Code of Ethics in Public Affairs: Salary Scandal (Essay Sample)

Each question should be 100 words at least
1. A 2010 salary scandal in the City of Bell, California startled the national community of people involved in local government management. The central figure in the Bell scheme is the city manager, a professional appointed by the mayor and city council. Only infrequently are career public professionals at the center of controversies about public sector ethics and this is an extreme, one might say bizarre, case of professional malfeasance.
After you have read the section on codes of ethics on pages 143-147 of The Responsible Administrator and the codes of ethics for ASPA and ICMA (see this week’s Course Overview), read about Bell in three files, “Bell I Download Bell I,” “Bell II Download Bell II,” and “Bell III Download Bell III.” Then, identify several specific principles from the ASPA Code of Ethics and tenets (“tenets,” not “tenants”) from the ICMA Code of Ethics and discuss how they were violated in Bell.
2. In 1971, a Stanford University professor conducted an experiment that involved college students posing as prison guards and prisoners. The behavior of the students has become a landmark in understanding how people respond to power and hierarchy. (Rigorous ethical standards for research involving human subjects were adopted by the federal government in the 1980s and 1990s. The Stanford Prison Experiment would not have occurred in this form under these standards.) There are several videos available in YouTube on the Stanford Prison Experiment. One video in particular is especially good for purposes of this week's discussion.
The link for this video changes periodically, so a current link is not shown here. Go to YouTube, search using "Stanford Prison Experiment," and find a video on the experiment that is 29 minutes and one second in length (29:01; the same video is also shown in three parts in other sites, 10:12, 10:03, and 8:31). Watch this video about the experiment and discuss what it might mean for administrative behavior and ethics in public affairs.