Ethical Accountability in Government

Talking about ôethical issuesö is easier than defining ôethicsö to everyone's satisfaction. As subjective judgments of competing values are involved, individual interpretations are characterized by continuing disagreement, ambiguity, and uncertainty. However within societies there tends to be acceptance that ethical issues are linked to a code of conduct. In the case of business associations and government bodies, this code may be formalized in a written document, although the population at large follows an informal code of ethical conduct.

How do governments define what is ethics and ethical behavior in office? The answer that each of us ultimately crafts for ourself must somehow distinguish between private and public worlds and must illuminate what we mean by the practice of management. Undergirding any understanding of public management is an ethical foundation. These different ethical obligations, as compared with those of a private citizen, are often the only useful distinctions between public and private administration. In this era of reinvention public managers who ignore their ethic

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ampant corruption the spoils system created made bureaucracy necessary. Perhaps the most corrupt department at the time was the Post Office. To undo the damage done by Postmaster William T. Berry, Jackson imposed on his friend, and Navy auditor, William Kendall to take the postmaster's job. Kendall was the first to see what had to be done to restrain official thievery. He reorganized the Post Office into an elaborate system of administrative checks and balances among newly organized offices of accounts, appointment, contract and inspection, each watchful of the others. Lower-level jobs were redefined strictly to remove temptation: no longer would those who handed out mail contracts, for example, be the ones to oversee their fulfillment, an arrangement that had been an invitation to shady dealing. Carefully kept records of every official action were required of employees, and auditors were hired to pore over them. Even with the advent of the civil service in the late 19th century, the ôdemocratizingö makeup of government officials, selecting them from a multitude of social backgrounds, made these systems necessary. For Kendall, the code of conduct was the centerpiece of this program. The oversight mechanisms grew more intense and
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Approximate Word count = 1586
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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