Public Administration Quarterly

One frontier of ethics is a debate. Ethical scholars and psychologists look at how people act ethically and some argue that it is done from a point of view of rationality and others argue it is from habit or other less rational basis of decision-making. Some argue such decisions are made from a person's inner sense of morality which directly affects ethical behavior. Thus. morality is the result of long-term, irreversible cognitive development and the most dominant determinants of overall ethical behavior. A principled, highly moral person behaves ethic ally over the long haul and is, able to withstand short-term environmental pressures to act unethically. Others, argue that disconnect exists between moral thought and action. They say that moral development plays a less powerful role because the dominant factors affecting ethical behavior are more environmental, short-term, reversible, and manipulative. Thus, an otherwise highly moral person could be induced through brief but intense environmental changes to act quite unethically and even pathologically. This article addresses this debate.

Another frontier of contemporary ethics is using whistle-blowers as a means to fight fraud and abuse in health care organizations. The federal government does this by increasingly relying on the False Claims Act and quitam suits brought by whistleblowers. This article argues that this approach is dysfunctional for both the whistleblower and the organizations targeted by them. The article proposes that enhanced standards, informed by virtue ethics and utilized by independent bodies such as the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations or JCAHO during the health care organization accreditation process, offer a better alternative to the current retributive approach now used by the federal government.

Another practical frontier of ethics is global ethics which this article examines in terms of South Africa and the United States of America. Both nations wish to entrench ethics and ethical behaviour in their societies in general and their public sectors in particular. The author devoted special attention to the notion of a global ethic as a possible alternative approach to embedding ethical behaviour in the two countries. Notwithstanding the glaring differences between the USA and South Africa in terms of socioeconomic development, few can dispute the need for an ethical society in both nations. He argues that the proper yardstick to judge American and South Africa's morality will be, or should be, a global one, especially if South Africa, just as the USA, hopes to compete on a global scale for trade, investment, and other types of bilateral or multilateral agreements. There is a need for a trans-cultural corporate ethic which is a business and governmental ethic that is acceptable across the borders, traverses and transcends nations and nationalities.

A huge development in post-apartheid South Africa is the focus on th global ethics that is a honing and refining of a set of “universal” ethics for the “new” South Africa (Hilliard and Kemp, 2000c). South Africa is now functioning and doing business in a global environment; since 1994 it has once more gained legitimacy in the international arena. In the wake of large-scale globalisation of all facets of human endeavour, speculating about the need for universal, global or cosmic values and norms is appropriate. If judged by international development, South Africa may, consequently, not want to be isolated from

This article presents a moral intervention theory designed to morally upgrade ethical thought and moral behavior in public administration. The theory is, based on bringing virtue ethics into the public management arena using a ONENESS ethical paradigm firmly rooted in the literature of public administration. The theory suggests four key independent variables, that would lead to the desired moral upgrading of our organizations,. The article explains the theory in such a way that other researchers, can go the next step of empirically testing the theory to determine its validity and usefulness,.

This article examines Nigeria's experience with civil service reforms after it attained independence from Britain in 1960. It first highlights civil service reform programs attempted by various post-independence Nigerian governments. Within this context the study addresses key issues, challenges, and factors that impeded implementation of previous civil service reform programs. Next. The study explores future policy directions for enhancing the design and implementation of a sustainable civil service reform program. The study concludes by recapitulating the key policy reform measures essential for bringing about a sustainable civil service process and improving the future effectiveness and performance of the civil service.