Taking Tough Choices Seriously: Public Administration and Individual Moral Agency

accountability

Journal of Public Administration and Theory 16 (3), 393-415.

Authors

Ciarán O’Kelly

Melvin Dubnick

Published

July 27, 2006

The paper is available here

Using the concepts of thick and thin relationships as the basis for ethical behaviour, this paper critiques the emphasis on discretion in the mainstream administrative ethics literature and argues that moral and other dilemmas facing public administrators provide a more useful frame. Two examples drawn from the UK Hutton Investigation into the death of David Kelly are used to demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of this approach.

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@article{o'kelly2006,
  author = {O’Kelly, Ciarán and Dubnick, Melvin},
  title = {Taking {Tough} {Choices} {Seriously:} {Public}
    {Administration} and {Individual} {Moral} {Agency}},
  journal = {Journal of Public Administration and Theory},
  volume = {16},
  number = {3},
  pages = {393-415},
  date = {2006-07-27},
  url = {https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/16/3/393/934236},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

O’Kelly, Ciarán, and Melvin Dubnick. 2006. “Taking Tough Choices Seriously: Public Administration and Individual Moral Agency.” Journal of Public Administration and Theory 16 (3): 393–415. https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/16/3/393/934236.