Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration

• Date: 01 September 2014
• Author: James H. Svara
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12230
• Published date: 01 September 2014

James H. Svara is visiting professor

in the School of Government at the

University of North Carolina and former

professor in the School of Public Affairs at

Arizona State University (ASU). He served

as co-chair (with James Nordin) of the

Working Group to Revise the ASPA Code

of Ethics (2011–13) and chair of the Ad

Hoc Committee on Implementation of the

ASPA Code (2013–14). Support for these

activities was provided by the Lincoln

Center for Applied Ethics at ASU.

E-mail: james.svara@sog.unc.edu

Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration 561

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp. 561–569. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12230.

James H. Svara

Arizona State University

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in

public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of

administration, but the broad f‌i eld of public administra-

tion has had dif‌f‌i culty articulating clear and meaning-

ful standards of behavior and developing a means of

upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of special-

ized professional associations in public service adopted

codes, starting with the International City/County

Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960,

the full range of public administrators did not have an

association to represent them until the American Society

for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939.

Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the f‌i rst

code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994,

but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new

code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and

increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other pro-

fessional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical

responsibilities to society of all public administrators.

It has long been recognized that ethics is inte-

gral to public administration. Although ethical

behavior is not always achieved at the individual

or organizational level, it is obvious that an essential

element of administration is missing when unethical

behavior occurs. Still, establishing clear and mean-

ingful standards to guide behavior has been dif‌f‌i cult

for the practitioners and scholars who make up the

f‌i eld. Although specialized groups of administrators

that organized themselves as professional associa-

tions developed codes of ethics, starting with the

International City/County Management Association

(ICMA) 90 years ago, the profession more gener-

ally, as represented by a diverse membership asso-

ciation such as the American Society for Public

Administration (ASPA), was

slow in adopting a code of eth-

ics.  is article examines the

shifting attitudes about codes of

ethics in public administration

and the progression of ASPA’s

code of ethics as a study of the

challenges of developing a set

of enforceable standards for a large and heterogeneous

group of practitioners. Understanding the issues and

challenges that have inf‌l uenced the development of

ethical standards for administrators can contribute to

advancing our understanding of ethics and improve

the prospects for ef‌f ectively implementing a code of

ethics that applies broadly to public service positions.

After calls for establishing a code for the profession

of public administration starting in the late 1930s,

ASPA—the association created in 1939 with the

intention of organizing the f‌i eld—did not act and was

often criticized for its failure to approve a code of eth-

ics until its forty-f‌i fth year.  e ICMA code of ethics

was of‌f ered as an example of what might be created

for public administration generally (Mosher 1938),

but for decades, scholars and practitioners in public

administration generally viewed codes negatively

and gave little attention to the study or promotion

of ethics (Cooper 1994). ASPA did not take formal

actions to advance ethical codes within the f‌i eld until

the 1970s.  e questions of whether to have a code

of ethics and what it should contain have been central

to the debate about whether public administration is

a profession as opposed to a collection of professions

with vague, shared values (Mosher 1968; Pugh 1988).

 e f‌i rst code of ethics adopted by ASPA in 1984

was an important step that established fundamental

standards shared by public administrators. It was

revised in 1994 with reorganization and clarif‌i cation

of the sources of ethical standards. A new version was

approved in 2013 that broadened the scope of values

and standards for administrators who serve the public

across f‌i elds and levels of government and other sectors.

 e debate over the appropri-

ateness, content, and imple-

mentation of a code of ethics

for public administration is

examined in this article.  ere

were shared values in the public

administration community

Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating

and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field

of Public Administration

 e debate over the

appropriateness, content, and

implementation of a code of

ethics for public administration

is examined.