Ethical Dilemmas in Government: Designing an Organizational Response

Abstract

This chapter focuses on conceptual clarification and organizational reform as the building blocks which must underlie efforts to improve the tenor of organizational life. It discusses the difficulties inherent in trying to make policy choices, in developing personal standards of conduct, and in making difficult moral decisions in the face of likely organizational reprisals. Correcting the normative dilemmas of organizational behavior needs more than a new or a revised Code of Ethics. Kenneth Boulding establishes ethics as a major organizational component. The chapter identifies three areas for the ethical reform of organizations—conceptual clarification, protection for dissenters, and a program of normative enrichment. In the analysis, the most realistic solutions to the problems of morality and ethics may lie in redesigning the organizational structures that constitute our public agencies. Another element of organizational redesign which can have a positive effect on the tenor of government is an improved system of personnel evaluation.