Values in Policy Making

Paper title: Values Orientation in Decision and Policy Making
Author/researcher: Donald Gates
Country of origin: Australia
Publication/completion date: January, 2010
Length: 303 pages
Keywords: The Salvation Army, values, policy, decision, management, leadership
Abstract:

 This thesis deals with problems encountered by decision and policymakers in multifaceted environments. Although rational information is an essential input in decision and policymaking, the process is fraught with many limitations including deficient knowledge, differences in values and ideologies and ambiguities of justice outcomes. Despite this, there is a need for decision and policymakers to reflect on the ethical and social justice questions their policies raise.

In policymaking the most likely scenario is that policymakers will be influenced by ideology and self-interest in the formulation of their policies. Through a process of a literature review and published papers the researcher has argued that these decision and policymakers need to be held accountable for the decisions they make and the policies they formulate. There is often a conflict in values between the policymakers’ traditional values systems and those that influence the policies that they formulate. In the political arena, this has been identified as a battle of ideas between market fundamentalism (or neo-liberalism) and social democratic principles. The researcher has identified this conflict as one between selfishness and selflessness. It pits Comte’s notion of `altruism’ against the egoism occasionally evidenced in the selfishness of rational economic decision-making. This thesis argues that such decisions are social justice issues because they affect behaviour to include or exclude. Selfishness can manifest as narcissism, beyond simple decision and policymaking, and even appear in religion’s prosperity theology and the self-admiration of its religious leadership. The researcher has argued for a different approach to decision and policymaking and he has identified this as the path of altruism in decisions and in the formulating of policies.

Values and ideologies may be linked to cultural identities and these may influence the way policies are formulated and outcomes are mpacted. The researcher analysed six distinct themes dealing with values in decision and policymaking. These values are significant foundation stones for governments and corporations, and their efforts to advance social justice in a global marketplace, especially with the pressures of the current 2008-2009 financial crisis.

The thesis examines economic rationalism and altruism as two apparently contradictory values or ideologies, as to their significance for decision and policymaking. Economic rationalism, linked with economics in general, and neo-classical economics in particular, is traced from its classical origins to its common usage in the late twentieth century. Economic rationalistic philosophy, like capitalism and classical and neo-classical economics, is dominated by egotistical concepts of selfishness and self interests. This has had a less than admirable impact on efforts to counter poverty, dominance, and inequality. Although individual philanthropy and corporate social responsibility exists, and may be beneficial, these actions may not be altruistic because they are motivated by self-interest

The researcher argues for decision and policymakers to adopt the alternative value of `altruism’ in their decisions and policy formulation. Altruism is opposed to economic rationalism and involves acting without regard for self. It is linked with social justice with all its ambiguities and uncertainties.

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