2016 Cambridge Business & Economics Conference ISBN : 9780974211428
Ethics in public administration: The Case of Czech Self-Governing Regions
Zdeněk Raška
Introduction
“What we have come to call economic crisis is but another name for moral poverty. Moral poverty is the cause and the economic decline is the result.” This quotation of Tomáš Baťa from 1932 as presented by Smejkal (2010)clearly illustrates the importance the successful businessman and to an extent a politician accorded to the ethics. Ethics being grounded in individual moral code of a certain extent which each of us have.
Ethics in the public administration and the entire public sector presents an issue of rising importance in all countries as they progress with their development into certain more developed and more stable stages. This progress is reflected by adopting common international frameworks for ethics of public servants that often precede national ones. Of course, the minimum ethical standards are to some extent embedded in legal systems of individual countries but those legal acts represent the bare minimum and there have been cases when even a strict adherence to them might generate ethical dilemmas difficult to resolve as adherence to law is pivotal element to the work of every public servant(Radhika, 2012). There is, however, some debate on how law and moral codes influence each other (Foster, 1981). Paine (1994) reminds us in connection with any manager public or private that merely respecting the laws does not set adequate moral standards in any organization. Indeed Dytrt(2009) notes that in some organizations the ethics is still mistakenly regarded as something expendable.
This paper aims to make a brief inspection of existing codes of ethics at the level of regional self-governing bodies in order to find out similarities or differences in their contents and methods of enforcing these. At the same time the sheer accessibility of the codes to general public and thus their possibility to be aware of public service ethics is covered. It is organized as follows. The first part deals with the theoretical background of the ethics in public administration, the second part introduces research methodology, in the third part the results are presented and commented upon. The final part concludes.
Theoretical background
What is ethics, then and how does it connect to public administration? First, the definition of ethics has been presented by multiple authors. Menzel (2009) defines ethics as “values and principles that guide right and wrong behaviour”, Dutelle(2011) similarly connects ethics to individual’s moral values and their influence of their behaviour in certain situations. Svara (2014) defines ethics as “well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what human ought to do…” and places special emphasis on duties, virtues, principles and benefits for society. In public servants he especially stresses duty as a core and basis for ethical behaviour. For publicadministration ethics also means the way its organization ethically respond to the situations at hand (Nedelko & Potocan, 2013).
In connection to public administration Demmke and Moilanen (2011) impart the importance in ethics for public servants naming it as essential part of operations for almost any existing public institution. In addition Menzel (2009) puts forward a reminder of how easily the ethics might be overlooked or their perception skewed. As the main reasons he names four respective failings beginning with unawareness of the importance of ethics for the work of public servants, continuing with lack of knowledge regarding subordinates’ misconduct by their superiors, then expanding his reach to society in general where lack of importance ascribed to ethics might stem from a nation’s past and its present culture as well from ethical illiteracy which may occur in both the leaders and the subordinates. In spite of these assumptions authors such as Radhika (2012) or Menzel (2009) inherently assume that most of the public servants do indeed have a sufficient moral credit and a set of values that generally enables them to distinguish “good” and “wrong” and any ethical misconduct is likely a result of unintentional behaviour rather than wilful law breaking and substandard moral values on part of the individual. This further emphasizes the need of recruiting not only competent personnel but also recruiting based on evaluation of the individual’s moral standards as Dvořáková (2005) or (2009)Menzel propose should be the case in public administration.
As the public administration face many changes in current turbulent global climate, the advance of new technologies, so come the new ethical dilemmas which present a challenge especially to the systems of public administration for which ethics is chiefly a new aspect of their agenda. In this context within the European Union the new member states are regarded as more challenged in terms of ethics in connection with the abovementioned influence of past (Menzel, 2009). The difference between European Union Member States is remarked upon also by Moilanen and Salminen(2007) who conducted extensive research into Member States in their study titled “Comparative Study on the Public-service Ethics of the EU Member States”. In their conclusion their state that newer Member States are somewhat lagging in practicing ethics but at the same time newly adopted ethics frameworks influence them more and they seem more active in pursuing ethics at least declaratorily. Still the authors find the new member states to be significantly more endangered by corruption. Many individual studies were concerned with individual member states and perception and practicing the ethics in their public administration. In this vein Nedelko and Potocan (2013) reflect on Slovenian public administration in which they emphasize the high moral standards of an individual which transcendent into his working behaviour and they also promote more attention be given to ethics in curricula across the education system. Giovanola (2011) introduces the case of Italy that according to his research lacks in terms of shared attitude and legal framework. Finnish public and public administration was researched by Salminen and Ikola-Norrbacka(2010) concluding that while the public held significant degree of trust with regards to the public administration the same could not be said about politicians and especially their assurances.
The situation in the Czech Republic is broadly influenced by the history of the public administration at large. Fuka (2014) reports as much in his paper aimed at introduction to the issues of ethics in the Czech public administration. He mentions previous economic and social system as a prime motivator of current systemic deficiencies combined with the lack of attention ethics was given when the Czech public administration began with the process of reforms eventually leading to current state. The current state in the Czech Republic in a cause of concern still. The Corruption Perceptions Index of 2014 (Transparency International, 2014) ranked the Czech Republic as 25th out of 31 European countries and 53rd out of 175 countries in total. Neighbouring countries in the results include Slovakia as well as Samoa, Bahrain, and Malaysia.
