UNDERSTANDING AND MAINTAINING ETHICAL VALUES IN THE PUBLIC

Abstract: Within the public-sector where leaders are held accountable to a wide variety of citizenry and stakeholders, public leaders are often expected to meticulously conform to standards higher than those aligned with personal morality. Accordingly, several scholars and practitioners have attempted to address the issue of ethics in public administration. Yet, many of the values which have frequently been associated with ethics in the public-sector are often explored independent of the broader subject of leadership. In general, however, many of the values commonly associated with theories of leadership, such as transformational and transactional, can similarly be associated with the ethical values and expectations of public officials—potentially allowing for the incorporation of these ethical considerations into an integrated approach to public-sector leadership. Thus, this paper is an attempt to explore the subject of public-sector ethics and its relevance to an integrated leadership approach (where ethical considerations are incorporated into a leadership framework that includes both transactional and transformational factors)