The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) explains it ethical standards well. The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) outlines it ethical standards well. Its first standard focuses maintaining the public’s interest. The focus of the ethical standards include exercising discretion to boost the public’s trust, incorporating the public’s inputs in decision–making, and helping the public in their government dealings.
Second, the ethical standards focus on respecting the constitution and all laws of the nation. Third ethical standards focus on the workers’ display of one’s integrity. Fourth, the ethical standards focus on strengthening of ethics –based groups. Last, the ethical standards focus on striving for excellence one’s professional endeavors (Geuras, 2005). The ASPA ethical standards will serve as a guide to ensure better public services.
According to James Bowman, there is an increase in the acceptance and enthusiastic implementation of ASPA’s ethical standards. The ASDA and the American Political Science Association (APSA) have joined hands to persuade all sectors of both society to embrace ethical standards as a guide for daily business, government, and personal dealings.
The ASPA’s successful activities include a national conference held in 1989 as well as countless materials written by respected ethics authors like Bowman and Lewis. ASPA also held well attended conferences for university community such as a 1991 conference held in Park City, Utah and a 1995 conference in Tampa, Florida.
The University activities were earmarked to inculcate in the minds and hears of the students the importance of ethical standards in elevating the all transactions to a morality–inspired level. A survey conducted among the university conferences showed that 87% of 55% of the school that emphasize the importance of ethics include regular seminars and verbal encouragement (Bowman, 1998).
The ASPA focuses on ensuring that all persons, especially those working in public companies should adhere to moral judgment, ethical reasoning, or moral thinking in their daily activities. Ethics is based on the principle that a person must do what is right or good and avoid what is wrong or bad when faced with alternative choices. Most of the public administrators within the 50 states adhere to ASDA’s ethical standards. Specifically, the administrators come from most of the municipal, federal, and state levels.
Further, a research conducted on 1,000 persons who were randomly-selected from the 11,18ASPA members show that 93.8% were white and 67 percent were male. The mean if the samples show an average age of 48 years. In addition, 87 percent were college graduates. In addition, 31 percent work in municipal offices as top level or middle managers. In addition, 14 percent of the respondents were teachers, and 1 percent of the samples were students (Ghere, 2005).
Mendel also discovered that the implementation of the ASPA ethics code increases the probability of people, especially those working within a public environment, behaving in an ethically –compliant manner in their dealings with the public. However, the ASPA code does not take away the person’s own moral standards, when in conflict.
The ASPA code does not intend to remove a person’s ability to defend one’s action or inaction. Most importantly, the ASPA code fills the person with the pride of belonging to a well –accepted group or job specification (Menzel, 2007).
In terms of conflict of interest, the ASPA standards emphasize that one should best exemplify promoting the public’s interest over and above one’s personal interest. In 2004, a Pentagon officer was charged and convicted for ensuring personal financial interest over the public’s ethical interest (Geuras, 2005).
Further, accepting bribes from a group or individual in exchange for awarding of public contracts would violate the ASPA’s conflict of interest provisions. In a related literature, the Code of Ethical Principles of the Association of Fundraising Professionals state that its members should not receive compensation based on a percent of contributions raised (Richter, 2007).
In terms of analytical impression, the above discussion shows that the ASPA code of ethics and conflict of interest provisions are excellent guides for public service workers to study, emphasize, and implement, without reservation. In terms of behavior, the organization’s ethics statements will clear the public servants’ doubts in terms of ASPA’s sincerity in placing the public’s interest over the individual public servant’s personal interests.
Further, the ASPA’s policies will place a strong unwavering impact on the public employees, customers, and members of the ASPA organization in the performance of their government responsibilities. Consequently, the general public will have an enhanced perception that bribes or connections are not needed to get better public services.
BRIEFLY, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) explains it ethical standards well. The standard focuses on prioritizing the public’s interest over the public servants’ own financial interest. The standards also focus on respecting the U.S. laws and strengthening ethics –based organization.
There is an increasing acceptance of the ASPA’s ethical standards. In terms of conflict of interest, ASPA standards states that one should best promote the public’s interest over and above one’s personal interest. In terms of analytical impression, the ASPA code of ethics and conflict of interest provisions are excellent benchmarks for public service workers to implement. Indeed, the ASPA ethical standards will ensure better public services.
References
Bowman, J. (1998). Teaching Ethics and Values in Public Administration Programs. New York: SUNY Press.
Geuras, D. (2005). Practical Ethics in Public Administration. New York: Management Concepts Press.
Ghere, R. (2005). Ethics in Public Management. New York: M Sharpe Press.
Menzel, D. (2007). Ethics Management for Public Administrators. New York: M Sharpe Press.
Richter, W. (2007). Combatting Corruption, Encouraging Ethics. New Yord: Rowman & Littlefield Press.