Futures 37 (2005) 231243 www.elsevier.

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Public service ethics in a changing world

Alan Lawton*
Teesside Business School, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, UK Available online 20 July 2004

Abstract The past 25 years have seen profound changes in the management and delivery of public services throughout the UK and elsewhere. Such developments, known as New Public Management (NPM) have taken hold, to a greater or lesser extent, in many OECD countries. These developments have had an impact upon the ethics of public service in a number of different ways. This paper explores four themes arising from these developments, i.e. (1) regulatory regimes and performance; (2) changing organisational structures, relationships and partnerships; (3) the public service ethos and (4) individual virtue. The themes are located within a complex set of mutual relationships involving individuals, organisations, government and society. Ethical behaviour will reect a balance between these relationships, expressed in decisions taken within a problem space characteristic of public services. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Any discussion of public service ethics needs to be located within the wider context of public services management and public policy. The domains of the private corporation and of public service are merging in western democracies. Increasingly the so-called public sector is becoming more business-like, with the introduction of competition, output measures and corporate management styles. At the same time, corporations are widely seen as contributing to public good, i.e. improving the quality of life to many, albeit at a cost to the environment, and providing public services under contract to government. The past 25 years have seen profound changes in the roles, management,

* Tel.: C44-1642-342-808. E-mail address: a.lawton@tees.ac.uk (A. Lawton). 0016-3287/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2004.03.029

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stafng and delivery of public services in the UK and elsewhere. Some of these changes are global, others local, often under the banner of New Public Management (NPM). Hood [14] has identied seven dimensions to change in the delivery of public services: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A shift towards disaggregation A shift towards greater competition An increased stress on private sector styles of management A greater stress on discipline and frugality in the use of resources More emphasis on visible hands-on management An increased use of explicit formal measurable standards of performance A greater emphasis on output controls.

The OECD [18] has been keen to promote these changes as the panacea for the perceived ills of traditional bureaucracy. However, whether NPM has taken hold in all countries, and to the same extent, is open to question [14]. Polidano and Hulme [19], for example, argue that the key issues for public services in developing countries are capacity building, controlling corruption and political decentralisation. The extent of convergence is in doubt and Pollitt [20] argues that there is little evidence to suggest that different countries are adopting the same management practices. Indeed, where changes have occurred these changes have often been ad hoc, sometimes in response to critical events, other times reecting changing political agendas. However, what can be said is that most countries will need to grapple with a range of tensions generated between: centralisation and decentralisation of government regulation of the individual behaviour of public ofcials by compliance and trusting in their individual integrity control of managers through rules and allowing them discretion and the freedom to manage public and private delivery of public services resources available and public expectation professional peer accountability and outside regulation and scrutiny traditional mechanisms of accountability and enterprise and risk-taking. Within the UK, these tensions have been played out in such a way that there has been an increase in the number of regulatory bodies involved in all aspects of the public services, such as the Audit Commission or OFSTED (Ofce for Standards in Education). At the same time, there has been a decrease in the number of core civil servants and an increase in the number of executive agencies, implementing public policy. There has been an increase in the number of partnerships with voluntary and private sector bodies, involved in the delivery of public services. Increased importance has also been attached to performance management and measurement, focusing, particularly, on outputs rather than inputs. There has also been a growing belief amongst policy-makers that the management skills and attitudes shown by private sector managers can help to solve the perceived problems in public service organisations.

