Role of civil services in ethical governance: Hong Kong civil services

Classical understandings of bureaucratic structure and organisation theory have provided little in the way of an ethical basis for administrative activity. In traditional management, Weber's bureaucracy was about ethics of neutrality. It was an alienating organisation which took person as machine and treated people impersonally. Economy, efficiency and effectiveness were emphasised. As to scientific management, it stressed technical efficiency as the vehicle for successful management that was not concerned with the humanistic and ethical components of organisation behaviour. Both traditional management and scientific management believed in politicsadministration dichotomy. It was not until the repeated occurrence of unethical conduct within the government did ethics start being subject to attention. Copyright © 2013 by Indian Institute of Public Administration.