What do you understand by ‘determinants of ethics’ in private and public relationships? Examine how family, peer group, educational institutions and the workplace each shape ethical conduct in a civil servant.
Subtopic: Section A · Ethics and Human Interface · Dimensions of ethics in private/public relations
How to structure your answer
Define: determinants as the social, psychological and institutional factors that shape the ethicality of an action.
Illustrate: walk through the four agents — family, peer, school, workplace — with a named civil-servant example for each.
Apply: show how poor workplace ethics can erode strong family values (transfer raj, posting-by-bribe).
Conclude: public ethics depends on continuous renewal across all four arenas.
Written within the word limit
154 words · target 150 words · 9 min
Definition: Determinants of ethics are the socialising environments that pattern an individual's moral reasoning across private and public life — principally family, peer group, educational institutions and workplace, each operating through distinct mechanisms.
Illustration: Family transmits foundational virtues through modelling and affect; Gandhi credited his mother Putlibai for satya and ahimsa. Peer groups reinforce or erode standards through norm-policing; the National Police Academy and LBSNAA Mussoorie use cohort socialisation to embed integrity. Educational institutions transmit constitutional morality through curriculum and ritual; Ambedkar's Columbia and LSE training shaped his fraternity ideal. Workplace culture proves decisive in adult life — E. Sreedharan's punctuality regime at DMRC, T.N. Seshan's procedural rigour at the Election Commission, show how institutional ethos converts individual values into reliable public conduct. Conversely, the Vyapam scam revealed how a corrupt workplace neutralises private virtue.
Application: Mission Karmayogi (2020) recognises this by building behavioural-competency frameworks for Indian civil servants, integrating ethics across induction and in-service training.
What an examiner expects to see
- 2nd ARC 4th Report identifies family, education, religion, leadership, work culture as determinants
- Bandura's social-learning theory: observation > instruction
- Family transmits primary values (Sardar Patel's mother-influenced austerity)
- Peer group reinforces or corrodes (probationer batches at LBSNAA)
- School-college builds reasoning capacity (Kohlberg's post-conventional stage)
- Workplace culture is the most decisive in adult civil-servant life (Nolan: leadership by example)
Concrete cases, schemes and judgments
- T.N. Seshan crediting his Palakkad upbringing for fearless ECI tenure
- E. Sreedharan's Konkan Railway team culture of zero-tolerance to padding
- Civil Services Day Awards 2024 — Aspirational Districts Programme officers