Conflicts of Interest in Contracts Management - Dissertation Example

? Resolving Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Contracts Management Conflict of interest is that situation where by a person; group or organization is involved in several interests. These multiple interests’ conflict with each other and one of the interests usually corrupt or alter the motivation of how the other would have been acted on. Individuals and organizations are involved in different conflicts of interests that affect their decision making process on how they will respond to certain tasks. In this paper I am going to look into how organizations are involved in conflict of interests in the contract management process and how to resolve these conflicts in contract management process using the organization conflict of interest regulations (OCI). I am going to focus on the four instances that tend to create organization conflict of interest in contract management process and how the OCI regulation helps contract officers to handle them. I will also include research questions and a problem statement on the topic that will give readers more understanding on what I am talking about. Problem statement The goal of this research paper is to come up with a good solution to solve the problem of organizational conflicts of interest in the process of contract management process. Organizations need to make sure that the process of giving out contracts is free and fair and that the best qualified for the job gets it (Friedberg 1999). Anyone with any other interests should not get the job at any cost. The main reason why organizations are facing this problem and making it so rampant in the contract management process is because organizations lack proper guidelines that can prevent this. Organizations also have contract management officers who lack integrity and the knowledge of how to curb this vice (Lo et al 2000). The people seeking these contracts also play a major role in this process these are the contractors who try to find illegal ways to get the jobs or have other interests in the organization apart from the job itself. If organizations do not find ways to avoid this, then most contracts will never be up to the required standards of the organization and also the government standards. It is important that organizations make sure there are regulations to be followed in any contract management process (Marilyn 2009). The government should also make sure the regulations they have come up with are stricktly followed by the organizations and their contract officers. Research questions 1. Why Organizational Conflicts of Interest exist in Contracts Management? 2. Who are the people involved in this conflict of interest in contract management? 3. What makes these people have these conflicts of interest in the contract process? 4. How can the organizations and the government solve this problem? We need to know that organizational conflict of interests can result due to several factors. A potential conflict of interest is created by these aspects on an available contract; this makes the nature of the work to be performed on the contract to create an actual conflict of interest on the contract management process (Friedman 2002). The conflict here comes up because of a future acquisition. What are the two main situations in which organizational conflict of interest may occur in the contract management process? The first situation is when a contractor is probably unable to give unbiased assistance or advice to the organization offering the contract. Here we clearly see that the contractor interests are conflicting with how he is giving the organization assistance on how the contract will be handled or any other imperative information. Subsequently organizational conflict of interests may occur in contract management process is when a contractor has an inequitable competitive advantage for a contract that is available. (Nelson 2002) In the organizational conflict of interests embody two underlying concerns that define organizations conflict of interest. One of the major concerns is that in a situation where a contractor has any conflict of interest in a certain contract then their judgment and advice may be biased (DeAngelis 2001). Another notable concern to look at in our context is that a contractor competing for a job may have an unfair advantage if he/she had accessed proprietary information on another competitor, or the requirements needed by the organization and the source selection information that is not available to all competing contractors. These organization conflicts of interests (OCI) were created to help officers involved in contracting jobs to be familiar with and help them dodge or resolve such conflict of interests we have seen above. Hypothesis The four OCI regulations will be our hypothesis study. 1. Contractor must provide systems engineering and technical direction. This is a must requirement for all contractors seeking to find tasks in any organization. A contractor may provide all this but lack the general responsibility a contractor should have on how the assembly, development, integration and production of the system. The OCI regulation here states that the contractor should not be allowed to compete for a contract even as a subcontractor (Kaiser 2005). This regulation helps organization avoid conflict of interests in the contract management process and thus will get a well qualified contractor. 