Structure and Role of Human Resources Departments

The reputation and success of governance is contingent on the  employees conduct and what the public believes about their conduct. It is essential that public employees act justly and fairly to all ethical conduct, also ensuring that these are manifestly and undoubtedly done. It is imperative that all employees upon accepting government employment must  recognize that they have a special duty to be open, fair and impartial when interacting  with society. Personal self interest should be subordinate to the public best interest in all circumstances, especially if there are circumstances with a  conflict of interest that may become an ethical dilemma. Ethical Dilemmas can be described as circumstances that requires a decision between competing sets of principles in a given undesirable or perplexing situation. Most public servants are confronted with ethical dilemmas that revolve around administrative discretion, corruption, nepotism, administrative secrecy, information leaks, public accountability and policy dilemmas. 

Public officials are not just architects of public policy, they also make decisions that affect the daily lives of citizens. The power to choose between courses of conduct in the administration of an office is referred to as Administrative discretion. The public servant must utilize their professional expertise and judgement when making a decision or performing official duties as opposed to adhering to strict regulations or statutes. The rules and regulations outlined by local legislature are within the prescribed procedures which gives a lot of opportunity to public officials to use their discretion.

In doing so they exercise discretion. The main concern is that they should make decision to avoid ethical dilemmas. In other words, the promotion of general welfare depends on the use or exploitation of administrative discretion. It is factual that within the rules and regulations laid down by legislature and within the prescribed procedures, there is plenty of opportunity for the public official to use his discretion. When faced with alternatives the choice of the public official poses an ethical problem, the choice may be acceptable to only a small section of society. The problem is that the selection of one path of action from among several alternatives is often made on the basis of personal preference, political or other associations, or even personal embellishment, thus ignoring identified facts and thus the possibility of rational decision making. It could well be that all the prescribed rules, regulations and procedures are adhered to but that the discretionary choice may be regarded as unprincipled or even fraudulent.

In government offices, corruption is major issue. The majority of bureaucrats maintain the high standards required by public office and are enthusiastic to promoting the general welfare. The moral standards of public officials are, however, directly related to society as a whole. If the public accepts that in order to secure a quick response from a public official some monetary or other incentive is necessary, and the official accepts the incentive, then the standards of ethical conduct of officials and the public are in fact in harmony from the point of view of the public. The corruption of public officials by private interests is usually indirect, for example, favours by the public to the official under obligation and he gradually substitutes his public loyalties to those doing him favours. The ethical dilemma that faces the public officer with regard to corrupt practices as result of private interests primarily concerns his reaction to the situation. If a corrupt practice or an attempt to corruption is exposed, it is quite possible that the official’s personal loyalties or party political relationships may be in conflict with his official responsibilities.

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