Conflicts of Interest. Challenges and Solutions in Business, Law, Medicine and Public Policy

Conflict of interest is designed as a conflict “between professional responsibilities (of a professional) to protect the interests of their constituents, shareholders, patients, clients or students, and their own self‐interest”. “Professional” must be read restrictively since it refers to medicines, auditors, lowers, and scholars, all categories that can be qualified as professionals in sociological or economical terms. This publication is made of ten major articles, each of them being commentated, to a total of 20 texts set and introduced by the four editors. The origin of the book is triple. It's an assertion about the continuous extension of conflicts of interest “in the areas of business, medicine, law and even academic research”. It's also a worry about ignorance in which are general public, authorities, and industries about those conflicts. This ignorance favours their extension, reinforces their negative consequences and participates to the mismanagement of them. Thirdly, editors take fact that, if the conflicts of interest are an object of studies in most the social and behavioural sciences, there is a need of general view as a first step toward an eventual general conceptual framework that permits the development “of more effective policies for dealing with what has become a pervasive problem facing our society”. Hence, the aim of this publication is to make this first step by setting academicals contributions about conflict of interest. This collection book is divided in four parts. The first one deals with conflicts of interest within the business especially in accounting. The second part focuses on medicines' conflicts of interest that can be largely associated to the influence of the pharmaceutical firms. The third part explores the limited or ambiguous legal responses to conflicts of interest. The fourth part attaches itself to the conflicts of interest in Public Policy Research. The fragmented character reaches to “somewhat depressing” for at least three reasons. A theme that runs throughout this book is there are few clear or inexpensive solutions to conflicts of interest whatever the level (individual or collective). Secondly, conflicts of interest are both more serious and widespread than widely recognized. Thirdly, public means of action, such as legislation or disclosure, are often either inefficient either counter‐productive. Only a drastic change of the legal rules of a profession can rob some specific conflicts of interest but … by creating conditions of others kinds of conflicts. Finally, it seems that the best guarantee is to trust on professionals' personal ethics. It's why it may be lakes a distinct ethical approach since the conflicts of interest throw back to the dilemma, a question that is well documented in ethics, especially in US context. But if ethics can theorize conflicts of interest it's not sure that it can manage it at least at collective level. This book will be useful for those who want to have a precise idea of the American “state of art” in social and behavioural researches about professionals' conflicts of interest.