The Morally Mute Manager: Fact or Fiction?

Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Dr. Charles E. Mitchell1 delivered a sweeping condemnation of appointed and elected officeholders that neither accept nor act on their ethical and moral obligations. Dr. Mitchell asserts that there is abuse at virtually every level of government by nearly every type of person from the highest ranking official through middle-management to the street-level bureaucrat. Moreover, as he puts it, “many in the field of public administration have questioned how we have arrived at a point where there is so much unethical, immoral, and illegal activity in government.”2 Is American government riddled with unethical, immoral, and illegal activity? Is it worse than in years past? Has there been a morally or ethically degenerative pattern in government? Private sector business behavior? Family? Schooling? And, if America is going south in the proverbial handbasket, what can and should be done about it?