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Notwithstanding where such changes t into a NPM agenda or the extent to which similar changes have occurred elsewhere, critics and supporters of such changes can be found in equal numbers. For example, there are those who argue that the advocacy of a more risk-taking entrepreneurial public sector may undermine traditional ethos of accountability, probity, etc. As Terry [31] argues; .a preoccupation with entrepreneurship is dangerous. It cultivates a sprit of excessive opportunism.which threatens and weakens the integrity of our public institutions, [31, p. 396] However, others have taken a more pragmatic view: Probably, good public managers have always had to be entrepreneurial, even if academics are only now recognising it. Rather than lament the fact they are, students of public administration should be thinking about how best to monitor entrepreneurial managers, and how to give them incentives for appropriate behaviour. [11, p. 270] This article explores the ethical implications of a number of these changes at the levels of society, government, organisations and the individual and groups them under a number of key themes. These themes can be characterised as: 1. 2. 3. 4. Regulatory regimes and performance Changing organisational structures, relationships and partnerships The public service ethos Individual virtue. In exploring these themes a number of assumptions are made: Organisations will continue to make demands upon individuals and these may result in conicting loyalties and crises of conscience (Themes 14) Performance indicators will continue to ourish but their functions may change (Theme 1) Structures will change but there will be an enduring requirement for appropriate accountability mechanisms (Theme 2) The balance between bureaucracy and the political system, between the executive and the legislative will continue to engage our interests (Theme 2) There will continue to be a public service (Theme 3) Public service will not just be about efcient and effective delivery of politically determined goods but will continue to be involved with the wider issues of governance (Theme 3) Public services will continue to recruit staff who are motivated by a number of different reasons including a commitment to a public service ethos (Theme 4) Human nature will not change dramatically and people do perform ethical acts out of benevolence or duty and not all are driven by instrumental rationality (Theme 4) These assumptions are fairly general in nature and can be applied universally.

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2. Theme 1: Regulatory regimes and performance The general growth of regulatory bodies and regulation in the UK is well-documented [21]. This growth begs a number of questions. Firstly, why is there a need for such bodies? A number of explanations can be offered to account for their growth including the perceived need to ensure uniformity of delivery; to control what might be seen as arrogant professionals who cannot be trusted to regulate themselves and to support a performanceoriented culture with penalties incurred for not meeting central targets. Secondly, to what extent have they proved effective in their aims? This is a difcult question to answer, partly because introducing mechanisms to investigate and regulate inappropriate behaviour invariably means that more examples of such behaviour are, in the rst instance, found. For example, in its rst year of operation in 20022003 the Standards Board (charged with overseeing the conduct of local councillors in England) received some 2948 allegations of misconduct by local councillors; no further action was taken in 50% of these cases and there was no evidence of a breach of the code of conduct in a further 23% of cases. It is thus a moot point whether the creation of a regulatory body is successful in combating unethical behaviour or whether it simply encourages allegations of unethical behaviour. Nevertheless the trend in the UK is to move from an integrity model, which trusts individuals and organisations to regulate themselves, to a compliance model. Thus, the perceived inability of MPs to regulate their own behaviour has led to codes of conduct, registers of interest and the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. A third question to ask is Are the regulatory regimes consistent in their approach? The evidence seems to indicate that the answer is no and this may give rise to problems. Davis et al. [7] express concerns at the lack of joined-up relations between the inspectorates covering local government. They also detail the range of inspection regimes that are on offer from compliance models to integrity models, thus: Most local authorities appear to, for example, regard OFSTED as pursuing a relatively punitive approach, whilst the re and police inspectorates are widely seen as unthreatening! [7, p. 1] They argue that inspection regimes need to achieve a balance between local diversity and capacity building and central prescription; between experimentation and zero tolerance of failure; between achieving early wins and sustainable improvement; and between cost savings and improvements in the qualities of services. Despite this argument for balance of centralised control and unyielding rules with local responsibility and decision making, the Select Committee of Transport, Local Government and the Regions [26] recommend a reduction in central control, stating: We recommend that the volume of regulations and guidance which accompanies the 2000 [Local Government] Act should be dramatically reduced. [26, para 9] There is a perception that there is still too much general control over the activities of local government by central government, which, despite the impetus for localised management through such structures as regional assemblies and Beacon Councils,

