Abstract
There is a limited body of knowledge on the role of organisational ethics
management, systems and mechanisms in promoting and driving ethics on strategic,
system and operational levels. Public officials still have to be convinced of the
importance of ethics within their organisations. Getting the ethics message across
to large groups of employees in a cost-effective, yet powerful manner remains a
challenge. An in-depth conceptualisation and contextualisation of ethics is required
to strategise organisational ethics management in the public service. The article
attempts to unlock the transdisciplinary relationship of philosophy and public
administration to determine the significance of ethical reasoning in decisionmaking
structures. Due to the advent of New Public Management (NPM), Public
Administration faces a paradigmatic shift towards decentralisation and relativism
that demands more accountability and responsibility...