The Czech Republic indicated its intention to dedicate due attention to the ethics in public administration at a rather late date. The year was 2001 when the government adopted an ethics code of conduct for public servants (Fuka, 2014). Thus the Czech Republic joined the ranks of countries which mainly adopted a compliance approach to application of the ethics in public administration. As described by Menzel (2009) this type of approach makes use of documents instructing personnel in proper behaviour and can be further characterized as system of penalties for unethical, not to mention unlawful, behaviour on part of individual. Codes of conduct and ethical codes have been made use of in multiple countries. Svensson and Wood (2009), Svensson, Wood and Callaghan (2004) conducted research on Swedish administrative units and their adherence to and results of using the ethic codes in 2001-2002 and 2005-2006. At the time of the completion the concluded fewer than expected organizations in the public sector had utilized the concept and the main motivator was to promote better organizational culture. During the length of their research they mainly noted shift towards using electronic means of communication in imparting the new codes of conduct and shift to a wider discussion of ethical problems with staff and public alike. Similar study was launched in 2006 into use of ethic codes in Norway in connection with the reform attempts in their public administration. The conclusion was that the use of ethics codes which then represented a newly implemented managerial tool was frequent in national public sector organization and supported by the managerial level of staff (Christensen & Lægreid, 2011).
Methodology
The research was conducted on ethic codes of the fourteen Czech self-governing bodies (NUTS III regions) as they were in August 2015. It is necessary to note that for many regions the then present ethic codes were not the first version. The government first encouraged adopting ethic codes by its own code titled “Ethics Code for the Employees in Public Administration” that was adopted in the government regulation no.270 in March 2001. This code of sever articles was adopted and the newly formed self-governing bodies were advised to either use it or created and adopt codes of their own(Červinka, 2013). The national code was updated in 2012 by a more sophisticated regulation which reflected newly promoted principles of good governance. It included aspects that Moilanen and Salminen (2007) refer to as core values. These stem from the European Ethics Framework for Public Sector proposed by the Dutch Presidencyandadopted by the Directors General responsible forPublic Administration in 2004 include (Dutch Presidency, 2004):
· rule of law,
· impartiality and objectivity,
· reliability and transparency,
· duty of care,
· courtesy, and willingness to help in a respectful manner,
· professionalism and accountability.
Similarly as in Moilanen and Salminen (2007), this research evaluated the evidence of respecting these core values within the ethic codes of the self-.governing regions of the Czech Republic. Apart from their representation in the text, the actual accessibility of the codes to general public was evaluated as well.
Results
The situation among the Czech NUTS III regions is rather satisfactory if very similar where the codes of ethics indented for the employers in self-government are concerned. All but one region (Středočeský Region) have adopted a code of ethics. It is either presented as a separate document or it is contained within the staff regulation. At this point the regions differ. In some of them the code is binding only for those employees who are employed directly in the offices of individual regions, in other regions all employees of the region whether working in its office or somewhere else are bound to adhere to the code. As for the public accessibility of the code all the regions allow access but there are some differences in the simplicity and easiness of the access. Majority (10) of the regions allow easy access to the code via internet webpage of the region, other three do not have the code readily accessible but there is evidence the codes have been released to private persons under the Act no. 106/1999 on the free information access (the request for information and the affirmative answer are accessible if not the code requested which was sent directly to the private petitioner). The basic characteristics of the codes are reported on in tables 1 and 2. The positive sign represent there is a strong evidence of them being encoded.
Table 1: General characteristics and representation of core values in the Czech Regions – part I
Region* / HMP / PLZ / KVK / LIB / STČ / JHČ / ÚSTApproximate number of words / 912 / 1400 / 1326 / 1440 / Non-existent code / Code readily inaccessible but existing as a part of staff regulation / Code readily inaccessible but existing as a part of staff regulation
Entered into force / 2007 / 2014 / 2012 / 2012
Rule of law / + / + / + / +
Impartiality / + / + / + / +
Objectivity / + / + / + / +
Reliability / + / + / + / +
Transparency / + / + / + / +
Duty of care / + / + / + / +
Courtesy / + / + / + / +
Professionalism / + / + / + / +
Accountability / + / + / + / +
* PHA = Capital Prague; PLZ = Plzeňský Region; KVK = Karlovarský Region; LIB = Liberecký Region; STČ = Středočeský Region; JHČ = Jihočeský Region; ÚST = Ústecký Region
Table 2: General characteristics and representation of core values in the Czech Regions – part II
Region* / KHK / OLM / MSK / JMK / ZLK / VYS / PARApproximate number of words / 1485 / 1396 / 3145 / 1437 / 233 / 4567 / Code readily inaccessible but existing as a part of staff regulation
Entered into force / 2012 / 2014 / 2012 / 2013 / 2005 / 2012
Rule of law / + / + / + / + / + / +
Impartiality / + / + / + / + / + / +
Objectivity / + / + / + / +
Reliability / + / + / + / + / + / +
Transparency / + / + / + / + / +
Duty of care / + / + / + / + / +
Courtesy / + / + / + / + / + / +
Professionalism / + / + / + / +
Accountability / + / + / + / + / +
* KHK = Královéhradecký Region; OLM = Olomoucký Region; MSK = Moravskoslezský Region; JMK = Jihomoravský Region; ZLK = Zlínský Region; VYS = Vysočina Region; PAR = Pardubický Region
Six of the ten available ethic code follow closely the same example given by the 2012 central government code of ethics that replaced a 2001 version, hence the multiple instances of the year 2012 when the newer codes of ethics entered into force in the individual regions. Exception to this rule in the Capital Prague whose code of ethics still closely follows this template, Moravskoslezský Region, Zlínský Region, and Vysočina Region. The last mentioned is particularly deserving of special attention. The ethics code of Vysočina Region is by far the longest, having both full and abbreviated version accessible via internet. Vysočina adopted a highly sophisticated document which indeed contains all the governmental template does but supplements many additional provisions. The special provisions concern for example leading public servants (managers) or issues of innovation acceptance by the public servants. At last but not at least the ethics code explicitly states it is continually accessible to public via web presentation of the Region.