2. A contractor must prepare work testimonials or stipulations The contractor who assists with preparing a work statement for an organization cannot be in contention for that particular contract award with the same requirements. There are two situations where the OCI rules do not apply. The first on is that any contractor who hands over specifications at the organization’s appeal for an item for consumption they provide (McWilliams 2010). The second situation is where the contractors are acting as industrial representatives, give help is looked into ad handled by the organization. 3. the contractor provides evaluation services There is no way that a contractor can evaluate his or her own proposal and the can also cannot evaluate those from other competitors in the market (Kinney 2002). This cannot happen in any circumstance without proper protection to ensure objectivity to protect the organizational interests. 4. The contractor gets right to use proprietary information This is the main reason for unfair competition leading to the problem of conflict of interest in contract management process. This occurs when a contractor uses leverage of the contract to get proprietary information from other contractors to perform the job being offered by the organization. Restrictions must be imposed to curb this act among people seeking contracts in originations (Davis & Stark 2001). The limitations will guard the information and persuade organizations and contract officers to provide the information only when it is necessary for contract performance. These OCI regulations apply to all types of organizations whether profit or nonprofit making organizations. They also apply to those that are funded by the government like the development and research centers. The applicability of the OCI regulations is not limited to any particular organization (Hahn 2002). How to identify potential organizational conflict of interest? The contract officer is the one who is able to decide whether there is a significant potential conflict of interest exits. If he/she finds out that there is, it is up to the officer to find appropriate means for resolving it completely. FAR 9.504 call for the contract officer to analyze all the planned acquisitions to identify and evaluate any potential organization conflicts of interest as early of possible. Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) requires all the contract officers to examine each contracting situation on the basis of the individual contract’s facts and nature. Organizations are counseled to exercise common sense, good judgment and sound discretion. Proper verification of the contractor’s papers and looking at the previous jobs they have done will be a good way to see if they are qualified or they have other targets except from the job. Asking for recommendations is also very important (Cech & Leonard 2001). Ever contractor should sign a conflict of interest declaration document. The formal decisions rests with the contract officer on who to get the contract but the final decision should involve the whole acquisition team. Purpose of this study From what I have discussed above, we can conclude that organizations face a major problem in fighting conflicts of interest in contract management process. The problem lies with both the organization and the contractors seeking these contracts. Serious measures should be taken to curb the problem and originations should embrace the OCI regulations. This will help both the organization and the contractors to avoid conflict of interest in the contract process. The organizations should make sure their contract officers are properly equipped with the Organization conflict of interest regulations. With that the problem of conflict of interest in contract management will be a thing of the past. References Cech, T. and J. Leonard (2001). "Science and business. Conflicts of interest--moving beyond disclosure." Science 291(5506): 989. Cho, M., R. Shohara, et al. (2000). "Policies on faculty conflicts of interest at US universities." JAMA 284(17): 2203-8. Davis, Michael and Andrew Stark (2001). Conflict of interests in the professions. Oxford University press. DeAngelis, C., P. Fontanarosa, et al. (2001). "Reporting financial conflicts of interest and relationships between investigators and research sponsors." JAMA 286(1): 89-91. Fowler R. (2006) Organization Conflict of Interests. Retrieved from http://www.oge.gov/uploadedFiles/Education/Education_Resources_for_Ethics_Official/Resources/Assets_NonSearchable/Breakout%2027%20Managing%20Organizational%Conflicts%20of%20Interest.pdf Friedberg, M., B. Saffran, et al. (1999). "Evaluation of Conflict of Interest in Economic Analyses of New Drugs Used in Oncology." JAMA 282(15): 1453-1457. Friedman, P. J. (2002). "The Impact of Conflict of Interest on Trust in Science." 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Retrieved from http://www.easc.noaa.gov/APG/Planning/Plan_Docs/Prevent%20OCI%20from%20Becoming%20Last%20Minute%20Showstoppers%20from%20NCMA%2001-08.pdf National Contract Management Association (2011) Organization Conflict of Interests. Retrieved from http://www.ncmasd.org/images/NCMA_Presentation_OCI_16FEB2011pdf Steinbrook, R. (2004). "Conflicts of Interest at the NIH -- Resolving the Problem." N Engl J 351(10): 955-957 Read More