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Selected Ethical Conventional Theorists within Public Administration Inter-discipline
Many scholars in Public Administration have insisted unwaveringly that administration is essentially about serving the public interest (Lynn, 1991:52). This refers to the works of conventional theorists of Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, Paul Appleby, Joseph Harries, Dwaine Mavick and Gordon Tullock, Herman Finer and Carl Friedrich to name but the selected few of which this chapter now turns to:
Herbert Simon was concerned with decision making in public administration, a leading public administration theorist of the time. Hebert Simon called for the rigorous analysis of decision making behaviour as central to the future study of administration, which he simultaneously decimated as simplistic the ‘proverbs of administration’ in his Administrative Behaviour’s writings. Simon argued that administrators made decisions on the bases other than those of economy and efficiency. He contended that social and psychological factors had a great deal to do with the decisions that decision makers made. Actually, before the appearance of Administrative Behaviour, Harold Lasswell in Psychopathology and Politics (1930) and Chester Barnard in the Functions of the Executive (1938) had essentially made the same argument (Henry, 1975:34).
Henry (1980:132-133) also states the contention made by Herbert Simon that decision makers made decisions on the basis of feelings, emotions and mental sets as well as on “rationality” implied that public administrators could make highly questionable, even immoral public policies that possibly would affect the whole population. Public administrationists became increasingly cognisant of disquieting notion that a sense of ethics-a sense of the public interest-was a genuine need in the practice of public administration. From Hebert Simon’s School of thought, it becomes clear that rationality and morality are two pivotal ethical imperatives in informing administrators to conduct their public affairs properly and to subject the two out of balance call for conflict of interest. Henry (1980:140) cautions that what is needed for the public administrator is a simple and operational articulation of the public interest that permits him to make a moral choice on the basis of rational thinking. One therefore observes that morality and rationality inevitably characterize a good political leader and public administrator per se.
Long before the Watergate Affair in USA, Chester Barnard, one of the leading thinkers in public administration recognised that the critical issues of government ultimately involved moral choices. Moral choices call for rational theories to assist administrators to make acceptable decisions and judgements. The definitive policy decisions made by government officials often have at their base, a conflicting ethical questions, such as whether to give precedence to the public interest or to the narrow demands of profession, department, business or clientele. In Chester Barnard’s view, the strength and quality of an administrator lies in his or her capacity to deal effectively with the moral complexities of organizations without being broken by the imposed problems of choice (Stillman II, 1980:437). The arguments underpins the study of conflict of interest in the sense that the implication for public administration of the contention that decision makers made decisions on the basis of feelings, emotions and mental sets, as well as on rationality was that public administrators could make highly questionable, even immoral public policies that possibly would affect the whole population (Henry, 1975:34). This argument could also extents to policy implementation wherein critical decisions are made of a technical nature.
Given this background, leading thinkers in public administration are increasingly cognisant of the disquieting notion that a sense of ethics, a sense of the public interest was a genuine need in the practice of public administration. This concern was reinforced by the appearance of a new corpus of literature that addressed the topic of morality and administration in a different manner. This is no other than the works of Paul Appleby in Morality and Administration (1952), which took on the ethical problems posed by the tension between pluralistic politics and hierarchy (Henry, 1975:34).
International and National Dynamics of Conflict of Interest in Public Administration
Entitlements are one of the forms of conflict of interest. In the Police Service for example, one of the police officers said, verbatim: “I do not get paid enough, therefore I should be entitled to make use of my police powers and opportunities to suit my personal needs”. This form of conflict of interest is triggered by a situation in which a field police officer for example works hard, risks his life to arrest a criminal, but later discovers that the criminal has been allowed to escape with the complicity of top-ranking police officials (Newham, 2001:40-41). This practice does not only embroil conflict of interest, but also damages work ethics of the operational officers. One could safely conclude that these undue entitlements embroil conflict of interest, which applies across the spectrum.
Typical examples of conflict of interest according to Mahlare (2003:2) are:
i. Self-dealing;
ii. Accepting benefits;
iii. Influence peddling; and
iv. Use of confidential information.
Conflict of interest applies worldwide. It is a country-to-country, and organization-to-organization problem. Notably, regardless of how high- or lowprofiled a country is, or how high or low it is positioned, conflict of interest knows no barriers. It cuts across the global spectrum. It is for this reason that Carney (1998: 2) echoes the thought of Eigen: “Throughout the world, people are increasingly angry with the ways in which public power has been manipulated for selfish interest”.
Rees (1990) concurs with the thought of Harris that selfishness is the universal form of human depravity, which has set the entire world at variance. However, selfishness gradually became the reigning law of the world, thus it became the epidemic disease of our nature. This is contrary to benevolence, the opposite of selfishness. The practice of the other quells the other. Therefore, benevolence is much desired in this study to replace selfishness, which customarily ravages the world, and robs it of its thrilling ingredient. Conflict of interest undoubtedly involves questions of ethics. In other words, it has ethical implications. It could also exist and result in fraud when an organization has a hidden interest in, or derives a hidden benefit from, the outcome of an event or transaction. This more subtle type of conflict of interest could occur if officials of an organization, either alone or in collusion with providers of services, obtain public funds or use those funds for things other than intended program purposes. In this instance, an organization has a hidden selfinterest that is actually or potentially adverse to the interests of the government and the citizenry (Simmons, 1997).
CHAPTER ONE HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Brief historiography of Limpopo Province vs. Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape Provinces
1.3 Conclusion
CHAPTER TWO RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Statement of the Problem
2.3 Specific Objectives and Significance of the Study
2.4 Research Question
2.5 Research Design and Data Collection Methods
2.6 Data Analysis Methods
2.7 Data Interpretation Method
2.8 Scope and Limitation of the Study
2.9 Outline of the Study
2.10 Conclusion
CHAPTER THREE CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Conflict of Interest and Corruption
3.3 The Relevance of Multi-disciplinary Socio-Philosophical andPsychological Conventional Conflict (of interest) Theories to Public Administration Discipline
3.4 Selected Ethical Conventional Theorists within Public Administration Inter-discipline
3.5 International and National Dynamics of Conflict of Interest in Public Administration
3.6 Causes and Ramifications of Conflict of Interest
3.7 Country-to-Country Attempts to Resolve Public versus Private Interests Conflict
3.8 Conclusion
CHAPTER FOUR ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE OF SELECTED CASE STUDIES OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Selected Case Studies of Limpopo Provincial Government in Comparison to Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape Provinces
2.3 Specific Objectives and Significance of the Study
4.4 Conclusion
CHAPTER FIVEINTERPRETATION OF SELECTED CASE STUDIES OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Cause and Effect of Critical Issues in Public Administration (Governance, Ethics and Accountability and Performance and Risk Management) for Consideration vis-à-vis Conflict of Interest
5.3 Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Conclusions
6.3 Specific Recommendations
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDICES
