Public Service Ethics

Ethics—in all its exemplary and exhausting forms—matters. It deals with the most gripping question in public life: "What is the right thing to do?" Now in a thoroughly revised second edition, Public Service Ethics: Individual and Institutional Responsibilities introduces readers to this personally relevant and professionally challenging field of study. No matter the topic—the necessity of ethics, intriguing human behavior experiments, the role of ethics codes, whistleblowing incidents, corruption exposés, and the grandeur and decay of morality—there is no shortage of controversy. The book enables readers to:

• appreciate why ethics is essential to leadership;
• understand and apply moral development theory at the individual and organizational levels of analysis;
• differentiate between ethical problems and ethical dilemmas, and design creative ways to deal with them;
• develop abilities to use moral imagination and ethical reasoning—to appraise, argue, and defend an ethical position, and
• cultivate individual and institutional initiatives to improve ethical climate and infrastructure.

Authors James Bowman and Jonathan West capture reader interest by featuring learning objectives, skill-building material, discussion questions, and exercises in each chapter.　 The authors’ narrative is user-friendly and accessible, highlighting dilemmas and challenging readers to "own" the book by annotating the pages with one’s own ideas and insights, then interacting with others in a live or virtual classroom to stretch one’s thinking about the management of ethics and ethics of management. The ultimate goal is to bolster students’ confidence and prepare them for the ethical problems they will face in the future, equipping them with the conceptual frameworks and context to approach thorny questions and behave ethically.