The scope and scale of ethics in public policy and management

This chapter aims to present current thinking by prominent scholars into ethics and integrity issues in public policy and public management, with a global focus. The focus for public service ethics and policy is on shifting sands as public services are delivered by a whole host of different organizations interacting with each other in different ways. The first chapter serves several functions. First, it provides an overview of some of the key issues in public service ethics, integrity and governance. Second, in so doing, authors consider how different disciplines might offer different perspectives on the same problems. Third, the introduction indicates the different themes that emerge and link the individual chapters. The authors argue that the dominant present approach seems currently to be the near exclusive domain of organization science, (new) public management or policy studies. The study of corruption sees corruption as either an individual action problem or a systemic problem of the 'commons'.