A Case Study of Shaping Civil Servants’ Values of Integrity and Competency and Building a Government of Integrity and Competency: The Approach of Social Judgment Theory
Cheng-Liaou Chen*
Abstract
In response to the public’s expectation for an “honest and competent government”, the Executive Yuan has been promoting a “Project of Shaping Civil Servants’ Values of Integrity and Competency” since 2008. However, most of the practitioners and scholars pointed out, to promote the reform successfully in the pluralistic-democratic era, the government should ascertain that the civil servants realize the true values of the reform. In addition, to assure successful reform, the government should collect the civil servants’ viewpoints in advance so as to make a good strategy. Hence, to avoid a repeat of previous failures in reform, how to grasp the psychological and cognitive information of the civil servants toward the project of forging honesty and competency values is the key to making the reform a success.
This study, adopting social judgment theory, investigates the cognition status toward shaping honesty and competency values from central and local government civil servants. The results indicate that the civil servants tend to take professionalism and integrity, rather than effectiveness and personal care, as the insight and components of shaping honesty and competency values. Moreover, the shaping effect is the best while adopting programs related to integrity and professionalism, whereas the program related to compassion is better, and the program related to effectiveness is the worst.
This study also suggests that the government consider excluding effectiveness and compassion, and simply adopt professionalism and integrity as the components of shaping honesty and competency values. In addition, the government should focus on the cultivation of the ideas and cognition associated with integrity and professionalism, choosing government officials more inclined to uphold those values from different agencies to carry out the value-shaping project. In this way, the project will be effectively completed and a government of integrity and competency will be built in the long run.
Keywords:the honest and competent government, the honest and competent value, judgment analysis, social judgment theory
* Personnel Director, Personnel Office, Municipal Kaohsiung Senior Vocational Industrial High School; Assistant Professor(pt), Department of Shipping & Transportation Management, National Kaohsiung Marine University.