Spotting Conflicts of Interest Essay

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Ability to Spot Conflicts

The modern society is characterized by numerous issues on ethics, especially in the increasingly competitive business environment. Corporate scandals have become common in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, which raises concerns regarding ethics. The increase in corporate scandals in these sectors is partly attributable to the relatively deteriorating ethical standards in the society. While nonprofits are generally considered to be uncorrupted by the desire for profit, recent events have demonstrated that they are vulnerable to ethical lapses that undermine the public’s trust in the entire sector. A critical aspect of these corporate scandals in the non-profit sector is conflict of interest. There seems to be a conflict of interest in the operations of nonprofits and involvement of some of their stakeholders in corporate scandals.

Conflict of interest is a major issue in the modern business environment given its strong link to corporate scandals and ethical issues in the society. As shown in this course so far, identifying conflict of interests is a crucial element in the human resources management. The course has not only shaped my understanding of the significance of conflict of interest, but also given me an opportunity to examine/test my ability to spot conflict of interest. Generally, a conflict of interest is defined as anything that hinders an individual or organization’s ability to act in an impartial manner and in the best interest of others.

I tested my ability to crush conflict of interest based on the quiz provided at Mentoring Canada (2005) and correctly crushed the conflict of interest in six out of the eight situations.

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Based on this score, the quiz indicated that I have a relatively good ability to spot conflicts of interests that could result in a corporate scandal for a non-profit organization. This quiz showed that I have a good ability to identify situations where board members of a non-profit organization act in a partial rather than impartial manner. In this case, I was able to correctly spot situations where the board member’s action could prevent the organization to act in an impartial manner and in the best interest of the organization.

My quiz on business ethics also enabled me to understand that I have the ability to determine whether board members demonstrate accountability in all their decisions and actions. Accountability is one of the most important aspects towards identifying and addressing conflicts of interest in business. Accountability ambiguity is one of the root causes of conflict of interests in nonprofit organizations (Williams & Taylor, 2012). The ambiguity emerges from the complexities in balancing the relationship between legitimacy and accountability. In nearly all the situations presented in the quiz, the potential conflict of interest was attributable to accountability ambiguity. Moreover, accountability ambiguity in each of these situations was attributable to the multi-stakeholder nature of their organizational environment. Therefore, the….....

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"Spotting Conflicts Of Interest" (2017, September 27) Retrieved June 6, 2025, from
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