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This engaging book presents a model for personal reflection on what
a career in public service means. It's designed not to convince the
reader to take up a public service career, but rather to invite him
or her to explore the implications for one's identity that are
inherent in the public service life. Lively and anecdotal,
Invitation to Public Administration directly confronts the various
difficult issues involved with a public service career even as it
evokes self-reflection. It is equally useful for undergraduate
through Ph.D. level readers, and it is ideal supplemental reading
for any foundational course in Public Administration. The book will
also stimulate public service professionals seeking fresh insights
for their own careers.
This engaging book presents a model for personal reflection on what
a career in public service means. It's designed not to convince the
reader to take up a public service career, but rather to invite him
or her to explore the implications for one's identity that are
inherent in the public service life. Lively and anecdotal,
Invitation to Public Administration directly confronts the various
difficult issues involved with a public service career even as it
evokes self-reflection. It is equally useful for undergraduate
through Ph.D. level readers, and it is ideal supplemental reading
for any foundational course in Public Administration. The book will
also stimulate public service professionals seeking fresh insights
for their own careers.
Makes the case for human relationship as the proper foundation of
administrative ethicsThis study of the critical role of ethics and
moral responsibility in the field of public administration, Michael
M. Harmon and O. C. McSwite posit that administrative ethics, as
presently conceived and practiced, is largely a failure, incapable
of delivering on its original promise of effectively regulating
official conduct in order to promote the public interest. They
argue that administrative ethics is compromised at its very
foundations by two core assumptions: that human beings act
rationally and that language is capable of conveying clear, stable,
and unambiguous principles of ethical conduct. The result is the
illusion that values, principles, and rules of ethical conduct can
be specified in workably clear ways, in particular, through their
formalization in official codes of ethics; that people are capable
of comprehending and responding to them as they are intended; and
that the rewards and punishments attached to them will be effective
in structuring daily behavior. In a series of essays that draw on
both fiction and film, as well as the disciplines of pragmatism,
organizational theory, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, and
economics, Harmon and McSwite make their case for human
relationship as the proper foundation of administrative ethics.
“Exercising responsible ethical practice requires attaining a
special kind of relationship with other people. Relationship is how
the pure freedom that resides in the human psyche—for ethical
choice, creativity, or original action of any type—can be brought
into the structured world of human social relations without
damaging or destroying it.” Furthermore, they make the case for
dropping the term “ethics” in favor of the term
“responsibility,” as “responsibility accentuates the social
[relational] nature of moral action.”
Makes the case for human relationship as the proper foundation of
administrative ethics This study of the critical role of ethics and
moral responsibility in the field of public administration, Michael
M. Harmon and O. C. McSwite posit that administrative ethics, as
presently conceived and practiced, is largely a failure, incapable
of delivering on its original promise of effectively regulating
official conduct in order to promote the public interest. They
argue that administrative ethics is compromised at its very
foundations by two core assumptions: that human beings act
rationally and that language is capable of conveying clear, stable,
and unambiguous principles of ethical conduct. The result is the
illusion that values, principles, and rules of ethical conduct can
be specified in workably clear ways, in particular, through their
formalization in official codes of ethics; that people are capable
of comprehending and responding to them as they are intended; and
that the rewards and punishments attached to them will be effective
in structuring daily behavior. In a series of essays that draw on
both fiction and film, as well as the disciplines of pragmatism,
organizational theory, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, and
economics, Harmon and McSwite make their case for human
relationship as the proper foundation of administrative ethics.
"Exercising responsible ethical practice requires attaining a
special kind of relationship with other people. Relationship is how
the pure freedom that resides in the human psyche--for ethical
choice, creativity, or original action of any type--can be brought
into the structured world of human social relations without
damaging or destroying it." Furthermore, they make the case for
dropping the term "ethics" in favor of the term "responsibility,"
as "responsibility accentuates the social [relational] nature of
moral action."
In this "postmodern, end-of-the-century" moment, the question of
what role public administration can legitimately play in a
democratic society has deepened and taken on increased urgency. At
the same time the movement toward global marketization has gained
enormous momentum, traditional prejudices and racial and ethnic
violence have appeared with a renewed virulence, presenting
unprecedented challenges to democratic governments. Legitimacy in
Public Administration reveals how the issue of administrative
legitimacy is directly implicated, indeed central, to this broader
issue. It argues that legitimacy hinges at the generic level on the
question of alterityuhow to regard and relate to "different
others." This book reviews the history of the legitimacy issue in
the literature of American public administration with the purpose
of demonstrating that this discourse has been distorted by an
underlying and undisclosed commitment to an elitist "Man of Reason"
model of the public administratorAEs role. Current attempts to
reformulate administration to meet the challenge of new conditions
will fail, the author argues, because they have not escaped the
grip of this implicit distortion. Legitimacy in Public
Administration includes a challenging concluding chapter that uses
insights from gender theory and demonstrates the connection between
the legitimacy question and the critical problem of alterity. The
author also offers a new way to fundamentally reframe the
legitimacy question, so as not only to help the field of public
administration resolve it, but to show how this resolution can
create a new understanding of the problem of racial and ethnic
prejudice.
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