Critical Analysis the Wrong Action of withholding Information about MH370 of Malaysia Government in Public Sector Ethics
Introduction
How to make the public sector perform its best functions has called forth a heated and considerable discussion among the academic circles, such as the role of both governments and regulatory institutions. It is inevitable for administrators and bureaucrats to make decisions in the daily governance, so that they must try their best to make decisions as ethical as possible. Manfred (2013) and Thomas (2013) also state that it is very essential to improve the ethical competency in the public sector. Thus, it is essential to take professional ethics as guidelines to properly contain the official power and standardizes administrators’ behavior.
This essay will firstly show brief introduction to public sector ethics, containing three main theories of ethics and the essentiality of public sector ethics. The aim and core of this essay is to critically analyze the wrong action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government in public sector ethics, to better discuss it, the essay will briefly tell about the happening of the whole affair, as well as the consequence and influences of it, and then analyze Malaysia government’s action respectively from the angle of main theories of ethics. Finally, it will give advices of what other governments can learn from this affair, such as how to effectively cope with the public crisis and improve their ethical practice.
Brief Introduction to public sector ethics
Main theories of ethics
Public sector ethics consists of two main areas, including making ethical judgments and encouraging ethical practice. There are three types of ethical reasoning, comprise consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics, and every type has its strengths and weaknesses.
Consequentialism, a sense of values that focuses only on the results in despite of process, holds that only the result of a particular action is meaningful and valuable, process itself is meaningless but a kind of ways, means and tools for consequence (Alan, 2005). From the perspective of ethical practice，a particular action which eventually brings good consequence or outcome can be called a morally right action. Both utilitarianism and teleological are a certain component of consequentialist ethics, take utilitarianism for example, as a ethical theory that defines the ethical standard based on the actual efficacy and interests, utilitarianism advocate the pursuit of “Maximum Happiness”, that is to say, the moral value of a particular action is simply depended on its devote to the overall utility. As to its strengths, consequentialism is conducive to concern for consequences and everyone’s welfare, but “Maximum Happiness” is at the expense of a minority.
Deontological ethics, which is also known as “duty” or “obligation” based ethics, believes that a morally right action is embodied in the specific features in the act itself or certain features in the rule of which the act is a example, but not itself outcome and consequence (Jeroen, 2004). The prime representative of the deontological ethics is Kantianism, whose central viewpoint is “duty”, the determining factor of whether a particular action can become a truly moral or ethical action, instead of self-interest or the greatest utility. For its strengths, it supports for moral principle and the value of individuals, while its weaknesses are the conflict between duties and principles, as well as the neglect of consequences.
Virtue ethics refers to a kind of ethics with virtue at the core, in which morality virtue and actors occupy a central, primary and decisive position, while morals, norms and behaviors play the subordinate, secondary and being-decided role in virtue ethics (Jill, 2008). Virtue ethics includes two aspects: on the one hand, it is more basic, important and decisive to a person of sublime virtue rather than conducting yourself ethically; on the other hand, virtue is the absolute ultimate standard to evaluate all acts whether legitimate or not. Aristotelianism is the typical representative of virtue ethics. As for its strengths, it recognizes complexity of moral judgment and fits professional values, but for its weaknesses, it lacks rules and principles, and is too high-minded as well.
The essentiality of public sector ethics
Firstly, due to the insufficiency of ethical practices, we are getting in touch with the failures of public administration in our daily lives, such as the massively inefficient, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. As we all know, public sector ethics has already developed into a significant issue since Watergate (Jean, 2013). Nowadays, there was increasing talk over the moral responsibility which state authorities and institutions should take responsibility for because of the decisions they make and the actions they take in the involved public issues. Moreover, the State invests more and more social investments in the communities in order to respond to the citizens growing demands. Consequently, it is inevitable to construct the public ethics institutions and lay rigid constraints on the behaviors of its civil servants.
Secondly, both politicians and civil servants have the powers to make decisions that have great impact on lots of people, thus these decisions are supposed to meet the ethical requirements (Wen, 2009). Generally speaking, a nation’s citizens will certainly want government departments and public servants to serve for the benefit of the public in a efficient and rational mode, rather than pursue their own narrow private, personal, or group interests.
Thirdly, as the basis for the universal measurement of practices, conventions and conduct of  public servants, ethics can provide an objective basis for citizens to judge whether their interests are fulfilled and the law process is obeyed, against that background, ethics proves to be a critical element in the governance quality.
Lastly, public sector ethics must be taken as an activity instead of a statute, and it is not just to set up a series of rules or regulations to advocate ethical and moral behavior. For any public sector, ethics refers to sequent management process which becomes a crucial factor for the normal operation and process of the government, as well as supporting the activities of the government (Patrick, 2008).
