ETHICS AND PUBLIC SERVICE VALUES: Ontological and Epistemic Frameworks for Study and Practice

This chapter addresses the significance of ontological and epistemic approaches to how researchers and practitioners theorize and conceptualize public service values and ethics. This chapter focuses on newer constructs in public administration, such as epistemic silencing and the colonization of knowledge, whereby the construction of truth and knowledge revolves around the experiences of only certain types of scholars. This chapter also addresses governments’ reliance on “evidence-based practice” (EBP), which raises questions about the nature of evidence and knowledge production in government, as well as questions about which criteria make evidence acceptable or unacceptable. Finally, we address an additional practice-based framework known as post-normal science (PNS), which is a process of inquiry that is relevant when high risks, uncertainty, and divergent values prevail for which objectivity is not always achievable.