To provide a scientific understanding of the essential characteristics and role of service ethics is an important practical undertaking in making socialist service work completely contribute to promoting the well-being of working people.
President
"Socialist countries should observe etiquette and morality better than others and conduct service work in a more civilized manner."
Ethics of public service are the principles of moral code the service workers should observe conscientiously and voluntarily. In other words, these are the moral principles they should voluntarily follow to meet the requirements of service for ensuring the independent and creative life of the people.
Service work is a form of social division of labour, a line of vocation, while ethics of public service are a form of vocational ethics.
People make means of living through labour and use them to live on. In their living, there are material and cultural needs they can or cannot meet by themselves. That is why labour was divided into special lines to satisfy the needs and through such specialized services they fulfil their demands.
As each occupation has social responsibilities and mode of activity peculiar to that job, service work to cover people's needs for service also accompanies the order and rules of conduct the service workers should observe to fully discharge their responsibilities and duties, that is, standards of service activities. Such a code of conduct in the service sector is the order and rules of conduct aimed at fulfilling people's needs for service and thereby satisfying their independent and creative demands for material and cultural life.
The code of conduct in the service sector includes not only the regulations and order the service workers should observe in the organization, management and practice of service but also the moral code they should follow conscientiously in the course of service activities. Because service activities are also part of people's social activities and morality is found in all fields of social activities.
As service activities are conducted by service providers for its users, the issue of morality arises in the process of intercourse between them. In other words, there are the order and rules of speech and conduct the providers should observe to respect the demands of the customers, treat them kindly and generously and fully satisfy their needs for service.
Since service activities are the process of meeting the needs of the customers by means of certain service facilities, there are also the order and rules of conduct the providers should follow in managing and operating such means to satisfy the customers' demands.
Service morals are just the order and rules that reflect the moral standards the providers should meet in using the means of service facilities and forming relations with the customers.
Service workers acquire moral traits pertaining to service activities in the course of their work and the standard of service morals constitutes an important factor of morality that guarantees service activities. For example, such moral traits as the spirit of service and kindliness are the most important qualities the providers should possess. These qualities are acquired in the course of voluntarily observing the code of service morals and develop into specific features and therefore constitute important moral qualities that fully satisfy the customers' demands and guarantee the success in service activities.
In the course of observing the code of service morals with such qualities in service activities, the providers form sound and civilized moral relations with the customers and fulfil their social responsibilities and role.
Service ethics stipulate such moral code, traits and relations the service providers should follow, possess and form as they conduct service activities. Specifically, the ethics theoretically clarify the reason why service workers should respect the demands and personalities of customers and treat them hospitably, speak and act in keeping with the circumstances and objects, and the ways to acquire noble moral qualities in service and provide sound and civilized service while rejecting unsound and wrongful relations.
Service ethics are a form of vocational morality specific to the sector of public service while an embodiment of the general ethics of overall society in this sector, namely the concrete form of the ethics governing overall society which are applied to service activities and a supplement to them.
Ethics of public service have their own characteristics.
One of them is that they apply to relations between service providers and those who need services.
Service ethics are intended for those who have certain material and cultural demands, or needs for service, and accompany intercourse with them. In other words, they are an aspect of ethics and morality pertaining to the course of mutual contact between service users and providers.
When campus ethics concerns the relationship between teachers, students and parents and medical ethics have to do with relations between doctors, patients and residents, service ethics apply to intercourse between customers and service workers.
Like this, service ethics are characterized by the mutual contact between those who have material and cultural needs and service providers.
Another characteristic of service ethics is that customers have the right to receive services and service workers have the duty to provide services.
A service worker and a customer are equal as they are both human beings. Therefore, both of them should respect each other irrespective of their occupations.
Meanwhile, they form a relationship of right and duty, that is, relations between those who have the right to receive services and those who have the duty to provide services.
For their occupational features, service workers have the duty to respect those who have demands for service in their fields, accede to their demands and strive to satisfy them. It is the moral quality of service workers to reply to every question of customers hospitably and it is their obligation to accede to their every demand. To be more specific, service providers, unlike those who are engaged in other jobs, have the duty to respect customers and accede to their just demands.
Of course, it is an elementary requirement of morals for people to respect and help each other and make concessions. When people fail to meet such a requirement, they may be subjected to social denunciation, but not be disqualified from their jobs.
In the service sector, however, it is an occupational feature and ethics for service workers to always respect customers, lower themselves, behave with modesty and accede to their demands, and therefore they are disqualified from their jobs if they fail to meet this requirement.
In this sense, it can be said that service workers should adopt an attitude of "servant" towards customers. When a barber dines in a restaurant, a waiter should serve him politely, whereas the former should serve the latter in the barber's shop in compliance with his request.
Therefore, a service user has the right to demand service to a service worker and the latter has the obligation to provide service and has no right to refuse the demand if it is just and reasonable.
As seen above, service ethics are characterized by the relationship of duty and right between service workers and customers.
Another characteristic of service ethics is that they are observed better in the course of making the most of serving art and skills in service activities.
As service activities necessarily accompany intercourse between service workers and customers, there are established formalities in speech and conduct according to service environment and customers' features.
