It is evident from the abstract that ethics have played immense roles in addressing some of the pressing issues in society. In the first paragraph, the article centers on how to approach various moral and normative questions in multiple organizations. In as much as the importance of ethics in public organizations has been addressed by other authors. This article stands out since it features particular ethical challenges and concerns that have not discussed in public administration. Indeed, the article is quite significant for the general administration students in identifying ethical problems and issues found in the twenty-first century. It is worth noting that today’s organizations experience challenges with moral and ethical principles. This is because there are increased cases of sexual assaults and sexual harassment of employees in public organizations. I feel that this article is quite useful in pinpointing these issues as well as addressing them for the common good of various stakeholders. This is with the reference of the previous statement asserted by the author that ethics helps in addressing multiple issues in the organization. Another point of reference is the fact that many people are aware of the emerging ethical challenges and concerns in the current world. Possibly, more problems have continued to appear because ethics evolve with various forces such as technological forces, social forces, political forces as well as legal forces. This implies that the past ethical challenges and concerns could have escalated in the twenty-first century.
The author is keen to trace how American public administration ethics have evolved. The author denotes that ethics have evolved into six main eras. These eras encompass reinventing government era, post-water gate era, civil rights era, post Second World War era, the progressive era, as well as the current era.
Interestingly, the progressive era developed the necessity for fighting corruption as well as establishing ways of improving the performance of the government. In my point of view, the period did not put much effort into fighting graft as well as improving government [performance. This is because corruption cases still exist in the current era despite the efforts put at first in fighting graft issues. With the author’s assertion that progressive reforms were meant to changing American public administration into a business-like or rather a professionalized endeavor. I concur with this statement; however, it did not bear fruit in the current federal administration.
Moreover, the author acknowledges the need for improving the performance of the organization by running the government the way business is managed or controlled. With this effect, it is clear that the author has not separated ethics from the performance. The author puts ethics play a significant role in solving various issues that affect the government, such as corruption and poor government performance. Indeed, ethics are essential in rationalizing the government. The authors bring in the idea about new public administration that was developed in the Civil Rights Era. He maintains that NPA was a means for making the government more responsive and more equitable to the societal diverse, and increasing demands. The author provides a new way through which public administration’s moral base can be injected through new civic virtues, benevolence, as well as values of equity. Concur with the author’s sentiments that new public administration brought in ethics into public administration. It is having mentioned that NPA was meant to make the government more responsive as well as equitable. I think NPA succeeded in making emphasis on the importance of ethics and social equity. The whole idea about ethics and government performance improvement can help public administration students determine whether ethics have succeeded in addressing various issues that exist in society. Conversely, an organization that a public administrator belongs to can as well complicate the roles of ethics in the public administration, leading to more challenges and issues being witnessed. This is because achieving equity in the current world has turned out to be problematic since public organizations are still experiencing ethical problems that have evolved over a period.
To sum up, I concur with the author’s point of view that that ethics have not evolved through omission but rather have evolved by addition. Ideally, the article has succeeded in addressing current pressing issues such as climate change, immigration, among others. The author in this article has highlighted and explained six eras through which ethics have evolved. On the other hand, ethical issues and concerns exist in public administration in the twenty-first century. To some extent, I feel that the previous era did not put much effort into fighting graft as well as improving government performance. This is contrary to the authors’ point of view. Generally, the article is useful since it provides an in-depth understanding of which the ethical issues can be identified in the organization.
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