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disgures the general landscape of government. The context of the Select Committee report was the wider modernisation agenda and the new political arrangements in local government generally, but it is also reected in the creation of the Standards Committees in local authorities and new codes of conduct. It is necessary for government to engage with the public with accountability, integrity and probity. However, inspection, regulatory and performance regimes that focus on prescriptive target-setting and the technical application of pre-determined metrics ignore the importance of judgement. Much of the problem results from an over-concern with outputs, not outcomes, and the downplaying of processes. This can lead to manipulating outputs, rather than concern for the process accountability. Examples range from hospital waiting lists to school examinations. Headlines such as that found in the Guardian newspaper on the 9th November 2002 are all too common: Head arrested over SATS tests A head teacher who resigned from his school after allegations that he doctored national tests results for 11 year olds has been arrested after a fraud squad investigation. Ends, in this case education league tables, become more important than the processes through which such ends are arrived at. Yet in much of the public services the process and outputs and outcomes are inextricably linked. It is the personal relationships that we develop with our teachers and doctors that matter and inform the success of the outcomes. There is some evidence that the regulatory culture may change. The new head of the Audit Commission, James Strachan, is quoted as arguing that audit should be thought of as a friendly tool for improvement, not another bloody inspection and he goes on to argue that Im not a woolly person but trust is vital in all of this. The greater the trust the more honest people can be about objectives and the more you can delegate and decentralise. [23] Thus, whilst it is likely that regulatory regimes will continue, critics argue that their direction needs to change from top-down compliance to a regime that encourages good performance and allows for development rather than punishment for failing to meet targets. Self-regulation is not the answer. Too often, as we have seen with members of parliament and corporate governance, self-regulation does not work and external scrutiny is resisted. Self-regulation is not credible with a sceptical public. There is some suggestion that performance regimes that focus purely on hitting targets may, in fact, lead to unethical behaviour [4]. At the same time, an accountability regime that relies upon peer pressure is unlikely to work either. Thus, one area for change is likely to be the operating environment in terms of the values that underpin central government relations with local government and the consequent impact upon relationships within public service organisations. The language of government performance has tended to focus on economy and efciency at the expense of effectiveness, and effectiveness itself has been overly concerned with outputs rather than outcomes.

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3. Theme 2: Changing organisational structures, relationships and partnerships The structure of public service organisations has, in recent years, changed in two different dimensions. Firstly, the structure of the industry as a whole has become more fragmented with a range of different organisations delivering public services. Secondly, the internal structures of individual organisations have changed in the direction of atter, less bureaucratic arrangements working with a range of partners. One of the implications of changes at the industry level is that there are now a large number of bodies who are no longer bound by traditional accountability mechanisms. One example of the problems that this can cause is reected in the sacking of the Head of the Prisons Service (Derek Lewis), in 1995 by the government minister (Home Secretary, Michael Howard) following the escape from a UK Prison (Parkhurst) by three inmates. The Prisons Service is a socalled Next Steps Agency, created at arms length from the Home Ofce to carry out the day-to-day management of the Prisons Service. The case raised the issue of where accountability lays in a devolved government structure. However, in the trade-off between different public service values, responsiveness to a range of different stakeholders has become more prominent, perhaps at the expense of accountability. This may be no bad thing as the assumption of a homogeneous bureaucratic public service with hierarchical accountability was always problematic. Accountability does take different forms as Table 1 below illustrates. The table emphasises that different values co-exist within government and different behaviours are expected on the part of public ofcials. The relationship between a public service organisation and its environment continues to change and public service organisations fulll a range of functions including provider, partner, collaborator, competitor, buyer, seller, and contractor [6]. Thus, government engages with other bodies and with individuals in a range of different ways and these entail different types of relationships involving different values [2]. Government engages with individuals as citizens, taxpayers, customers, beneciaries, or criminals. Each of these relationships will be underpinned by different values including justice, desert, responsiveness, entitlements and so on. Framing these relationships is some concept of the boundaries between public and private activities, which is discussed below.
Table 1 Accountabilities Type of accountability Bureaucratic Legal Professional Political Market Peers Value emphasis Efciency Rule of law Expertise Responsiveness Responsiveness Loyalty Behavioural expectation Obedience to organisational objectives Compliance with external mandates Deference to individual judgement and expertise Responsive to key external stakeholders To the customer Conformity to peer values

