Importance Of Ethics Of Public Servants

Importance of ethics of public servants

To understand this topic we must first know the concept of ethics;This is "a part of the philosophy that runs from the morals and obligations of man". (Social Dictionary, 2018)

Legal ethics is responsible for studythe good or the bad;where it is about issuing judgments about the evil or goodness of something, but always giving the cause or reason of said judgment. 

However, if reference is made to ethics in the workplace, we refer to professional ethics, which marks the expected behavior guidelines for the performance of the functions inherent in a specific position. If the position is public, that is, that it corresponds to a use of the governmental sphere, whether it is the executive, legislative or judicial power of any level of government -federal, state or municipal-, or that it is from thedecentralized administration, the people who assume it are called public servants.

Public ethics

The public ethics that occupies me in this intervention says, however, in the first place to the public, to which concerns us all, which concerns each of those who form a certain society. Hence the concept of "Republic" as that political invention that delimits the territory of citizens interested in the "public res" or interested in the same "public issue". Public ethics then exceeds the individual sphere of ethics although of course it does not cancel it. Public ethics has to do with matters that concern us all within a society and in this sense it is of interest to all that public "business" are carried out with probity, transparency, integrity, in response to the reciprocal advantageWhat is everyone’s advantage.

However, in our current economic system, the social issue is not an obvious or gravitational issue within the economic theory or within its practical application. All logic and economic practice revolve around the maximization of the "individual benefit", of the "minimization of costs" to achieve this particular benefit, which consists of a selected preference between a stock of possibilities. At this point the basic problem of public ethics arises: how to reconcile the particular interest with social interest?, How to make it possible for the search for the individual benefit not to be injured, do not stop side, do not undermine the public benefit?

Ethics of good consciousness and institutional ethics

In this regard, a possible response is that of individual ethics, which is generally to which the common people, politicians, the media and anyone who at first glance agrees that morals and morals and thegood customs are learned at home and that once we are adults we already have recorded in our personality the moral values that will distinguish us as people. This answer sounds like this: to keep a basket of good, beautiful and appetite apples, you have to separate the rotten apples from the basket. To save public morals you have to separate bad elements, bad officials and choose the best morally speaking. However, it does not take into account the quality of the basket, that is, the system in which individuals work. This solution appeals to the good awareness of individuals so that if necessary in the midst of corrupt elements give heroic example of ethical behavior until the last consequences.

This route insists on training, training, personnel selection, individual knowledge of each official, their resume, trajectory, inclinations, tastes, preferences and weaknesses. It is an exhausting way because it demands a lot of time and resources to meet and train each of the public officials. It is an unsafe route because freed to the official’s good awareness, it will be necessary to trust that one day he does not get up on the wrong side of the bed and bad temper tries the user badly, he borrows some good or public fund with the good intention of returning itLater, or show preference in his efforts towards those who he also considers being of good awareness, those he knows, and leaves those who consider not being of good conscience or who simply know or do not interest him. The individualistic solution to solve the problem of the lack of public ethics resorts to large television, radio or press campaigns to promote good public behavior, not only that of the public official but that of the common citizen so that for example, I do not take garbage inThe street does not make parks to hygienic services, do not drive in ethyl state, pay your taxes, be punctual, etc. If in these campaigns there are recognized faces that appear as a model of behavior, success or sympathy, so much better.

Domingo’s preaching systematically insist on the need to seek good, work for peace, help others and have morally exemplary behavior. Who is in favor of war? Who is against love? Who considers that violence is the way to fix all conflict? Who believes that stealing is fine? No one in healthy judgment would agree with these approaches. However war, hatred, violence, theft, there are.

Of course, I do not mean that a cultivation of individual ethics is not necessary, that we have not to train our public officials also in issues of ethics, that the personnel have not to be selected from a dimension that considers their moral quality or thatLeave aside the motivating campaigns of socially desirable behaviors. What I want to underline is that these actions alone have not achieved or achieve, in the current socio -economic conditions, that individuals change their behaviors, leaving aside their particular benefit to seek in the first place the common benefit. To go beyond individual interest, a system of rules and controls that delimit and guide individual action in order to achieve collective benefit is necessary.

Precisely social ethics based on institutional economic theory allows individual behaviors to be modelachieve social benefits. Buchanan (1991), Rawls (1979), Homann (2002), Panchi (2004) are authors who have worked this perspective.

In social ethics it is not individuals who primarily determine the moral behaviors of the State agencies. These are the rules of the game that establish the behavior of individuals within organizations. In this perspective, behaviors do not only arise from the determination of free will. There are conditions that enable one or another behavior. How to demand the public employee or the police, that always and in every place reject the coima, the bribery, the gratification for the fulfillment of their duty;If he wins a salary that does not cover the basic family basket? How to demand honesty and merits for promotion within the work structure, if organizations do not have a system that ensures impartiality, good judgment and independence for labor promotion?

It is not about forming moral heroes that maintain their word and moral behavior at anypoth evidence within the public and private function. It is about creating conditions that promote a social commitment according to the benefits that this society provides. It is about issuing laws and regulations that provide user protection against possible failures, which solve the solution of conflicts through due process with a place to defense and through evidence that exceeds the subjectivity of the parties.