Big Questions in Administrative Ethics: A Need for Focused, Collaborative Effort

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00386.x
• Published date: 01 July 2004
• Date: 01 July 2004

Big Questions/Big Issues 395

Terry L. Cooper

University of Southern California

Big Questions in Administrative Ethics:

A Need for Focused, Collaborative Effort

Introduction1

I have argued elsewhere that administrative ethics as a

significant field of study is only about 30 years old, dating

from the mid-1970s, largely instigated by the work of the

New Public Administration, and reflecting developments

in thought about public administration dating back into the

1930s.2 During these few decades, scholarly work on ad-

ministrative ethics and its application to practice have ex-

panded with enormous speed and rich diversity, both in

the United States and around the world. The number of

journal articles, books, courses, conferences, and training

exercises have proliferated beyond anyone’s wildest ex-

pectations. More than a passing fad, administrative ethics

has demonstrated its sustainability and its centrality to the

field (Cooper 2001, 1–36).

What is lacking with respect to these developments is

anything like a focused effort by groups of scholars to study

specific sets of significant research questions in a sustained

and systematic fashion. There is an enormous amount of

interesting but highly disparate scholarship on administra-

tive ethics reflecting the diverse and often episodic inter-

ests that capture our attention. The existence of this rich

diversity of work is not bad at all; rather, it indicates lively

intellectual engagement and the multifaceted nature of the

field. It also may be viewed as a necessary scoping of the

field in its early stages, the product of an energetic explo-

ration of the range of concerns in the study of administra-

tive ethics.

After approximately three decades, however, there is

very little that manifests ongoing scholarship by working

groups based on specific theoretical perspectives, sets of

related problems, or significant issues.3 Without collabo-

rative efforts to fix our gaze on the most fundamental and

vexing questions that are essential to moving administra-

tive ethics forward, there is a risk that the creativity and

energy now being directed to the subject will dissipate,

and that our field will fail to earn the sustained promi-

nence in journals, curricula, and professional development

it deserves. Without this kind of concentrated work, ad-

ministrative ethics may remain an interesting but periph-

eral concern.

None of us can define the elements and boundaries of

such concentrated efforts; that needs to become a matter

in which many of us invest ourselves. We need to work at

building consensus among those interested in administra-

tive ethics about sets of research questions that, in some

sense, define the heart of the field. Not intended to pre-

clude or exclude other work on other questions, the call

here is for the establishment of a center of gravity for the

development of administrative ethics around some focused

collaborative efforts. Diversity of interests articulated by

many from various areas in public administration are

needed to keep the field fresh and lively; focused efforts of

those mainly committed to studying administrative ethics

may be required to provide sustainability, coherence, and

sufficient weight to advance it solidly into the core of pub-

lic administration.

This essay should be viewed as the first bid in a conver-

sation about those “big questions” around which some fo-

cused, sustained, and collaborative activity might be orga-

nized. It began with an invitation I sent out to the ASPA

Section on Ethics Listserv on September 27, 2002. In that

message, members of the section were asked to offer their

nominations for the “big questions” in administrative eth-

ics. Thoughtful responses were received from 10 persons,

with excellent proposals for questions of central impor-

Terry L. Cooper is the Maria B. Crutcher Professor in Citizenship and Demo-

cratic Values in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the Uni-

versity of Southern California. He is the author of two books—

The Respon-

sible Administrator: An Approach to the Ethics of the Administrative Role,

and

An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration—

and editor of two

other volumes,

Handbook of Administrative Ethics

and

Exemplary Public

Administrators: Character and Leadership in Government.

E-mail: tlcooper@

usc.edu.

Big Questions/Big Issues