Big Questions in Administrative Ethics: A Need for Focused, Collaborative Effort

Introduction1 I have argued elsewhere that administrative ethics as a significant field of study is only about 30 years old, dating from the mid-1970s, largely instigated by the work of the New Public Administration, and reflecting developments in thought about public administration dating back into the 1930s. During these few decades, scholarly work on administrative ethics and its application to practice have expanded with enormous speed and rich diversity, both in the United States and around the world. The number of journal articles, books, courses, conferences, and training exercises have proliferated beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. More than a passing fad, administrative ethics has demonstrated its sustainability and its centrality to the field (Cooper 2001, 1–36). What is lacking with respect to these developments is anything like a focused effort by groups of scholars to study specific sets of significant research questions in a sustained and systematic fashion. There is an enormous amount of interesting but highly disparate scholarship on administrative ethics reflecting the diverse and often episodic interests that capture our attention. The existence of this rich diversity of work is not bad at all; rather, it indicates lively intellectual engagement and the multifaceted nature of the field. It also may be viewed as a necessary scoping of the field in its early stages, the product of an energetic exploration of the range of concerns in the study of administrative ethics. After approximately three decades, however, there is very little that manifests ongoing scholarship by working groups based on specific theoretical perspectives, sets of related problems, or significant issues. Without collaborative efforts to fix our gaze on the most fundamental and vexing questions that are essential to moving administrative ethics forward, there is a risk that the creativity and energy now being directed to the subject will dissipate, and that our field will fail to earn the sustained prominence in journals, curricula, and professional development it deserves. Without this kind of concentrated work, administrative ethics may remain an interesting but peripheral concern. None of us can define the elements and boundaries of such concentrated efforts; that needs to become a matter in which many of us invest ourselves. We need to work at building consensus among those interested in administrative ethics about sets of research questions that, in some sense, define the heart of the field. Not intended to preclude or exclude other work on other questions, the call here is for the establishment of a center of gravity for the development of administrative ethics around some focused collaborative efforts. Diversity of interests articulated by many from various areas in public administration are needed to keep the field fresh and lively; focused efforts of those mainly committed to studying administrative ethics may be required to provide sustainability, coherence, and sufficient weight to advance it solidly into the core of public administration. This essay should be viewed as the first bid in a conversation about those “big questions” around which some focused, sustained, and collaborative activity might be organized. It began with an invitation I sent out to the ASPA Section on Ethics Listserv on September 27, 2002. In that message, members of the section were asked to offer their nominations for the “big questions” in administrative ethics. Thoughtful responses were received from 10 persons, with excellent proposals for questions of central impor-