Conflicts of interest in nowadays business - Essay Example

Primary interests include all the responsibilities a person has at work depending on his/her kind of activity. Secondary interests are personal purposes and wishes such as making career, money making, doing favors for relatives. Certainly, financial motives are the most widespread causes of conflict of interest occurrence. Actually, personal interests are natural as all the people have them; however, they can easily become obnoxious in case if their motivation becomes stronger in comparison with primary interests’ motivation.

The conflict of interest may be frequently present in the dormant form, but it turns into the real conflict when the person is really strongly influenced by secondary interests. Thus, there is a notion “conflict in a conflict of interests”. It appears in case when the risk of acting following secondary interests is present. More general interpretation of conflict of interest states that it is the circumstances in which a person or a company uses the official authorities for personal advantage.

Actually, only the presence of conflict of interest is not considered as bad behavior as this is natural that employees or executives do have conflict of interest sometimes. . Really, as it was explained above, conflict of interest may be present but the fact of misdeed may be absent at the same time. Here it is essential to introduce the notion of “conflict of roles” when a person has two roles at once and they are conflicting. For example, he/she may have governmental position and may own stock at the same time.

Such differing of roles sometimes can lead to misdeed and misuse. Conflicts of interests may have different forms. The first form is self-dealing conflict of interest when an individual who is working in one company has a deal with the individual from another company for his own advantage. The second form is connected to the conflict of roles when a person has two jobs and the interests of one contradict the interests of another. The next form is related to family interests when a person may give to his/her relative a desired and prestigious job or an individual may buy something from the company his relative works in.

Another popular form is making presents to a person who you work with. One of the important purposes of political ethics is to regulate the conflicts of interests, because the primary task of governmental officials is to provide public service not taking into account their personal interests. “Where a conflict exists, it should be dealt with in a transparent and accountable way. Even the mere perception that a conflict of interest has influenced an outcome can undermine public confidence in an organization’s integrity.

  Having a clear policy which details specific reporting procedures and staff who are fully aware of their obligations to disclose any conflicts of interest are effective ways of ensuing that they are handled appropriately, before they give rise to