‘Ethics’ is a system of accepted beliefs, mores and values, which influence human behaviour. More specifically, it is a system based on morals. Thus, ethics is the study of what is morally right, and what is not. Since the early 17th century, ethics has been accepted as the “Science of morals; the rules of conduct, the science of human duty.” Hence, in common parlance, ethics is treated as moral principles that govern a person’s or a group’s behaviour. It includes both the science of the good and the nature of the right.

The normative foundations of public service ethics are those standards used to justify and defend one’s conduct, i.e. reasoning about obligations, consequences and ultimate ends in specific situations. In addition to personal codes of conduct, leadership in the public sector requires the ability to apply ethical reasoning based on formal controls and technical standards.

Even though it is difficult to agree on what ethics should be put in place, there has been five major alternative themes that has been studied the past 30 years: regime values, constitutional theory, and founding thought, citizenship theory, social equity, virtue, or character based ethics, and the public interest. Regime values, constitutional theory, and founding thought argued that public administration ethics ought to be grounded in the American constitutional tradition and the regime values upon which it rests.

1. The three regime values identified by Rohr are freedom, equality, and property. Rohr called for public administrators to emerge in this evolving tradition of constitutional values because when one accepts employment in a regime, it is extremely important to be clear about its core values and whether one can uphold them.
2. Since the public administrative role is viewed and created by that of the citizen, public administrators hold the role of citizen in trust as they do what has been done previously and now hand it over to professional citizen who has the time and resources to carry it out.
3. Social Equity is a third alternative originally associated with the so-called New Public Administration of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This addressed a number of administrative areas such as personnel management, fiscal federalism, the use of statistics in service delivery, and social service productivity. Social equity never achieved acceptance in the field as the single-central ethical principle, but clearly it has become one of the major normative touchstones for administrative ethics.
4. Virtue provides a different kind of answer from the others. Hart was a leading voice in calling attention to virtue, he outlined the desired character traits of public administrators as superior prudence, moral heroism, caring or love for humanity, trust in the citizenry, and a continuing quest for moral improvement. Virtue is clearly one of the elements of the normative foundations of public administration ethics.

David K Hart’s Views on Ethical Ideas:

He propounded the idea of ‘benevolent bureaucrat’ and ‘moral exemplar’. According to him the moral exemplar is one who serves as a model of ideal morality.

• He distinguishes public administration from business enterprise. Public servants, as compared to business managers, strive for a higher purpose.
• He describes public administration as a moral endeavour and distinguishes it from business enterprise and suggest public servant to adopt different personal traits and higher moral qualities than those of business managers.
• Therefore, public servants need a unique moral character and commitment to certain moral duties.
• The list of moral qualities which Hart mentions include:
• Superior prudence,
• Moral heroism,
• Love of humanity,
• Trust in common people,
• Continuing effort towards moral improvement.