ABSTRACT
An important development in the recent public administration literature, particularly that which is concerned with administrative ethics, has been a focus on identifying and preventing or redressing occurrences of administrative evil. As the authors responsible for inventing the concept, Guy Adams and Danny Balfour point out, "Administrative evil is regrettably a recurring aspect of public policy and administration in the modern era". This chapter uses the administrative evil construct to examine challenges facing higher education. It offers some recommendations for avoiding or combatting administrative evil based on recent research in the area. Melvin Dubnick's main point is that Adams and Balfour's introduction of critical theory into public administration theory is a mistake because critical theory does not provide a rigorous enough methodology to support their argument. Eugenie Samier argues that most administrative evil is in fact passive evil, in which participants perceive administrative evil and yet do nothing to prevent or stop it.