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However, at the same time, the concept of publicness is useful to characterise attachment to public service values such as accountability. Antonsen and Jorgensen [3] distinguish between public service organisations with high publicness (HP) and low publicness (LP). Organisations with HP are characterised by complex tasks, professional orientation, many external stakeholders, conicting environmental demands, low managerial autonomy, tight ministerial control, strong vertical links, rule compliance and reluctance to change. Whilst it is likely that organisation will be somewhere on a continuum between HP and LP. Such a characterisation is useful in reminding us of the complexity of public service organisations and the inadequacy of a single model of public service organisations. At the same time, the internal structuring of public service organisations changes over time and takes different forms and has an impact upon those who are subject to it. Research carried out in a large Australian public sector organisation by Stokes and Clegg [29] found many organisational members experience of organisational reform as a process of unresolved and contradictory duality between an enterprising promise and a rationally accountable past. Instead of an organizational displacement of the old public service ethos with a new business ethics we nd ethical erosion at the apex and practical confusions at the base. [29, p. 241] Such a contradiction is not unusual; structures may change but, as Stokes and Clegg, argue, power does not disappear but is recongured in different ways. In a similar vein, Garsten and Grey [13] argue that shifting organisational forms have re-opened the debate on trust. They suggest that as public bureaucracies change then we nd the end of career patterns, permanently shifting employment, intensied systems of monitoring and appraisal and eeting organisational attachments Trust is the oil that smoothes the path of changing relationships and entails that individuals act in a predictable way. In bureaucracies, predictability comes from organisational routines and rules and as bureaucracy becomes less prevalent relationships will need to be sustained in other ways. At the same time, the increased use of a wide range of outside bodies to deliver public services in a belief that they may be more responsive to the customer may have had an adverse impact upon accountability and serving the public. Private sector organisations have a duty to their shareholders, rst and foremost, and this may compromise their concerns with a public interest. At the same time, many of the bodies now delivering public services are not held to account through the democratic processes. One solution is to extend the powers of the National Audit Ofce to scrutinise the accounts of partner bodies. The delivery of public services through networks and partnerships poses new challenges for public services managers. Organisations have different interests and will expect to have their autonomy recognised and respected. Different denitions of the proper remit of public services will be held by different agencies. At the same time, the political nature of the enterprise will need to be recognised and how to manage key stakeholders will be crucial. Common interests will need to be identied and perceived as more important than conicting interests.

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For partnerships to succeed, condences need to be respected and trust built [15]. In the rst instance, if trust and goodwill do not exist then joint venture agreements specifying the rights and obligations of different parties will need to be specied. The UK Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) [10] recognise the challenges that partnerships pose: Building an effective alliance is a complex process. A successful partnership requires trust, honesty, a exible approach and above all staff willingness to respond to the challenge The importance of trust is stressed and guidance is provided on how to build and maintain partnerships. However, we need to recognise the different value systems that participants have to a partnership. In their research Rasmussen et al. [24] found that managers in the public sector will have a different ethical orientation to those in the nonprot sector and that public servants appear oriented towards the larger values associated with the maintenance of social systems via serving the public interest; in the non-prot sector individuals are by denition and design focused on the interests and needs of individual clients and their immediate colleagues There is more dominance of benevolent ethical criteria within the non-prot sector based upon the primary consideration for the well-being of others; whereas in the government context the emphasis is on cosmopolitan sources of ethical reasoning that rely on abstract concepts such as the citizen, the public or the profession. [24, p. 93]

