Ethical Governance

Ethical governance

------Taking anti-corruption as example

Abstract: Many agencies and organizations have been pursuing ethical governance for a long while, and new approaches are emerging to fight corruption and other kinds of political misconduct.

Key words: ethical governance, corruption, international organizations, nonprofits organizations

The nature of ethical governance

Ethical governance may be an ideal idea to many citizens, or just an aim to pursue. But it is not and should not be a just wishful thinking.

essentials to ethical governance

There are some values central to ethical governance: openness, transparency, fairness, equity, respect for human dignity and diversity, environmental sustainability, due process, and citizen participation. Ethical governance should produce goods and services affordable to the majority of population.

b) relationship between “ethical governance” and “good governance”

Good governance is an inclusive concept and practice. It also includes the mix of practices and values borrowing from non-profit, media, and business sectors. The range of its consequences consist of water and clean air, recreation facilities, highways and transportation, police service etc. Of course, these consequences are expected to be efficient, effect, and economic. A government that works well is only part of what are in ethical governance’s basket.

Good governance and ethical governance are two relating and distinct terms. It is possible that we can have one without another. In the 1930s, Germany and Japan were very effective at “getting things done”, but their accomplishment fell far behind of the ethical governance. Actually, do people really want efficient politics? Ae least the founding fathers of America did not want politics to be much too efficient. What they wanted was a stable and democratic government.

c) relationship between ethics and politics

The realm of ethics is a world of philosophy, values, and morals. Ethics has the power to determine how values are practiced in everyday life. Actually, politics can be taken as one of ethics’ decisions and actions. Ethics is responsible for picking right from wrong, while politics must get things done.

Ideally, ethical principles and politics should go along with each other. In practice, however, they often not. George Frederickson once argued that the attitude towards corruption and what constitutes ethical behavior vary on whether they pertain to a business, medical, political or legal profession. Legal principles tell people how to live with one another, while ethics tell people how to live with their own conscience.

Approaches to foster ethical governance

principles for managing ethics in the public service

Ethical guidance should be available to public servants.

The decision making process should be transparent and open to public scrutiny.

Appropriate and formal procedures should be exist to deal with political misconduct.

Managers should illustrate and stress the importance of ethical principles, promoting ethical conduct.

Adequate accountability should be in place within public service.

Ethical standards should be reflected in the legal framework.

Ethical standards for public service should be clear.

b) traditional approaches to promote ethical governance

There have been three basic ways promoting ethical governance. The first one is mainly about using various strategies to encourage citizen participation and enhance necessary transparency, therefore fighting against corruption. The second means focuses on developing education and training program. In this way, a society can foster its own public integrity, and increase citizen’s capacity of political participation and supervision in the end. The third approach stresses the importance of constructing a society’s legal and institutional infrastructures. All of these are very important in the text of promoting ethical governance.

c) organizations as active players

Combating corruption has also found powerful advocates in a growing number of international organizations, nonprofits organizations, and supernational bodies. they did a lot of work fighting against political misconduct and encouraging people’s consciousness of supervision.

Transparency International (TI)

The best known anticorruption, nonprofit organization is Transparency International, founded in 1993. TI has established itself as the leading international organization whose mission is "to create change towards a world free of corruption." TI describes itself as a "global civil society organization leading the fight against corruption" and bringing "people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women, and children around the world." TI is politically nonpartisan and "does not undertake investigations of alleged corruption or expose individual cases, but at times will work in coalition with organizations that do." TI has more than ninety locally established national chapters and chapters-in-formation and an international secretariat with a staff of sixty-eight based in Berlin.

TI has created several corruption measurement tools that have garnered worldwide attention. TI' s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPT) has become the signature tool used to rank countries. Established in 1995, the CPT is based on a composite collection of perceptions drawn from country experts (resident and nonresident) and data drawn from eleven independent institutions. In 2008, the CPT ranked 180 countries: Denmark, Sweden, and New Zealand were the least corrupt, and Iraq, Myanmar, and Somalia were as the most corrupt. Other measurement tools include the Bribe Payers Index, an industry-specific survey, and the Global Corruption Barometer, a public-opinion-based survey that assesses the general public's perception of and experience with corruption.

TI also publishes handbooks and produces other materials intended to help in the fight against corruption. These include an anticorruption handbook——The Corruption Fighters Tool Kit and best practices guidelines for business to counter bribery. An annual Integrity Award is presented to "courageous individuals and organizations around the globe that make a distinct difference in curbing corruption."

TI' s well-intentioned empirical efforts to measure corruption and rank countries are not without some shortcomings. First, the CPT employs soft data (perceptions) and is a complex measure, essentially a "poll of polls." The extent to which the numbers are accurate and really indicate the state of corruption, which is often hidden from public view in a given country, is arguable. Second, while the annual measures can be viewed as tracking corruption, the method has changed over time and therefore may not accurately "track" corrupt acts. TI' s measurement sticks, like others (such as the Worldwide Governance Indicators and the Opacity Index), invariably place poor, undemocratic countries on the bottom of the corruption pile. Although this result may reinforce what many observers believe to be the " truth," it may also create a "halo" effect in mature democracies, especially in the West, that shields them from a harsher assessment.