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There is an extremely high probability that at some point in your career, you will have a conflict of interest. Your initial reaction to that statement may be to discard [...]

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST (COIs) PUT PROFESSIONALS ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE that tarnishes the integrity and reputations of institutions and individuals, which can lead to tremendous distrust. For this reason, management [...]

The American Booksellers Association held its annual meeting and town hall virtually July 1 4. Board president Christine Onorati of Word Bookstore in Brooklyn and Jersey City, N.J., began the [...]

The alleged FIFA (governing body of soccer) bribery scandal is a recent high-profile conflict of interest scandal to be played out in the global media. Allegations of personal gain from [...]

Concern about financial conflicts crowds out sufficient consideration of other interests that may bias research conduct. Regulations, institutional policies, and guidance from professional bodies and medical journals all primarily focus [...]

The ubiquitous nature of medical conflicts of interest is attracting increased attention from physicians, policymakera, and patients. However, little work has examined the psychological processes at play in the presence [...]

Issues of financial and intellectual conflict of interest in clinical practice guidelines have raised increasing concern. Professional organizations have responded by more rigorous regulation of conflict of interest. Nevertheless, tension remains between the competing goals of optimizing guideline quality by using the experience and insight of experts and ensuring that financial and intellectual conflicts of interest do not influence recommendations. The executive committee of the American College of Chest Physicians' Antithromboric Guidelines has developed a strategy comprising 3 innovative aspects to address this tension: First, place equal emphasis on intellectual and financial conflicts and provide explicit criteria for both; second, a methodologist without important conflicts of interest should have primary responsibility for each chapter; and third, experts with important financial or intellectual conflicts of interest can collect and interpret evidence, but only panel members without important conflicts can be involved in developing the recommendation for a specific question. These strategies may help to achieve the benefits of expert input without conflicts of interest influencing recommendations.

As family physicians, general practitioners play a key role in safeguarding children. Should they suspect child abuse or neglect they may experience a conflict between responding to the needs and interests of the child and those of an adult patient. English law insists on the paramountcy of the interests of the child, but in family practice many other interests may be at stake. The authors argue that uncritical adoption of the paramountcy principle is too simplistic and can lead, paradoxically, to greater harm. They argue for a more subtle and nuanced view of interests and of conflicts of interest in safeguarding children. doi: 10.1136/jme.2009.034488

Context Physicians are regularly confronted with research that is funded or presented by industry. Objective To assess whether physicians discount for conflicts of interest when weighing evidence for prescribing a new drug. Design and setting Participants were presented with an abstract from a single clinical trial finding positive results for a fictitious new drug. Physicians were randomly assigned one version of a hypothetical scenario, which varied on conflict of interest: 'presenter conflict', 'researcher conflict' and 'no conflict'. Participants 515 randomly selected Fellows in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network; 253 surveys (49%) were returned. Main object measures The self-reported likelihood that physicians would prescribe the new drug as a first-line therapy. Results Physicians do not significantly discount for conflicts of interest in their self-reported likelihood of prescribing the new drug after reading the single abstract and scenario. However, when asked explicitly to compare conflict and no conflict, 69% report that they would discount for researcher conflict and 57% report that they would discount for presenter conflict. When asked to guess how favourable the results of this study were towards the new drug, compared with the other trials published so far, their perceptions were not significantly influenced by conflict of interest information. Conclusion While physicians believe that they should discount the value of information from conflicted sources, they did not do so in the absence of a direct comparison between two studies. This brings into question the effectiveness of merely disclosing the funding sources of published studies. doi: 10.1136/jme.2009.034496

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Efficient and effective management is obviously important to the success of any real estate joint venture (meaning any entity formed for co-investment by multiple parties, including general partnerships, [...]

* Researchers sought to estimate the costs of different types of conflict and containment in the United Kingdom using events from 136 adult acute inpatient psychiatric wards in the United Kingdom and unit costs from a sample of 15 wards. * Researchers study sought to obtain and observe actual staff time managing conflict and containment by means of a new method of estimating costs arising from the development of an interview schedule to use with key staff. * The estimated mean annual cost for conflict is 145,177 [pounds sterling], and for containment 212,316 [pounds sterling]. The total estimated annual costs in England for all conflict is 72.5 million [pounds sterling] and for containment is 106 million [pounds sterling] (see Table 1). * The most expensive conflict behavior to manage was verbal abuse with a mean cost per ward of 21.2k [pounds sterling] and a total of 10.5 million [pounds sterling] nationally. Self-harm had a mean cost of 8.2k [pounds sterling] per ward and 4 million [pounds sterling] nationally in England. Intermittent and special observation cost 45 million [pounds sterling] and 35 million [pounds sterling] respectively (see Table 1). * This study also suggests that approximately half of all nursing resources are expended in managing conflict and deploying containment., THERE ARE ONLY A FEW published studies of incidents and events on psychiatric inpatient wards, most of which are from the United States and none of which is less than [...]

The agency theory is used to study the impact of conflict of interest between management and stake holders on organizational performance.

This final article in the series on the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch (1) will address conflicts of interest. A [...]

A study examining the due diligence efforts of venture capital companies for controlling agency risks is presented. Based on Singapore markets, it is observed that venture capital companies that are not strong in reprisal ability are inclined to devote more efforts on due diligence. Venture capital companies face the agency risk from entrepreneurs who sacrifice the interests of venture capital firms for personal gains.