Education matters in how public servants approach administrative ethics.

Recent scandals in the US government such as the Veterans Health Administration scandal point to the need to reexamine how much autonomy and discretion public servants are able to exercise. In new research which examines the ethical behavior of public servants, Edmund C. Stazyk finds that highly trained managers view organizational problems through a compliance based, legalistic lens and one which is based on their own personal moral compass. He argues that by providing public servants with more educational opportunities, they may be more likely to use this ‘fusion’ approach to ethical decision making.