The second cluster addresses internal management practice. The most common
tactics craft codes of ethics that enumerate the obligations and responsibilities of
public managers and employees. To be effective the code should support an
internal culture of high ethical and performance standards. The emphasis upon
culture combines with education, modeling, and ensuring that incentives and
promotion match promulgated values. Often the codes assemble the disclosure,
conflict of interest, and often post-employment limitations. United States' codes
tend to be long, explicit, and punitive. Ethics offices with investigatory and
sometimes quasi judicial power augment the power of the codes. Most codes of
ethics written over the last thirty years arose as responses to scandals and narrowed
discretion combined with legal and parallel enforcement agencies. More than a few
jurisdictions write fine codes only to turn them into dead letters with no strong
institutional backing, education, or enforcement. A recent backlash argues, to an
extent correctly, that the cumulative impact has been to hurt government flexibility,
talent, and responsiveness (Anechiarico and Jacobs 1998; Light 1993). Others
see codes as being of no help or clouding the issue that depends upon a deep ethos
(Kernaghan 1993). More recent codes under the influence of the OECD and NPM
school tend to be terse and principle-based with adaptations to unique institutional
cultures. These codes unfold with a precedent-based record that permits
adjustment and enforcement. Cynics might see this as the only way to get "vague"
language through legislatures, but such codes give rhetorical leverage and distill the
essence of the values that liberal democracies have been discussing. The codes often
ally with the media to steadily erode the distinction between private and public
lives, and senior public managers find their private lives under increasing scrutiny
(Thompson 1987; Dobel 1999).