Innovation and Conservatism in Ethics Policies in Europe : The Case of Disclosure Policies

Abstract

Ethics policies are fluid policies: Whereas new ethical challenges constantly emerge, others decrease or even disappear at the same time. Whereas integrity policies are expanding and deepening, they also focus on individual causes for unethical conduct. However, frequently, administrations shy away from enforcing existing policies and rules against top officials and ministers. Another problem concerns the lack of attention to the (growing) management challenges and the emergence of ever-new administrative burdens. As we will claim, the relationship between any type of organization and integrity is highly conflictual (Ortman, Organisation und moral. UTB, 2010).

Today, innovation in the field of ethics policies deals with many issues such as the need to evaluate the impact of artificial intelligence, efforts in order to improve the measurement of integrity policies, new ways how to monitor ethics policies and new initiatives as regards the design of new instruments. We also note growing understanding that the effectiveness of any particular institutional integrity system is determined by the degree of consistency among its constituent elements and the way it fits into the specific (organizational) culture. Overall, experts have become more reluctant to easily approve grand innovation strategies and best practices because the field continues to be dominated by fashions and fashionable concepts. Pragmatic reflection is also growing about the right regulatory mix, the role of self-regulation, the effectiveness of deterrence mechanisms and sanctions, the quality of regulation, and the need to overcome the classical distinction between compliance-based and value-based systems. Finally, transparency (disclosure) policies raise deep questions about the effectiveness of self-monitoring, put into question not only naïve requests for more soft-instrument approaches but also the limits of regulatory approaches. Innovations challenge classical integrity policies and require public organizations to constantly adapt new methods, practices, and procedures in the field of integrity management. As we will see, these governance reforms innovations put pressure on public organizations to innovate.

However, often, innovative practices produce the opposite of what they are supposed to do: classical bureaucracy, formalism, and administrative burdens. At present, it seems there exists no perfect ethical organizational recipe and no readily established accepted theory of public sector innovation. Today, it is simply impossible to state that innovation is good, simply because it is an innovation.

In the following discussion, we will refrain from taking a too ambitious approach. Instead, we will focus on one aspect of innovation of ethics policies and on one instrument: Innovation in the field of disclosure policies. We will argue that disclosure policies produce positive and critical effects. Overall, we also claim that innovation in the field of disclosure policies is generating a new ethics bureaucracy. Like this, the policy is as innovative, as it is conservative. Innovation is generating new forms of individualized monitoring and control a new ethics bureaucracy (Demmke, The institutionalization of integrity policies and the management of a growing ethics bureaucracy. In A Olejarski & SM Neal (Eds), Empowering ethics and public service values, Routledge, Milton Park, 2024).