Current Public Administration Magazine (February - 2014) - "Ethics & Morality in Administration"

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Ethics & Morality in Administration

Professional ethics and features of administrative ethics

Most civil servant activities involve communicating with the public and having constant daily personal contact with many people. Besides legal and other regulatory systems, morality is another important instrument of normative individual activity and behaviour regulation in any sphere of life. Labour morality usually includes professional ethics that determine moral principles and individual behaviour standards for any sphere of labour activity.

Professional ethics are a set of norms that determines an individual position towards professional duties, professional relations with other employees and, finally, towards society as a whole. Professional ethics reflects the specifics of morality, personal interrelationships and behaviour coming from professional activities. It is common practice to distinguish professional ethics for activities related to direct communications with people, such as medicine, journalism, legal science, general sciences, etc. Activities dealing with special public duties like military service, police service, sports or public and political activities and others are also characterized by special moral codes.

Professional ethics can be considered as a concrete expression of general ethical norms caused not only by the specifics of relations between professional groups and public, but the specifics of personal relations within a professional group. It is the existence of special personal relations within professional groups that results in special moral norms regulating these relations.

Professional ethics include:

first, behavioural codes defining certain types of moral relations between individuals who consider these codes optimal for the performance of a professional duty;

second, the ground for these codes, the social and psychological interpretation of cultural and humanistic purposes of the profession, its epos.

Professional ethics studies:

the position of a professional group and its members towards society and other groups, and their concerns;
the personal moral features of a specialist that provide the highest level of his/her professional duty
erformance;
specifics of moral relations between specialists and individuals to whom a specialist's activities are directed;
relationships within professional groups and special professional moral standards expressing these relationships;
professional activity as a personal moral feature and professional activity values;
specifics, goals and techniques of professional education.

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Moral aspects of personal labour relations suggest that the goal of a professional activity, its motivations, moral statements, ways to achieve goals, evaluation system of labour results and their social value are clearly identified. Professional morality exists not only in the field of theoretical principles and statements but in everyday notions and individual professional behaviour patterns for different professional activities. Since special professional duties and tasks, as well as conditions of their performance, form the basis of professional ethics, they can strongly affect its content. A special moral relationship arises between people during a labour process. First of all, it includes personal attitudes towards labour and the participants of the labour process, as well as the moral relations that result from an interception of the interests of a professional group and society, not to mention the interests of different professional groups. Professional ethics both reflects the development of moral relation components mentioned above and presupposes that new unique components expressing qualitative attributes of a given profession can arise

Professional ethics should not be considered a consequence of inequality between professional groups. However, society requires a very high morality level from certain professions. Labour activities in certain professional areas are based on a high level of coordination between participants, which causes increasing needs for cooperative behaviour. Special attention is paid to the moral features of individuals, such as having the right to make decisions in the areas of human life, high valued assets, health service, education and management, with public administration as a part. It is extremely difficult to formalize, regulate and put these activities into instruction. These activities are creative by their nature. The specifics of certain professional group labour activities makes moral relations much more complicated. A new component is added to them: the relationship with people to whom an activity is directed. Since management means an ‘invasion’ into the personal internal world, moral responsibility is a priority in this case.

To determine the level of confidence in a civil servant, society takes into account both his/her educational level or amount of special knowledge and skills, and his/her moral features—one of the most important components of civil servant professional fitness. General moral norms are specified in the course of a civil servant’s professional activities, taking into account labour features and the structure of moral relations typical for a given profession.

The responsibility is higher for professions based on personal contacts with other people. For these professions the value of initiative and independence in making decisions and resolving conflicts is increased. Therefore, the availability of highly developed and qualitatively special personal moral features is considered by society as the most important component of the professional fitness of an individual involved in such a profession. What professional features should the civil servant possess?