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

Description

This collection explores the subject of conflicts of interest. It investigates how to manage conflicts of interest, how they can affect well-meaning professionals, and how they can limit the effectiveness of corporate boards, undermine professional ethics, and corrupt expert opinion. Legal and policy responses are considered, some of which (e.g., disclosure) are shown to backfire and even fail. The results offer a sobering prognosis for professional ethics and for anyone who relies on professionals who have conflicts of interest. The contributors are leading authorities on the subject in the fields of law, medicine, management, public policy, and psychology. The nuances of the problems posedby conflicts of interest will be highlighted for readers in an effort to demonstrate the manyways that structuring incentives can affect decision making and organizations' financial well-being.

Don A. Moore is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include bargaining and negotiation, decision making and decision-making biases, and environmental issues in management. Professor Moore's research has appeared in Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the Annual Review of Psychology. He has received awards for both research and teaching. Daylian M. Cain is a doctoral candidate at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, a Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a William Larimer Mellon Scholar. George Loewenstein is Professor of Economics and Psychology in Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Social and Decision Science. He has held academic positions and fellowships at The University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Russell Sage Foundation, and The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. A specialist in behavioral economics, he is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, and is co-editor of Choices Over Time, Time and Decision, and Advances in Behavioral Economics. His research interests focuses on people's predictions of their future behavior. Professor Loewenstein had served on the editorial board of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Theory, Behavior and Philosophy, Management Science, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and the Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets. Max H. Bazerman is Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, he served on the faculty of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University for 15 years. Professor Bazerman's research focuses on decision making, negotiation, creating joint gains in society, and the natural environment. He is the author or co-author of over 150 research articles and chapters, and the author, co-author, or co-editor of eleven books, including Predictable Surprises (with Michael Watkins), You Can't enlarge the Pie: The Psychology of Ineffective Government (2001, with J. Baron and K. Shonk), and Judgement in Managerial Decision Making (2002). Professor Bazerman is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Management and Governance, The Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the International Journal of Conflict Management. He received the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in mentoring Award form Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

"This books is a genuine public service, above all because it shows how human psychology can make conflicts of interest quite intractable. Often, for example, people believe that it is enough for those with a conflict simply to disclose it. Unfortunately, disclosure often does little or no good. Filled with insights and highly relevant to public policy, this outstanding book is must reading for anyone interested in the role of conflicts of interest in both private and public sectors." Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago "This skillfully edited volume takes social-science analysis of conflicts of interest well beyond the traditional confines of principal-agent theory. Readers are guaranteed to come away with a sharper appreciation for why, so often, what one observer decries as a shameful conflict of interest, another observer applauds as blissful symbiosis." Philip E. Tetlock, University of California, Berkeley