This volume establishes a foundation for a uniform code of professional ethics for public administrators in the United States.

Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century lays the ethical foundations for a uniform professional code of ethics for public administrators, civil servants, and non-profit administrators in the US. Martinez synthesizes five disparate schools of ethical thought as to how public administrators can come to know the good and behave in ways that advance the values of citizenship, equity, and public interest within their respective organizations. Using case studies, he teaches American administrators how to combine the approaches of all five schools to evaluate and resolve complex ethical dilemmas within the constraints of the U.S. democratic values set.

Martinez enunciates the common ethical principles that guide public administrators in their practice within the specific ethical parameters and organizational cultures of a myriad entities at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States, as well as in non-profit organizations. Along the way, Martinez addresses a number of crucial issues, including personal gain, conflict of interest, transparency, democratic impartiality, hiring, hierarchical discipline, media relations, partisan pressure, appointments by elected officials, and whistle-blowing. The striking, high-profile case studies-Nathan Bedford Forrest, Adolph Eichmann, Lieutenant William Calley, and Mary Ann Wright-illustrate ethical dilemmas where, for better or worse, the individual was at odds with the organization.

• Four cases of ethical and unethical decision making in context-Nathan Bedford Forrest, William Calley, Adolf Eichmann, and Mary Anne Wright-who resigned in protest over the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• Six figures depicting the process of ethical decision making within a public organization
• An extensive bibliography listing of the major sources on administrative ethics in print and online
• An index of key thinkers and theories involving administrative ethics

The engineering, medical, and legal professions in the United States each have explicit codes of ethics in which all practitioners must be educated and by which they must abide. Yet of all fields, public administration remains without such a uniform code-despite the manifestly ethical nature of the way civil servants and non-profit administrators are asked to work and make decisions.

About the Author

J. Michael Martinez is a corporate attorney in Monroe, GA, and teaches political science as a part-time faculty member at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, GA.

Book Information
ISBN 9780313358821
Author J. Michael Martinez
Format Paperback
Page Count 194
Imprint Praeger Publishers Inc
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc