A matter of institutional culture
January 30th, 2009
In my experience, I’ve noted that there’s often an assumption by many that COI are about individual misbehaviour. The following story about state of Arizona’s Attorney General’s Office investigating a Tuscon area school board about dubious procurement practices — AG report chastises TUSD on purchases — shows how COI can be a problem of institutional culture.
According to the report (cited in the news story)
“This is not a case of one rogue employee and a dishonest vendor corrupting a single district procurement,” the report said. “Multiple district employees and administrators took part in these activities and others looked the other way while district policies and state and federal laws were ignored.”