Of course, such formalities are accounted much in morality as a whole, but service activities require special art and skills in speech and conduct as hospitality and obedience to the demand of customers are the most important in them.
In service activities there are speech and conduct peculiar to this field. Service providers should always call users "customers" affectionately, say such words of greeting as "Good morning", "What can I do for you?", "I'm sorry", "You're welcome", "Goodbye" and "See you again" and often adopt such a polite way of talking as "Please" with appropriate intonation. They should also skilfully use certain service facilities and instruments in a hygienic and cultured way in accordance with the corresponding regulations and order to fully meet the needs of customers.
Such proficient techniques and skills are called the art and skills of service. In the course of making an efficient use of them service ethics are better observed.
Service ethics assume a class character.
There can be no sound and civilized service ethics under the system of reactionary exploiter classes. In capitalist society service work serves the privileged and exploiter classes and is intended for profits. They artificially foster inhuman demand for services in disregard of the promotion of public well-being, thereby deforming the material and cultural life of people. Service providers in capitalist society seem to be hospitable, but it is nothing more than hypocrisy and trick to exploit the people more by taking away more money from their pockets.
Sound and civilized service ethics are established only in socialist society. Service work there is intended only for the betterment of the people's well-being and their convenience in life. Service workers, in turn, are the faithful servants of people who have been assigned by the state the task of taking care of them in their posts, not the mercenary traders. That is why genuine socialist service ethics are prevalent in the society whereby service workers respect customer, receive them kindly and affectionately and strive to satisfy their demand.
Socialist service ethics play a very important role in making service workers conduct service activities with sound moral qualities, fully satisfying material and cultural demand of the people, giving full play to the advantages of the socialist service system and establishing a sound and revolutionary socialist moral habit throughout society.
Above all, they take an important part in making service workers discharge their occupational duty in a responsible manner with the noble mental and moral traits as the faithful servants of the people.
Sound and noble mental and moral traits are important in the qualities of service workers. Even though they have high technical skills, they cannot win the respect and love of the people if they do not observe service morals but treat customers rudely and, consequently, they will lose customers. That is why, when they possess noble mental and moral traits, they can fulfil their occupational duty faithfully and responsibly, thereby promoting the convenience of customers and contributing to their material and cultural life.
Socialist service ethics make service workers aware that their work is not a mere job for earning their bread, but an honourable revolutionary duty to provide various forms of convenience for the people in their living, and instil into them the pride that they are the servants of the people who strive to meet their material and cultural needs. The ethics encourage them to regard it as their duty to always receive customers hospitably and affectionately and cultivate their mind, thereby acquiring noble traits as the service workers who are loved and respected by the people. These also motivate them to build and manage service facilities in a cultured and hygienic way and secure necessary goods sufficiently and in time in order to satisfy various material and cultural needs of the people fully and in time, thereby helping them discharge their responsibility and duty they assume on behalf of society and collective to make the people's living diverse and pleasant.
Socialist service ethics play an important role also in giving full play to the advantages of the socialist service system.
Socialist service is a popular policy of the Party and government aimed at fully satisfying various material and cultural needs of the people in line with the intrinsic demand of socialist society in which everything serves working people.
Unlike in capitalist society where consumption service is abused as an additional space for exploitation of working people, in our socialist society many forms of service including health service and the provision of dwelling and cultural conditions are provided gratis or dog-cheap and, through this, working people receive lots of additional benefits from the state.
Such popular politics are implemented by service workers.
Socialist service ethics inspire service workers to display a high sense of responsibility and enthusiasm in order to enable socialist working people to equally receive the benefits granted by the Party and state by upholding the Party's policy of "We serve the people!" with pure conscience and obligation. Thanks to service workers, the people enjoy the popular service of the Party and state and affluent and civilized material and cultural life and realize the advantages of the socialist service system. As they see polite and kind service workers they keenly feel the preciousness of and gratitude to the service system whereby everything serves working people. They harden their moral sense of obligation to devotedly work in order to defend and add glory to the grateful system as they witness the hospitality of those who provide welfare service dog-cheap, the warm humanity of medical workers who treat every patient free of charge, the devotion of those in the passenger transport sector who ensure every convenience for travellers, especially the elderly, mothers with babies and patients, and the conscientious deeds of those who strive to enable the people to conduct civilized leisure activities in magnificent modern theatres, cinemas, parks and recreation grounds.
Socialist service ethics also make a tangible contribution to establishing socialist moral habit throughout society.
They clarify the principles, standards and traits of service morals by focusing on the material and cultural interests of working people to ensure that socialist moral habit is established not only in the service sector but also throughout society.
Service establishments are not only a place to meet people's needs for service but a good place of moral education for them.
These are closely associated with their everyday life. While living, they satisfy their material and cultural needs as they use services in these establishments such as commercial, catering, welfare, repair, transport and cultural service facilities including barber's shop, beauty parlour, bathhouse, park, recreation ground, cinema and theatre.
As they use them they are greatly influenced by the civilized and sound moral environment and the kind and polite words and conduct of service workers. They reflect on their morality and cultivate their mind, trying hard to work and live with a high moral sense like service workers. In the course of this, social morals make sound progress and a civilized socialist moral habit prevails throughout society.
