Over the Long Haul

Long-term purity—indelible, unmixed, and unchanging adherence to a single way of thinking—is unlikely if public managers are like other people, whose capacity for thinking abstractly and applying general principles varies over time. Despite methodological and epistemological criticisms, research by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg and his colleagues has deeply influenced contemporary thinking about cognitive development.

Kohlberg identifies six general, universal patterns that are sequenced in invariable stages of cognitive development, based on the individual’s use of generalizable abstractions . These six orientations or “total ways of thinking” he terms “stages of moral development”. The stages progress from the pre-conventional level (stages 1 and 2), which is concerned with physical and hedonistic consequences, to the conventional level of conformity and loyalty (stages 3 and 4), and finally to the post-conventional level of autonomous, principled reasoning (stages 5 and 6). According to Kohlberg , the stages are these:

Stage 1. Punishment and obedience orientation

Stage 2. Instrumental relativist orientation (market relations)

Stage 3. Interpersonal orientation (intention, pleasing others)

Stage 4. Law-and-order orientation (authority, duty, order)

Stage 5. Social contract legalistic orientation (utilitarian overtones, procedural rules)

Stage 6. Universal ethical principle orientation (logical comprehensiveness, universality, consistency of abstract ethical principles)