Book Reviews

Edward T. Hall's classic book, Beyond Culture (Anchor Books, 1976), is not a government ethics book. But a lot of the wisdom in this brilliant book can be applied to our field. It's hard to describe this book. It is an examination of certain aspects of culture and of how difficult it is to go from …

In ethics, there are two basic approaches: (1) an ends-based approach, also referred to as utilitarian or consequentialist; and (2) a means-based approach, also referred to as rules-based or deontological. Government officials, and most people when speaking about government, generally use the forme…

After reading my recent blog post about bridging the gulf between administrative and government ethics, one of the great scholars of public administration, George Frederickson, sent me a copy of a 2009 lecture of his, which appeared in 2010 in the journal Public Integrity. Entitled "Searching for V…

Self-Evaluation and Getting One's Bearings To change oneself (and to support change in one's environment), self-evaluation is required. Before you change, you have to have your bearings. The problem is that, unlike evaluation of others, self-evaluation is rarely rational. It is more commonly emotio…

You Can't Teach Ethics In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath say that there are two kinds of mindset:  the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset believe that things and people are the way they are. There are peopl…

Why Scandals Lead to Poor Ethics Reform In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath note that John Kotter and Dan Cohen argue in their book The Heart of Change that the sequence of change is not analyze-think-change, which is how most people (inc…

There is a great deal of thought-provoking material in Chip and Dan Heath's book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010). Change has proved hard in every single city and county in the United States. Those seeking government ethics reform can learn a lot from this book. There …

I don't talk much in this blog or in my book Local Government Ethics Programs about character. However, there is another approach to government ethics that is sometimes referred to as "the character approach." For example, the Josephson Institute trains local officials on the six pillars of charact…