4. Theme 3: The public service ethos The notion of the existence of a common, unied and clearly articulated public service ethos is problematic [16,22]. The concept of an ethos may be either virtuous or reect the dominant interest of a professional elite. What does it mean for those who fall under its umbrella and what does it mean for those who engage with public services in a variety of different ways? It is transmitted through culture, tradition, and organisational practices and is given expression in the recruitment and promotion of individuals based upon a recognised set of attributes. We take an ethos to be concerned with the culture of an organisation and of particular concern is how that culture is transmitted over time. It will be transmitted through well-understood formal and informal rules, through training and through peer support and pressure. Tradition is important in sustaining a sense of identity and continuity. However, when we move to short-term contracts or hived-off agencies what happens to that source of continuity? As discussed above, Garsten and Grey [13] point to the impact of changing employment relations. In recent years, the dominant language in the discourse of public administration has tended to be economic with critics lamenting the managerialist ideology taking over public administration. What are the ethical implications of this? From the 1980s onwards the concern with economy and efciency in particular tended to be the most important criteria. The third E of effectiveness was less easy to demonstrate. One version of the last 25 years of public administration in the UK reveals beleaguered managers trying to hold

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back the ethical line against hordes of marauding private sector managers. Sufce to say that there is little to support the idea that a public service ethos has been fundamentally undermined by recent developments. Indeed it can be argued that the public service itself is not necessarily ethical if it sustains jobs for the boys or encourages misplaced loyalties. Notwithstanding the elusiveness of the concept the proponents of a new public service ethos argue: .we need a new public service culture that is more entrepreneurial and outcomes focused. [1, p. 9] Do the changes discussed above make it likely that a public service ethos will continue to be sustained? There are certainly a number of developments that make it problematic: 1. As indicated above, research seems to suggest that there is no one agreed public service ethos but there may be several 2. Public ofcials engage more and more with other organisations and are exposed to different practices 3. The notion of a career civil service is under threat both through changing employment practices and changes in the status of organisations themselves. The notion of a professional vocation is one that has come under attack, not least because the sources of personal identity are more numerous, particularly as we are more and more encouraged to achieve a worklife balance. At the same time, we are encouraged to take responsibility for our own careers and construct portfolios of skills and competences. Judgement is not so easily acquired. However, management itself is part of a social practice: .the practice of management is not determined solely by the technical or structural need for it but also by the meaning that it carries for those who manage and are managed. [25, p. 712] The change in identity from public administrators to public managers is more than a change in name as mangers seek to respond to, and to shape, their organisational and external environments. Power is not always exercised on managers as passive recipients; more research needs to be done on what institutionalist theorists term loose-coupling. The existence of ambiguous goals and objectives creates opportunities for internal politics and goal displacement, i.e. for loose-coupling between strategic and operational goals. Thus, Baker [5] argues that organisations are political and that ethical behaviour results from a complex interplay between existing power structures and the individuals role within, and commitment to, the organisation.

5. Theme 4: Individual virtue A key theme of post modernity is the individualising of society, of which a number of related questions can be asked:

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Are individuals per se becoming less virtuous? Are public ofcials becoming less virtuous? Should public ofcials be particularly virtuous? What is the relationship between the public and the private?

