The Effects of Organizational Culture and Work Values on Administrative Ethics Behavior－A Case of Taipei City Government

• Main Authors: Mei-lun Chen, 陳美倫
• Other Authors: 黃一峯
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62455697919556284583

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 公共行政學系公共政策碩士在職專班 === 98 === The range of discussions concerning administrative ethics spans greatly, from small issues like conflict of personal professional judgment versus the instructions of superiors, to major issues like the meaning and role of government as a whole. From this wide spectrum of issues, the author chooses to study the effects of organizational culture and work values on administrative ethics behavior of a public administration, the reason being that for a long period of time, our government has failed us time and again in fulfilling the 3R ideology: 1. Responsive Government, 2. Responsible Government and 3. Reliable Government. In other words, the public is generally not satisfied with the government’s current performance. To salvage this situation, President Ma Ying-jeou declared during his inauguration speech that one of the main tasks of the new government is to set a role model of clean politics. After the new government receives power, being “clean and capable” has become one the primary focus of policy implementations. The Central Personnel Administration (CPA) of the Executive Yuan sets forth in creating a clean and capable team through assisting civil servants understand their roles, and clarifying their public ethics values, through gathering of core ethics values by studying the legislations of advanced countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Poland and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members. The “Civil Code of Ethics” was drafted through wide gathering of suggestions, public participation and amending the core values of civil servants. It was characterized with strong emphasis on practical implementation, simple yet conscientious, and can truly reflect the core values of modern civil service. It is hoped that all civil servalnts coule abide by this Code,and re-establish our government''s image as clean and capable. According to IMD’s World Competitiveness Yearbook ranking published on May 18th, 2010, Taiwan’s overall competitiveness leapt from 23rd last year to 8th this year, business efficiency leapt from 22nd last year to 3rd this year, and government efficiency increased from 18th last year to 6th this year. All these examples demonstrate that the policy decisions of the present government and implementation abilities of respective agencies have improved tremendously, and directly proved the importance of emphasizing administrative ethics of civil servants, which will eventually lead to greater performances and efficacy. If the positive trend continues, the future is bright for our country, and the subsequent encouragements received by our civil servants will surely prompt them to work harder and raise standards. This research employed the civil servants of Taipei City Government as research targets, and through a quantitative approach, 608 questionnaires were distributed among the civil servants, with 461 effective samples collected. The results of this research indicate that, organizational culture and work values will affect civil servants’ administrative ethics behavior, with “bureaucratic culture” and “inner values” posing the most significant influence. The results also show that different nature of civil servants’ work will also affect their administrative ethics behavior. Hence, based on our literature reviews and questionnaire analysis results, the following suggestions are provided for how to raise civil servants’ administrative ethics behavior, both in the public and private sectors: 1. Comprehensive legislation to support administrative ethics on a national level. 2. Role models and leadership from high-level management. 3. Active encouragement of being clean and capable, which helps in shaping positive organization culture. 4. Strengthen civil servants’ ethical education, to align their work values. 5. Expand public participation through accessible information. 6. Establish anti-corruption and clean government activities, and build civic anti-corruption network. 7. Understand public opinions and invite positive suggestions for improvement of civil ethics. 8. Strong cooperation from implementing agencies, and strengthen investigation of ethics violation. When there are clean and capable civil servants, a clean and capable government will ensue. As for the people, the results of a clean and capable government will result in effective policy implementation, and the people can enjoy good living environment. As for the corporations, a clean and capable government means a better economic environment, which naturally leads to more investment from the corporations. Suggestions for future research topics include: expanding research scope to include central or national civil servants, comparing the existing differences of central and local civil servants in terms of administrative ethics behaviors. In addition, if all research targets are civil servants, the repetitive nature of the sample will be too high, causing insignificance in the regression analysis of the two indicators, namely work values and administrative ethics. If future research could incorporate business people as research targets, new results may be found. at all civil servants could abide by this Code, and re-establish our government’s image as clean and capable.