Public Sector Managers and Ethical Dilemmas

Controversies surrounding the behaviour of ministers and high profile leaders seem to be commonplace in public life. That there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of ethics is not surprising. The spotlight on ethics in the public domain has been due in part to the crisis in confi¬dence about government and a lack of public trust in organisations. Furthermore, a complex organi¬sational environment where managers are being required to juggle a ‘multitude of competing obli¬gations and interests' (Cooper 1998, p. 244) has provided fertile around for the emergence of ethical dilemmas. In this paper we put forward a tentative model that reveals important inputs that bear upon an individual, such as a public sector manager, who is confronted with an ethical dilem¬ma. In the final part of the paper we illustrate the model's efficacy with an ethical dilemma described by a retired senior public servant to determine whether the model works in practice