Lecture
Ethics is the most important branch of philosophy, whose subject of study is morality.
In traditional society a person does not set themselves critical tasks; they are part of the cultural environment and accept its cultural values, traditions, and stereotypes almost automatically or unconsciously. In performing a generally accepted ritual or following a cultural tradition, a person does not consider the possibility of alternative modes of behaviour. Cultural tradition serves as a means of uniting people, demonstrating their commitment to a common system of values shared by all.
The word "Ethics" was coined by Aristotle from the word "ethos," which had several meanings. Ethos was a customary place of habitation, a dwelling, an animal's den. Later it came to denote the stable nature of a phenomenon, a custom, simply a habit, a disposition, a character, a temperament.
Ethics is moral philosophy, where ethics is a field of knowledge, and morality is its subject.
The specificity of ethics lies in the fact that it gives the problems of an individual person a universal, human scale, so that the solutions proposed can be extended to any other individual facing the same problems.
Ethics is the study of the fundamental values and goals of human life (good and evil, happiness, love, etc.), but also an analysis of the concept of morality.
The transformations carried out in the country in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal legislation reflect and ensure a change in the strategic goals of state and social development, and a change in the nature of relations between the state and its citizens, based on a commitment to a democratic system of values.
As the idea of the service-oriented nature of the state spreads, as public service is transformed from being the "sovereign's service" into a truly civic one, and as a new image of public administration takes shape, the state and the administrative bodies acting on its behalf at all levels are increasingly viewed and perceived by citizens as organizations providing services that they pay for as taxpayers . This increases the significance of the moral aspect of managerial activity, and makes it possible to clearly formulate not only professional but also ethical requirements for employees at all levels of the sphere of administration. This is precisely why, in many countries, the social stratum of civil servants is considered to include everyone who works in state and municipal bodies, organizations, and institutions and who provides social services to citizens. In the Model Code of Conduct for Public Officials, approved by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2000, the term "public official" is proposed to designate any person serving in a public body.
Consistent attention to the ethical component of the process of establishing state and municipal administration and reforming the administrative system in Russia can be traced in the political, legal, and regulatory documents of the last decade — the annual addresses and decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, concepts and doctrines, federal programmes for reforming the civil service, as well as in the following federal laws: "On the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation," "On Municipal Service in the Russian Federation," and "On General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation."
In the interests of implementing the principle of unified requirements for officials who ensure the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens in the sphere of providing them with social services, the problem of developing a special type of professional ethics becomes urgent — administrative ethics.
Administrative ethics — is a type of professional ethics, a normative discipline in which the ethical principles, norms, prohibitions, and rules of official conduct are systematized and formulated for officials of state and municipal administrative bodies, as well as of local self-government bodies acting as intermediaries in relations between the state and its citizens.
However, as N. L. Omelchenko, observes, "most of our fellow citizens have formed a distorted or not entirely accurate idea of what administrative ethics means and what it should deal with... Very often, including in educational publications, the term "administrative ethics" is understood as the etiquette-related side of the activity of state and municipal officials, the rules of business etiquette" . Sometimes in the scholarly literature the concept of "administrative ethics" is reduced to the concept of "civil service ethics," and the important, yet still particular, problem of conflict of interest is put forward as its central problem.
In Western countries, administrative ethics has long been considered one of the most important ways of combating corruption. The development and improvement of standards of conduct have become an almost obligatory component of public administration reforms. International organizations dealing with the problems of combating corruption (such as the OECD, "Transparcncy Int.," the World Bank, the UN) devote considerable attention to administrative ethics in their research and practical recommendations. The management of administrative ethics is included among the courses of the largest educational institutions engaged in training public administrators.
In published scholarly works — both domestic and foreign — administrative ethics is examined as one of the types of professional ethics, as:
Thus, proceeding from the etymology of the word "administration" (English: administer — to govern, administration — administration, government), one can give the following definition of the concept of administrative ethics.
Administrative ethics — is a type of professional ethics, a normative discipline that systematizes and formulates society’s requirements regarding the moral meaning and social purpose of the activity of officials of administrative bodies at all levels — from federal state authorities down to the grassroots administrations of local self-government; as a set of norms and rules of conduct for officials in the professional administrative environment.
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