Ethics in Public Service
Spring 2008
Review Sheet for Mid-Term Exam
The first exam will consist of
twenty-five or more multiple choice questions and one (1)
essay questions of which
you will have some choice in responding.
The test will cover the foreword and Chapters 1-5 in Unmasking Administrative
Evil, Chapters 1-4 in The Responsible Administrator, and other
assigned readings (the Andre, Jones, and Sobel articles) as
well as your lecture notes and video segments. After
reading your text and reviewing your notes, answer the questions below to see how prepared you are to
take the examination.
Scantron sheets will not be required to take this
test. Good luck!
- What are the differences among the
traditional, modern, and postmodern approaches to ethical decision making?
- What inspired Hannah Arendt to coin the phrase, "the banality of
evil"?
- Why is administrative evil different than evil traditionally understood?
- What role can hubris play in administrative evil?
- What do the terms egoism, teleology,
deontology, virtue ethics, relativism, and utilitarianism mean within the framework
of ethical study?
- What strategies are available to the individual administrator for helping
to make ethical decisions?
- Know and understand the levels of ethical reflection.
- What is the difference between objective and
subjective responsibility?
- Describe the psychological experiments that links the ethical responses of
individuals to authority figures.
- Describe Kohlberg's theory concerning the development of moral reasoning.
- List and explain the key arguments used by Adams and Balfour to describe
their concept of administrative evil.
- Be able to offer several definitions of ethics.
- Describe various ethical systems and approaches to the study of ethics.
- How did Hitler establish and maintain his totalitarian state? How
did the public administration community of Nazi Germany respond?
- Trace the evolution of NASA and its various missions within the context of
ethical theory.