CHAPTER 5
Ethics and Accountability and the Challenges
Although the question of ethics in public life has existed from the earliest times of human existence, it has achieved increased prominence as a result of globalization. Globalization has complicated the issues of ethics and accountability by enabling various formal and informal actors, both national and international, to intervene in the affairs of governments. It has also introduced new dimensions to public sector ethics. The chapter analyzes the issues of corruption, accountability, ethical leadership, ethical climate, privacy, organizational politics and global ethics. The issues of ethics and accountability has existed since the origin of the government. Dubnick (2003) traces the history of ethics and accountability from the Anglican and feudalistic period. Others have traced its roots back to the time of Athenian democracy (Elster 1999). The issues of ethics and accountability have become complicated as a result of changes in the role of public administrators. Denhardt (1988, p. 60), for example, asserts that “the role for the career administrator has changed during the present century in three important ways. First, the administrator has become a policy maker; second, the public has demanded both more responsiveness and more responsibility from the administrator; and third, the bureaucracy has become professionalized.” By contrast, Thompson (1985, p. 556) remarks that “the possibility of an administrative ethics was dependent on rejection of what was termed the ethic of neutrality and the ethic of structure in favor of the ability of a public administrator to serve
© The Author(s) 2018 H.A. Khan, Globalization and the Challenges of Public Administration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69587-7_5
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