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The World of Public Administration: An Ethical Perspective I. Ethics in Public Administration: An Overview In the realm of public administration, what is legal is not necessarily ethical. Whether we like it or not, public administrators always work within some kind of legal framework, and this legal framework may not necessarily fall under what we perceive as ethical. Ethics, according to Nigro and Nigro, are statements, written or oral, that prescribe or proscribe certain behaviors under specified conditions. Furthermore, values, according to Redfield, are conceptions, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means, and ends. The values held by persons or groups can be most accurately determined through the careful observation of their behavior over time, or more specifically, by noting how he or she acts in specific situations. In the same light. for Richard Means, values involve deep emotional commitments to certain cognitive views of public objects. They stand behind rational social action and are the engines of human activity insofar as that activity is social. So, judging from these definitions, value