Siedentop [27] traces the concept of civic virtue back to Montesqieu and raises the fundamental tension question for modern citizenship: .we want more from public life than we are prepared to put into it. We want a share in power, but we also want to be left alone. [27, p. 63] He argues for a modern citizenship, which recognises a private sphere. As citizens we vote less, are less engaged politically, want to pay less taxes. As consumers we expect more products and choices and we do not care who delivers them. There is less respect for politicians and less involvement in civic institution, e.g. as parent governors or parish councillors. Why? Partly because the demands made on individuals acting in a voluntary capacity to manage budgets, make strategic decisions or conform to a raft of central government legislation and regulation are too onerous. One critic of postmodernity has argued that too much weight is given to instrumental reason. We are now characterised by a concern with self and the trend is from a concern with citizens duties, responsibilities and the community to customer rights [30]. However, other authors are more positive in arguing for individual virtue. The ethics of character is undergoing something of a renaissance. Mangini [17] argues that ethics needs to be understood in terms of continuity and durability rather than just single acts. Character expresses itself over time; The ethical perspective offered here is meant to restablish the importance of our way of being against values chosen and pursued by single acts. [17, p. 93] She asks us to revisit the question of what kind of persons do we want to be and what kind of lives shall we lead. A response to the second question has engaged North American academics more than ones based in the UK and is seen as part of a wider debate concerning the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy [31]. However, public ofcials are expected to be virtuous. Public administration or management is a moral activity because of public trust, obligations, duties and because it is in the nature of the ofcial [12]. They are expected to exhibit the highest moral qualities. These will include optimism, courage, fairness tempered by charity and benevolence, civility, courtesy, respect and tolerance, justice [9,12]. The character of the ofcial will be expressed through the decisions that they take. The shift from traditional bureaucratic structures to atter, more exible structures is predicated, partly, on the fact that different kinds of decisions need to be taken. These decisions are no longer routine, formal and governed by rules but are exible and instant where discretion needs to be exercised. As Uhr [32] reminds us, character is important when decisions require more than technical expertise, more than the routine following of pre-determined rules. Moving on to our nal question, Steinberg [28] argues that formulating clear boundaries between public and private is very complex; it is not a boundary problem but is

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about different manners of acting. Public acts take on the character of procedural and legalistic; private acts take on warmth, intimacy and affection. They are thus distinct manners of acting but not necessarily different spheres of action. These are important distinctions.

6. Conclusions The public sector is changing but not necessarily in ways that converge. There are alternative multiple futures for public administration, depending upon the degree to which there are career civil servants; the degree to which organisational boundaries become blurred; the extent to which there are general, system-wide rules of procedure; the growth in the regulatory framework; the distinction between public and private morality, between public and private lives; the changing nature of the public service ethos and the changing organisational and governmental landscapes. The four themes explored in this paper reect different spheres of ethical values and action and these spheres interact, and reinforce each other, as shown in Fig. 1. The causes of ethical and unethical behaviour will result from the balance between these dimensions. For example, individuals may be ethical but problems arise when asked to cut corners to meet work targets. The causes of ethical and unethical behaviour are likely to remain the same in each of these dimensions, as shown in Table 2. At the same time, different sets of values will need to be reconciled. Individual values expressed in terms of the concept of the self and the relations that we make; organisational values in terms of formal and informal; formal in terms of rules and regulations, codes, and structures and informal in terms of integrity, culture and values. Finally, society values in terms of civic culture, government and the law. It is difcult to predict which might have the single greatest impact upon individual behaviour, although changes at governmental or organisational level are easier to make; the impact of a change of leadership, for example, can be immediate and profound. As always the answer is dependent upon balancing acts. Thus, for example, Garofalo and Geuras [12] seek to reconcile competing ethical views and argue that;

Fig. 1. The interplay of ethical values.

242 Table 2 Causes of ethical behaviour Individual Predisposition Opportunity Fear of sanctions Professionalism Peer pressure

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Values in Society Culture Education Religion Economic system

Government Power Leadership Commitment to public interest Extent of state capture

Organisational practices Recruitment and promotion Ethos Targets Controls Rules Leadership

To be moral is to exercise discretion and judgement.By act ethically we mean that public administrators who adopt our integrated stance will internalise a perspective that comprehends the ethical and technical aspects of their duties and obligations, and that enables them to express, reect and advocate normative concerns in both management and policy. [12, p. 132] However, it is likely that competing ethical views will played out in a problem space characterised by grey areas. Thus, DeLeon [8] asks us to recognise such a space, necessitating complex and reective choices concerning ethical values. She argues that, for example, neither entrepreneurial experiments nor increased discretion for professional managers needs result in diminished accountability. The future public service organisation will be complex and complicated and will need managers to balance a competing set of ethical claims. This is not to say that they should be ethically ambiguous. They need even more so to be grounded in a set of principles, purposes and ethical performance.

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