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Where’s (DWight) WalDo?

heather getha-taylor University of South Carolina

ABSTRACT: In a time of increasingly complex problems, a network of public, private, and nonprofit partners are together tasked with providing public service and thus defining the common good. Scholars and practitioners should consider how the provision of services by partners who span organizational and sectoral boundaries addresses foundational public service values and obligations.

KEYWORDS: ethics, networks, values

In a June 2008 editorial, paul light presented the bleak reality of today’s “can’t do government,” described as a public service paralyzed by a growing roster of increasingly complex problems and dwindling resources to solve those problems. the time is now, light insisted, for drastic changes. according to light, today’s government is, as alexander hamilton said, “government ill executed.” some troublesome signs of the times include decreasing employee morale, ethical mis- conduct, high turnover, inadequate bureaucratic leadership, and a general lack of confidence in government following a variety of performance shortfalls.

to overcome the “can’t do” phenomenon, the need to reexamine the foundation of governance, specifically the values inherent to public service, is clear. public employees are theoretically drawn to service for the opportunity to contribute to the greater good. With an evolving focus on achieving results, cost savings, and working across boundaries, the definition of the common good is increasingly blurred. Following political admonitions for performance, organizational leaders are tasked with identifying what must be done, but not so much what should be done.

Complicating the picture are additional trends: public servants are increasingly working alongside private contractors (often doing the same jobs), reward sys- tems are tightly constrained, and the need to collaborate to solve shared problems requires that public employees work with organizations and individuals that may not share the same set of priorities. together, these changes are placing pressure on the foundation of public service. mending the widening cracks in this founda- tion will require efforts that span both academia and practice.

Public Performance & Management Review, Vol. 32, No. 4, June 2009, pp. 574–578. © 2009 m.e. sharpe, inc. all rights reserved.

1530-9576/2009 $9.50 + 0.00. Doi 10.2753/pmr1530-9576320406574

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A Growing Crisis

according to light, almost half the federal workforce will retire in the next decade, including many baby boomers who entered government “when the call to service was bright” (2008, p. 2). these looming retirements should present opportunities for innovation and cultural renewal via new hires, but the seemingly bottomless trend of hollowing out instead highlights another affront to public service values and a perpetual double standard. it is estimated that the private contractor rolls have grown from 2.2 million in 1999 to 7.6 million almost ten years later: “as the number of large contracts has increased and competition has declined, it has become nearly impossible to reward or hold contractors accountable for their work” (light, 2008, p. 1).

ingraham noted:

the contractor workforce has grown dramatically, but we don’t know by how much or at what cost. We also don’t really know what exactly the plethora of contractors are doing, but we do know that their “zone of discretion” in performing public work is expanding rapidly. (2004, p. 17)

this, says ingraham, is creating an accountability deficit. While civil servants are expected to espouse a set of public values, including accountability, their private contractor counterparts are not always held to the same standard. in the nation’s efforts to introduce measures of entrepreneurialism and privatization to the public sector workforce, menzel (2007, p. 171) reminded us that “precious little” attention was given to how these forces might affect ethical public management.

troubling results from a 2007 survey by the ethics resource Center (erC, 2008) indicate that the government is at very high risk for serious ethical breaches. a high incidence of ethical misconduct at all levels of government combined with the widespread failure to establish ethics programs suggests trouble ahead. a full quarter of erC survey respondents identify their workplaces as environments that are conducive to misconduct. the top violations reported include: placing self- interest over organizational interests, lying, abusive behavior, safety violations, and internet abuse.

an even more alarming trend is the witnessing of misconduct without report- ing such behavior. on average, 29 percent of government workers (at all levels) witness ethical breaches but do not report them. reasons for not reporting include the fear of retaliation from bosses or peers. this is perhaps best illustrated by the erC’s finding that those who witness misconduct shun confidential whistleblower hotlines (only 1 percent of workers used the hotlines to report misconduct).

this reflects a move toward organizational cultures that foster “bureaupathologi- cal behavior,” gordon said: “such unhealthy behavior can be seen as reflecting a lack of integrity and the absence of a moral compass” (2007, p. 7). For those

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who attempt to act ethically in such cultures, hazards are apparent (see o’leary, 2006).

these ethical breaches have broad repercussions for public trust and organiza- tional effectiveness. according to goodsell (1994, p. 8), civil servants are typically viewed as “lazy or snarling, or both,” while the institution of bureaucracy is re- garded as “overstaffed, inflexible, unresponsive, and dangerous, all at once.” paul Volcker, former chair of the National Commission on the public service, reminded us that there are no easy solutions for overcoming such widespread perceptions. “at the end of the day,” said Volcker, “what will count is restoring and maintaining a sense of trust in government” (Brookings institution, 2002, p. 2).

Where’s Waldo?

any efforts to restore trust in government must include attention to the basis of public service. at its core, public service requires a vision that extends beyond narrow self-interest. Dwight Waldo’s (1988) map of ethical obligations offers a framework for examining the variety of public service obligations that extend beyond the self, including: the Constitution, law, nation/country, democracy, organizational/bureaucratic norms, profession, family/friends, middle-range col- lectives, public interest/general welfare, humanity/the world, and religion/god.

