When the Two Collide: Nepotism, Loyalty and the Officer in the Middle
Every case study in this paper is finally the same case: a person who is both a private human being and a public officer, and a situation that will not let them be both.
Category: Ethics
Ethics in Private Relationships: Where Partiality Is a Duty
In private life the impartiality that defines good administration would be a form of coldness. This is the one sphere where preference is not a failing but an obligation.
Public Relationships in Practice: Two Who Built Trust, One Case That Broke It
Principles are tested by cases. Two Indian careers show what public trust looks like when it is built deliberately; one scandal shows what happens to an entire sector when it is not.
Ethics in Public Relationships: The Six Principles
A public relationship has no affection in it, and that is precisely what makes it demanding. You owe a stranger the same standard you would give a friend, without the feeling that makes it easy.
A Decision Framework for the Officer in the Room
Theory is what you read beforehand. This is what you use at eleven in the morning when a decision cannot wait and every option is imperfect.
The Three Spheres: Personal, Professional and Public Action
The same person owes different things to a child, a client and a citizen. Confusing the three is where a great many ethical failures begin.
Gandhian and Existentialist Ethics: Means, Ends and Responsibility
Two traditions insist that how you act matters as much as what you achieve. One is Indian, one is European, and together they answer most questions about means and ends.
Care, Contract, Relativism and Absolutism: The Second Set of Theories
Beyond the famous three lies a second set of theories, and they are where the interesting questions in this paper increasingly come from.
Three Ways to Judge an Action: Duty, Consequence, Character
Almost every case study in this paper can be argued three ways. Knowing which three is the difference between an opinion and an answer.
The Determinants: Why People Behave Ethically, or Fail To
If consequences are the effects of ethics, determinants are its causes. This is the part of the chapter that explains why two officers in identical circumstances behave differently.