Interest and commitment
The University of Oregon is in the process of re-working its COI policy, which apparently is focused primarily on managing financial conflicts of interest; the University has taken the decision to separate this from discussions about conflict of commitment. The following story — Questions of conflict confront professors — does a nice job of working through some of the reasons for such a separation in a policy. I think three issues are worth noting:
1) dealing with financial COI related to research is a challenge, particularly with regards to determining what financial threshold actually constitutes an undue enducement or COI.
2) there are other non-financial interests that can bias judgements, research etc. and these should be addressed in a COI policy.
3) it is important to also think and talk openly about the diversity of roles that professors and researchers have (or should have) in an academic institution. How much time can a prof legitimately spend doing outside activities (and what are these?) that are or are not linked to their position as a prof? In many institutions, serving on outside committees, doing public outreach, etc. is a legitimate and even required part of one’s academic responsibility. So in order to see whether there is a conflict of commitment, its critical to have a clear sense of the types of activities, and the amount of time involved, that profs can and should engage in, and where their priorities should be.
Whether the issues of conflict of interest and conflict of commitment should be in separate policies is an open question, to my mind. They key is that such policies be written in a manner that is accessible and relevant to the broad university community, and is practial in helping faculty, administrative staff and other identify and manage conflicts.