Moral Reasoning Among Public Administrators: Does One Size Fit All?

The purposes of this study are to establish a baseline measurement of public administrators’ moral reasoning, to examine differences in reasoning among them, and to compare their moral judgments with those of other professional groups. Nearly 275 public administrators completed usable responses on the Defining Issues Test to assess preferences for three types of moral reasoning: personal interest, maintaining norms, and postconventional. As a group, the subjects used more postconventional moral reasoning than maintaining norms reasoning. Although 85 percent of the sample held a graduate degree, administrators did not use more postconventional moral reasoning than adults in general or college students. The group scored significantly lower in postconventional reasoning than similarly educated groups: physicians, staff nurses, and law students. Females used a significantly higher percentage of postconventional thinking (mean P% = 45.23) than males. The discussion delineates possible implications of these patterns in ethical thinking for policy, education, and practice.