ABSTRACT
The initial demands made by any society of its public service are modest. It is required to be incorrupt and effective. A lower standard of achievement is expected in the latter quality than in the former where nothing short of perfection is acceptable. This is right for, in the words of a distinguished citizen of a country which has yet to approach this ideal standard, ‘nothing is so corrupting as a suspicion of corruption’. Underlying this demand by society is a hope or an expectation that public servants generally should be men of high ethical standards. This requirement would be accepted as just by most officials. If outside observers suspect that civil servants, as flexible in responding to external pressure as described by Charles Sisson, might find difficulty in maintaining ethical values, they will have been at least partly reassured by Sisson’s hope that ‘officials are men who might in the last desperation exhibit a scruple’. Certainly in Britain most officials would defend their ethics more vigorously than their achievements in management and would assert that they were seen as exhibiting scruples, even at the risk of seeming priggish, well in advance of the last desperation. But every widely held and important assumption can usefully be explored from time to time. The ethical assumption was the subject of some profound thought by Mr D. Morrell in an address to his colleagues in the civil service shortly before his death. Certainly any wholehearted search for better management in government will need to rest on assumptions about ethics. The same statement could be made of management in business: it is encouraging to find British business schools raising the subject for discussion.