Brief Introduction to the disappearance affair of Malaysia Airlines plane
The happening of the whole affair
Flight MH370 is one of the flights of MALAYSIA AIRLINES SYSTEM BERHAD (MAS), which flight from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing Capital International Airport. There were 227 passengers and 12 members of the crew on the flight, including 153 person from mainland china and one person from tai wan。
In the early hours of March 8th, 2014, Flight MH370 lost contact with the air traffic controllers in the radar coverage boundary between Malaysia and Vietnam. After its missing for 16 days, March 24th, Malaysia's prime minister declared Flight MH370 has already crashed in South India ocean, and there are no survivors of the crew.
MAS performed and handled absolutely incompetent in the matter. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization, once the flight loses contact for more than 30 seconds, the airline company must launch related emergency plans immediately, including the releasing public information as soon as possible and updating them in time. While the flight disappearances information had been delayed for more than five hours by MAS .Even more, it released the information just in Facebook and Twitter in the first time, the domestic press conference has also delayed to the next day at 3 in the afternoon, opened for just 5 minutes, only showed its regret to a hasty end, which reflected the arrogance and low efficiency of MAS to some extent. The Malaysian administration also faced sustained doubt and criticism of its handling of the Flight MH370 matter, due to its action of withholding information about MH370.The information cannot be shared among Malaysia official departments, not to mention it will be fully released to the outside world.
Consequence and influences of the wrong action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government
Malaysia government’s own opaque political system made the relevant information of MH370 delay publishing or even be blocked. The outside world has always been listening passively to the Malaysia government’s confused wording, and never took the initiative to have access to the information. Malaysia government also rejected the relevant question from all walks of life from start to finish. The description of Malaysia government to MAS airliner was from “lost contact” to “turned back”, as well as from “hijacking” to “crash”, the description to lost time was from “2:40 a.m.” to “8:11a.m.”, the announcement of search and rescue field was from “Vietnamese Waters” to “Malacca Strait”, and finally to “South India Ocean”. Malaysia government made the ambiguous statement about MH370, which not only brought mental and physical harm to families of the crash victims, but also provoked anger among people those paid close attention to the event.
Analyze the wrong action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government in public sector ethics
From the angle of consequentialism, especially utilitarianism, Malaysia government’s action of withholding information about MH370 has influences on multiple groups, including Malaysia government, MAS, families of the crash victims and the whole country, which we call them stakeholder in utilitarianism. According to the Maximum Happiness Principle, we should evaluate the happiness the action brings to judge whether it is a morally right action or not (Manfred and Thomas, 2013).
First of all, in terms of happiness, for Malaysia government, the action of withholding information about MH370 may probably turn a political crisis with China into a plane crash. Moreover, the high litigation cost and long litigation period of aviation accident, there is not conforming to compensation standards, Malaysia government did not assist other related countries to carry out rescue work, which may reduce the search costs and compensation expenses to a certain extent. For MAS, after the aviation accident, the company will probably face high compensation for the families of the crash victims, and the government’s action of withholding the information may delay putting compensation issue on the agenda, which makes it possible for MAS to temporarily postpone the possible financial crisis of itself.
On the other hand, in terms of pains, for Malaysia government, it did not effectively communicate with relevant countries, such as providing reliable information and clues to the rescue, which not only resulted in delaying the rescue time and wasting rescue resources, but also bringing great harm to the families of the crash victims. In addition, there were not unified news channels to publicize the search and rescue progress and no authoritative spokesmen to meet the press in a week. Besides MAS, Malaysia military, defense ministry, transport ministry, police, aviation management department all release information but talked past each other, which reflected serious problems in their information publishing links. Such wrong action made the Malaysia Airlines crisis turn into the Malaysia government crisis, even evolve into the international crisis, which had the serious negative influence for the government's own prestige and credibility. For MAS, the lack of information disclosure may lead to all kinds of media speculation, the media will probably trumpet speculations of the crashed airliner, will may badly affect MAS image. Simultaneously, there are a lot of speculations in stock market, particularly the terrorist attacks of speculation, which make most of the nervous retail investors sell the MAS stocks, so that it has been in decline in the channel. For the families of the crash victims, an emotion of great sadness associated with bereavement will cause adverse effects of the physical, emotional or mental, and they certain do expect to know any information about their loved ones, so that the action of withholding information will badly wound their susceptibilities. Another impact is that the contentious procedure will become difficult because of the lack of sufficient information. For the whole country, as Malaysia government’s action of withholding information about MH370 against humanity, this seriously hurt the feeling of the Chinese people and impaired China-Malaysia relations. Thus, the number of Chinese tourists to Malaysia may greatly reduce, as well as Chinese enterprises that invest in Malaysia real estate, under such circumstance, the economic development of Malaysia will be impeded.
After comparing the happiness and pains, it is obvious that pains far outweigh happiness, therefore, Malaysia government’s action of withholding information about MH370 is not a morally right action in terms of utilitarianism.
According to the deontological ethics, it is the government's responsibility and obligation to establish and improve the information disclosure system, in the modern world, we call it the Freedom of Information Act, or FOI for short. It has been enacted into law in many countries around the world, which demands government agencies and administrative departments to be open and allow information to be transparent for citizens (Sonia, 2011). It means that citizens have their right to require access to government documents, including documents comprising personal information about you, and information about government policies or public affairs. Malaysia government did not release information of MH370 to the outside world, which was in clear violation of the principle of information publicity and did damage to the public's right to know. Therefore, the action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government itself is not in conformity with the requirements of a morally right action which deontological ethics has defined.