While it would be unfair to say that those engaged in public service—be they government employees, nonprofit partners, or private contractors—have abandoned these obligations altogether, it is not unfair to say that the prioritization of these obligations varies widely.

the ways in which public, nonprofit, and private sector partners prioritize the many obligations of service—as well as the resulting congruence or incongruence of such priorities—should be considered. gawthrop noted:

generations of public-sector careerists have been schooled intensively in the fun- damental premise, derived primarily from the private sector, that the methods of “good” management are separate and distinct from the ethical-moral values and virtues inherent in democracy. (1998, p. 19)

moving toward a more ethical public service, then, requires attention to the under- lying values that support public service—and public servants—in any sector.

Moving Forward: An Agenda for Restoring Trust and Reclaiming Public Service Values

to move forward, an obvious question surfaces: What is the common good? particularly in an environment characterized by increasing contracting out and collaboration, identifying a shared vision of the common good that extends beyond

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organizational boundaries is imperative. admittedly, balancing competing de- mands, solving complex problems, facing an environment of decreasing resources, and meeting performance standards leaves little time to focus on shared values and obligations. however, Nadler (2008) reminded us that organizations—and by as- sociation, their members—will only be truly ethical when they set ethical behavior as a top priority and implement associated codes of ethics into the organization.

establishing such codes can have tangible results. in the 2007 erC survey of government employees, 30 percent of federal respondents indicated that their organizations have ethics programs in place. erC found a relation between the presence of such programs and the reduction of workplace misconduct. While it seems appropriate to question the impact of organizational codes of ethics on outside partners, the influence of ethical public managers on their partners is considerable. When working alongside partners from outside government, the burden falls on public managers, said Vigoda-gadot (2003), to serve as teachers and gatekeepers by leading by example and overseeing ethical standards.

academia must also be part of the solution. Discussions of democratic and administrative obligations, ethical behavior, and value congruence should perme- ate public administration curriculum. gawthrop noted, “a new reassertion of the values and virtues of democracy should be directed not only from the top levels of government but also from the combined efforts of the nation’s professional schools” (1998, p. 130). the extraordinary impact of public servants’ decisions must be stressed; a shared definition of the common good (and its associated values) has the potential to maximize the positive impact of such decisions.

Conclusion

the changing nature of public governance, particularly, the reliance on partners to deliver public services, places strain upon traditional public service values, including transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Diiulio, garvey, and Kettl suggested, “the need is to find ways to span multiple and cross-cutting boundaries, thereby improving government performance and responsiveness, but without sacrificing the core values that lie behind government’s very existence” (1993, p. 60). Discussions of public sector ethics have rarely included mention of monitoring ethical behavior across sectoral boundaries. yet the interconnected nature of public work “raises moral and ethical issues that contemporary discus- sions of governmental ethics fall far short in addressing” (luke, 1992, p. 23).

the challenge of modern governance is in balancing demands for performance with demands for ethical behavior. gawthrop suggested, “a different center of value has emerged in the form of an explicit and persistent public demand for a sense of ethical consciousness to be reflected in the managerial decisions made by those who serve in the name of democracy” (1998, p. 88). this requires at-

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tention to public service values both in the workplace and in the classroom. as gawthrop reminds us:

Unless and until we can begin to restore the ethical impulses, the transcendent values, and the moral vision that inhere in democracy and in the ethos of public service, we will continue to drift in the backdraft of pragmatic expediency and narrow self- interest. (1998, p. 24)

References

Brookings institution. (2002, February 13). the quiet crisis roars [press release]. www. brookings.edu/media/Newsreleases/2002/20020213volcker.aspx, accessed march 12, 2009.

Diiulio, J., Jr., garvey, g., & Kettl, D. (1993). Improving government performance: An owner’s manual. Washington, DC: Brookings institution press.

ethics resource Center. (2008). governments at all levels show high rates of misconduct: “Next enron” could be in public sector, erC survey finds [press release]. www.ethics. org/about-erc/press-releases.asp?aid=1148, accessed march 12, 2009.

gawthrop, l.C. (1998). Public service and democracy: Ethical imperatives for the 21st century. New york: Chatham house.

goodsell, C.t. (1994). The case for bureaucracy: A public administration polemic. Cha- tham, NJ: Chatham house.

gordon, p.D. (2007, march). The ethics map: A values-based approach to defining ethics and integrity in the public service. paper presented at the transatlantic Workshop on ethics and integrity Conference, Washington, DC.

ingraham, p.W. (2004). you talking to me? accountability and the public service. PS: Political Science and Politics, 38(1), 17–21.

light, p.C. (2008, June 25). Can’t do government. Washington Post, p. a13. luke, J.s. (1992). managing interconnectedness: the new challenge for public adminis-

tration. in m.t. Bailey & r.t. mayer (eds.), Public management in an interconnected world (pp. 13–32). New york: greenwood press.

menzel, D.C. (2007). Ethics management for public administrators: Building organiza- tions of integrity. armonk, Ny: m.e. sharpe.

Nadler, J. (2008). Creating a culture of ethics in the public sector. santa Clara, Ca: mark- kula Center for applied ethics. www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/govern- ment_ethics/public-sector-ethics.html, accessed march 12, 2009.

o’leary, r. (2006). The ethics of dissent: Managing guerrilla government. Washington, DC: CQ press.

Vigoda-gadot, e. (2003). Managing collaboration in public administration: The promise of alliance among governance, citizens, and business. Westport, Ct: praeger.

Waldo, D. (1988). The enterprise of public administration. Novato, Ca: Chandler and sharp.

Heather Getha-Taylor is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Sci- ence at the University of South Carolina. Her research and teaching interests focus on public and nonprofit management, with special emphasis on human resource management, executive leadership, and organizational behavior. She completed her Ph.D. at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse Uni- versity, in 2007.