Creative Thinking

This case is deeply embedded in the public administration in which it reflects plenty of dimensions and aspects that should be analyzed in order to acquire a better understanding for the whole issue and to know how to deal with other upcoming issues. This case should be analyzed from three main perspectives, which are Jacob’s (a member in the development board), Alan’s (the customer/citizen), and the development board’s perspective.

Jacob is facing so many issues in this case including role conflicts, administrative responsibility, ethical practices of civil servants, and professional codes. Role conflict occurs when incompatible duties and goals are placed upon an employee, and they require this employee to be compliant with all these duties, however, it is very difficult. In this case, Jacob had a strong role conflict between two of his separate roles as a public official in the development board and as Alan’s dearest and oldest friend. Jacob must do his work as a member in the development board properly and should follow rules and regulations in order to avoid misfeasance, which is the improper exercise of lawful authority, and malfeasance, that is the illegal actions done by public officials, at the same time, he should keep his friendship with Alan. He must manage both roles and strive for balance in order to operate both of them effectively.

According to our textbook (managing the public sector), administrative responsibility consists of important six characteristics that public officials should have to operate both efficiently and effectively. They are flexibility, responsiveness, honesty, fairness, competence, and accountability. In this case, some of these characteristics are reflected such as honesty, fairness and competence. Jacob, as a public official, should be honest with everyone, however, this honesty should not conflict with his duties and responsibilities. Honesty means trust. Thus, Jacob must be trusted by the development board at first, by other citizens as well. The board members should trust Jacob to keep confidential information secretive and to be wise in dealing with different issues related to his work. Other citizens should also trust Jacob by his formal position to be honest and fair with all of them. This leads us to the next responsibility characteristic which is fairness.

A civil servant should be fully fair with everyone whom he deals with. This means that public officials should give equal chances to all citizens for their cases to be heard. Moreover, the principle of due process should be strictly followed by civil servants in both procedural and results sense and it assumes that “no human being should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law”. So, Jacob cannot advise his friend to hold for a bigger sum of compensations because other citizens will not be given the same opportunity to delay and get much more money. Some will just accept the initial offer and other will delay because of different reasons, but if Alan delayed that will be because he knows that the sum will increase and this piece of information is highly confidential and no one from outside the board should know it.

A third characteristic that a public official should acquire is competence. In order for an official to be competent, he should be concerned with consequences and reaching program objectives. These two considerations are related to this case in which Jacob should precisely know the consequences of the action he is going to conduct. Jacob should know that if he told his friend, the board will lose extra money to compensate one more citizen who is Alan. This also intersects with the second consideration which is achieving the program objectives. The board will of course want to accomplish the project with losing the minimal amount of money and satisfying everyone by giving them the choice when to receive their compensations. Jacob should act in line with the program because the core of his job is achieving these objectives.

From an ethical viewpoint, the analysis could be deliberated differently according to different ethical approaches. From a teleological perspective, all issues are evaluated in terms of consequences or outcomes in which the actions that lead to good outcomes are considered ethically right. If Jacob wants to assess his situation, he would end up with two pathways either to view the outcome of telling Alan to hold on as a positive one in terms of his friendship or to view the positive outcome for the board to reduce costs if he told Alan to accept the initial offer. Another ethical approach is obligation to formal principles of Kant. This approach evaluates actions based on their inherent rightness or wrongness. Jacob knows that telling Alan everything is illegal and wrong, so he will not tell Alan anything if he followed this approach.