MPA7105 Public administration and management ethics

This course promotes reflection on the ethical domain of Public Administration and Management decision making and develops the students’ capacity to analyze and argue the ethical dimension.  Specifically the course will focus on critical ethical implications of managerial decision making.  The emphasis will be on the link between personal values, community values and ethical standards in any decision making situation.

Course Aims  

• Promote an understanding of the importance for administration, management and the community of ethical conduct.
• Provide the skills with which to recognize and resolve ethical issues in Administration and Management.  
• Enhance awareness and critical examination of one’s own values, and to appreciate the relevance of personal values in work place setting.
• Encourage reflection on the ethical dimension of your own decision making in work place and other settings.
• This course further aims at creating a lively and open space within which the learners can develop a deeper and more integrated understanding of personal, institutional and cultural ethics and dynamics that exist between these domains.  It further intended to restore and improve quality of services delivery and create an acceptable standard value in Administration and Management.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, it is expected that students will be able to;

• Identify more clearly where, when and how ethical issues arise in Administration and Management.
• Suggest creative solutions to ethical problems that are consistent, defensible and adaptive both personally and professionally.
• Understand the nature of their own values and how these relate to personal action.
• Understand major ethical theories and how they apply to every day decisions within the realm of Administration and Management.
• Have a clear vision of what a better society might look like and how public Administration and Management might contribute to its emergence.
• Confidence and competence in applying ethical reasoning in a systematic way through the study and experience of a selection of management dilemmas that present to employees, managers and consultants.
• Students will be able to learn how to identify and avoid ethical decision making traps.
• Will be able to explore critical links between beliefs, values and ethics, and learn how to make decisions when these decision making elements don’t align.