A Proverbial Approach to Public Administration

The ethical challenges of public administrators are great. In order to address these  challenges the administrator requires more than legal boundaries to fall back onto. A moral foundation is also required. The moral foundation thesis is not new to the study of public administration, however, this paper proposes that one overlooked and underrepresented area for establishing a moral foundation is found in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and especially its central book of wisdom, Proverbs. This paper examines select and common public administrative principles that flow from the book of Proverbs, thus showing that ethical decision-making by public administrators is influenced by wisdom literature found in religious texts.