Melvin J. Dubnick

Accountability in the Public Sector: Lessons from the Challenger Tragedy

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight anld seven crew members lost their lives. The widely known details of that tragic event need not be retraced here. Opinion is growing, however, that the official explanations offered by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (the Rogers Commission) fail to provide full answers to why the disaster occurred. We offer an alternative explanation which addresses institutional factors contributing to the shuttle accident.

Accountability and ethics: reconsidering the relationships

While a relationship between accountability and ethics has long been assumed and debated in Public Administration, the nature of that relationship has not been examined or clearly articulated. This article makes such an effort by positing four major forms of accountability (answerability, blameworthiness, liability and attributability) and focusing on the ethical strategies developed in response to each of these forms

Accountability and the Evil of Administrative Ethics

Scholars of administrative ethics have recently been attentive to the problem of so-called administrative evil. The authors argue that evil can be understood as a socially constructed category of agents and acts specific to particular circumstances and moral communities, and the authors apply a framework of accountability to reflect the dynamics of that constructed reality. Selected examples of efforts to hold evil actors accountable or otherwise to account for evil acts illustrate a paradox: Responses to so-called evil may themselves be labeled evil in hindsight or by members of other contemporaneous communities. In light of this paradox and attendant ethical dilemmas, the authors argue that conventional ethical and behavioral prescriptions are necessary but insufficient protections against catastrophic mis-, mal-, or nonfeasance in and by organizations.

Move Over Daniel We Need Some “Accountability Space”

Professor Flinders makes a strong case that our obsession with accountability has turned “problematic” and even “pathological”. While agreeing with the gist of the argument, I contend that the essence of the problem is more ontological than political. What we require is a radical “reframing” that highlights the pervasive role accountability relationships play in governance— that is, an approach that would shift attention to the alteration of ongoing governance arrangements and relationships that occurs with each reformist effort to “enhance” or “improve” accountability. Governance takes place within accountability spaces, and we need to give priority to research that maps that space as a first step toward understanding the nature and potential of accountable governance.

Sarbanes-Oxley and the Search for Accountable Corporate Governance

AbstractThe following sestions are included:‘PURPOSE’ AND THE ASSESSMENT OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE REFORMUNCOVERING THE HISTORICAL PURPOSE OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCEThe Modern Corporate Form as HybridInventing the Corporate FormCLARIFYING THE STANDARDThe Stakeholder ModelThe Fiduciary ModelThe Accountability ModelASSESSING ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNANCE: A FRAMEWORKASSESSING SARBANES-OXLEYThe Performative ProvisionsThe Regulatory ProvisionsManagerial Provisions and the Absence of Fourth Order ProvisionsCONCLUSION

Movies and Morals: Energizing Ethical Thinking among Professionals

Abstract This article examines the use of film in the administrative ethics classroom, with special attention to energizing the moral imagination of professionals. Challenged by a shift in student demographics reflecting the emergence of the new public service, instructors must consider alternatives to pedagogies based on normative and applied ethics. Approaches designed to stimulate the moral imagination of students (based on contemporary metaethical perspectives) need to be considered. Using his experience with movies in the ethics classroom, the author argues that films are particularly effective in energizing the moral imagination.

Introduction: Accountability Study Moving to the Next Level

Accountability study as a relatively specialized area of inquiry has grown significantly in the past several decades. How to evaluate its current status and how should we move forward? This question is of interest to many public administration scholars, and it brought together over thirty scholars in March 2015 for a symposium organized before the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) annual conference. The symposium was sponsored by ASPA’s Section on Public Performance and Management and its China section, as well as the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China. We were especially interested, as stated in the call for papers, in “papers that break new empirical and/or theoretical ground in the study of accountability and accountable governance.” Many interesting ideas emerged from the presentations and conversations at the symposium. Some will appear later in this journal. Included in this issue are five articles, which are rooted in different backgrounds (e.g., law, political science, and sociology), but fit nicely together and point to some shared future directions. In this essay, we introduce the five articles using the Finer-Friedrich debate as the anchor and then briefly summarize what we have learned. It has been eighty years since Herman Finer initiated one of Public Adminisration’s most notable debates by critiquing Carl J. Friedrich’s views of administrative responsibility. In his review of monographs published by the Social Science Research Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Public Service Personnel, Finer (1936) attacked Friedrich’s “abuse” of the concept of responsibility, calling the approach (which allowed for an administrator’s “self-discovered and self-imposed sense of obligation”) “unwholesome.” Moreover, at a time when sensitivities were high regarding the emergence of anti-democratic regimes in Europe, Finer adds a stinging accusation: “What a surrender this would be to the Mussolinis and Hitlers! For this abuse of the term ‘responsibility’ is the very marrow of their systems.”1 The argument would be joined in Friedrich’s often cited 1940 essay on “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility.” As was his style in addressing his severest (and, by tone, detested) critics, Friedrich avoided referring to Finer by name in the body of his response, instead

Aggressive Action: In Search of a Dominant Narrative

The idea of “going to war” seemed obvious enough at first blush. We had been attacked, and we planned to respond in kind. It was that simple. Or was it? Despite the analogies drawn to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the decision to enter a “state of war” after September 11, 2001 was a unique event in American history. Although other American wars are associated with “triggering” events (e.g., the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the sinking of the Battleship Maine, Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Kuwait), none of those past instances occurred in a “narrative vacuum.” In each previous case, the road to war had been well paved materially, politically, and psychologically over an extended period of time. The shelling of Fort Sumter by South Carolinian troops was the culmination of events that had unfolded over several months after the election of Lincoln and after many years of heated discussion and debate.2 The public clamor for war with Spain was already several years old when the battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana in February 1898, but even then two months passed before Congress declared war.3 The U.S. entry into the First World War is often associated with the loss of American lives when the Lusitania was sankh—but nearly two years and a great deal of preparation passed between that event and the declaration of war.4

Problems in U. S. Standard-Setting: The Implications of the Shift to Control Functions

Standard-setting, one of the traditional and more mundane tasks of government in the United States, has recently become the focus of considerable attention among both policymakers and analysts.i This increased attention reflects a number of developments in contemporary public policy, but has specifically derived from the federal government’s2 increasing reliance on standards as a means for protecting both the general public and certain groups from critical health and safety hazards.3

ALL MEGA-PROJECTS ARE LOCAL? CITIZEN PARTICIPATION LESSONS FROM THE BIG DIG

This paper examines the impact of managerial philosophy on public participation. Specifically the paper explores the historical development of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel project, more commonly known as the Big Dig, with a particular focus on how the two men most closely associated with the conception and construction of the project approached this type of administrative reform. This paper uses the concept single and double loop learning to illuminate how each manager attempted to implement this reform.