From the perspective of virtue ethics, virtue is more important than the standard and regulations, only in those who have virtue character, can ethical rules or norms possibly have the real moral significance and meaning (Margaretha, Josse and Seth, 2012). That is to say, public ethics is the professional ethic of civil servant, the moral quality of public managers is the critical standard to judge whether the government's action is a morally right action. Humanitarianism and humanistic care are one manifestation of the government's virtue (Gawthrop, 1984). During the period that the MH370 had lost contact for more than 10 days, the international community has not abandoned the search, but tried their best to fully participate in the search and rescue mission. While the Malaysia government withheld information instead of releasing effective ones, which resulted in losing the best opportunity to save or search MH370 aircraft to a large extent. After that, the Malaysia government and military provided false information frequently, which was on suspicion of delaying time and misleading media, all the signs indicated that Malaysia was trying to hide the truth, this is obviously the disregard for lives.
In short, the action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government was wrong, immoral and irresponsible on the basis of the three theories of ethics.
Advices of what governments can learn from this affair
As ethical issues are universal in public sector all over the world, ethical practice should be encouraged in every country in the world. Other governments can learn from the ethical wrongdoing of Malaysia government to deal with the public crisis about MH370 to improve their ethical practice.
There are some recommendations for governments on how to handle ethical issues. Firstly, in terms of general and political priorities, the public sector must find balance between the needs and concerns of multiple interest groups, as well as between interest groups and society as a whole, rather than concentrate on their own interests (Roland, Giuseppe, Jan and Christoph, 2013). It requires governments to set up ethical principles, discourage unethical practices and punish deviations from institutional values. Secondly, to learn and grasp interpersonal skills and crisis management skills, such as emotional and social intelligence enable public servants to disseminate and set up core ethical values in public sectors. Lastly, it is of great necessity for governments to establish and improve the information disclosure system to safeguard and defend the public's right to know. Especially at a time when public crisis appears, if the local government does not release effective information or even block them, it would generate a lot of speculation in the outside world, which will have negative influence on prestige and credibility of the government.
Conclusion
To sum up, from the above analysis of the action of withholding information about MH370 of Malaysia government in terms of main theories of ethics ,it is clear that this action was not a morally right action( Richard, Robert and Anne, 2006). Activities and goals of public organizations involve the relationships between whole social interest and partial interests, immediate interests and long-term interests, as well as the organizational behavior and social interests, so that the activities and behavior of public organization must comply with the commonly agreed code of conduct. As a criterion system to standardize the public organization behavior, the public ethics can help adjust the interest relationship between the administrative organs and the general public, and Malaysia government had obviously violated such code.
Other governments can learn from this affair by setting up ethical principles, learning and mastering interpersonal skills and crisis management skills, as well as establishing and improving the information disclosure system. Only when ethics is taken as the basis for the universal testing of public practices, conventions and conduct of administration officials, in which way can citizens confirm that their own interests are satisfied and the law process is respected and obeyed. Against that background, ethics is a critical factor in the quality of governance.
References
Alan, L. and Alan, D. (2005). Researching Ethics for Public Service Organizations: The View from Europe, Public Integrity, 8(1), 11-33.
Gawthrop, L (1984). Public sector management, systems, and ethics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Jean, C. (2013). Budgetary governance and accountability in public sector organisations: An institutional and critical realism approach, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 24(7), 518-531.
Jill, A, F. (2008). Practicing research ethics: Private-sector physicians & pharmaceutical clinical trials, Social Science & Medicine, 66(12), 2495-2505.
Jeroen, M. (2004). Approaches to Ethics Management in the Public Sector: A Proposed Extension of the Compliance-Integrity Continuum, Public Integrity, 7(1), 20-41.
Patrick, V. (2008). Studying Methods, Not Ethics: Exploring the Methodological Character of Administrative EthicsResearch, Public Integrity, 11(1), 9-34.
Manfred, F, M. and Thomas P, D. 2013, The Search for Ethical Competency: Do Ethics Codes Matter? Public Integrity, 15(2), 149-166.
Margaretha, B. Josse, D. Robert, D. and Seth, V. 2012, Public sector employees: Risk averse and altruistic? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 83(3), 279-291.
Roland, A. Giuseppe, G. Jan van, H. and Christoph, R. 2013, Public sector governance and accountability, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 24(8), 479-487.
Richard, G. Robert, F. and Anne, G. et al. 2006, On the Ethics of At-Will Employment in the Public Sector, Public Integrity, 8(4), 305-327.
Sonia, H. (2011). Ethics and leadership skills in the public service, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15(7), 2792-2796.
Wen L, K.2009, Health research ethics in public health: Trials and implementation of malaria mosquito control strategies, Acta Tropica, 112(1), 37-S47.