The Ethics Primer, Book Review Example

In the first two chapters of James Svara’s “The Ethics Primer” as well as James Lager’s Overcoming Cultures of Compliance to Reduce Corruption and Achieve Ethics in Government, the discussion of ethics in government and non-profit organizations is presented as value-based practices that are meant to be concise and grounded in duty. I find this aspect of ethical practice in public administration to be extraordinarily important and encompassing. Especially in Lager’s article about corruption and compliance, this became even more evident. His article acknowledged and analyzed the vast amount of legal and regulatory ethical guidelines that public employees are required to follow and thus concluded that requiring the expert knowledge of these guidelines allow those who intend to lie, cheat or steal the ease and know-how in doing so. I find this particularly impactful as it shows, as Lager acknowledged, the cynicism  that is rampant in government service.

Related to this behavior, Lager also discusses the use of loopholes to exploit certain rules and laws, specifically in tax law matters. Professionals will offer their services to specifically find these loopholes in order to self-serve and exploit. These are all aspects of ethics in public administration that have been known about in the public and private sectors yet these ethical violations are regularly practiced and overlooked. The notion that laws are written and then immediately dissected in order to find loopholes is evidently wrong, yet not at all that surprising.

Lager and Svara both discuss this issue as a matter of  a lack of value based qualities as well as a by the book referencing of rules that distinguishes an individual’s ability to use human decency as a guide to ethical decision making. Lager uses the example of the Abu Gharib torture scandal to reiterate this, saying that the interrogators were “guided not by standards of human decency, but by a legalistic interpretation of a rule book on interrogation” (69). I find this argument compelling and on point, as individuals often tend to overlook the wider implications of their actions, and simply follow the rules they are given without a thought on value based judgment and reasoning.

References

Lager, J. M. (2009). Overcoming cultures of compliance to reduce corruption and achieve ethics in government. McGeorge Law Review, 41, 63.

Svara, J. H. (2014). The ethics primer for public administrators in government and nonprofit organizations. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.