You make the call: tips for making public decisions

Public administrators face more difficult challenges in the decision-making process than their private-sector counterparts, because the goals are quite different. While profit is the primary motivator in the private sector, public managers must consider laws and regulations, personal values, spiritual and cultural values, moral theory the greater public interest, and regime values, as described by John A. Rohr in his 1976 Public Administration Review article on the study of ethics values derived from Supreme Court decisions. Beyond values, administrators' capacity for making decisions also may be hamstrung by budgetary concerns, a democratic desire to be responsive to public demand, and the complexities of decision making when competing experts disagree. Numerous outlines exist that administrators can find helpful. These are: 1. Serve the public interest. 2. Justify the decision. 3. CLICK (Consequence, Legal, Image, Culture, Know) it. 4. Aim high.