Disabling or Empowering
Although belief in progress is a public service attribute, it does not cast public man- agers in the role of Don Quixote, tilting at imaginary windmills. It does not demand that managers butt futilely against a brick wall. It pays, then, to begin by assessing the situation, that is, finding out what managers actually face.
The profession is animated by the dual potential of ethics to either disable or empower managers. The concern with ethics has the potential for disabling managers if it is used as a coercive control device, an exploitative tool, a subtle motivational gimmick, or a public relations scheme. Alternatively, the concern with ethics can empower managers by promoting ethical practices, supporting ethical managers, and reinforcing accountability.
For many managers (and for us), the first set of possibilities cries out “Stop!” The second signals a careful “Go!” Either way, ethics is “the new political symbol to change controls over the bureaucracy,” as Vera Vogelsang-Coombs, a state-manager-turned- academic in the mid-West, remarked in August of 1990. Ethics is more accurately seen as a renewal rather than a radical departure from traditional practice. In its early years, professional public administration in the United States had a strongly moralistic dimension that had developed partly in revulsion against the partisan spoils system’s blatant corruption.
