Managing Conflicts of Interest in the Public Sector

Managing conflicts of interests is a means for preventing corruption and increasing public transparency, efficiency, accountability and trust. Every public agent /employee may face a conflict of private and public interest, and hence, conflict of interests does not necessarily equal corruption. These situations must be transparent and managed correctly. Many countries have laws on the management of conflict of interests but there is no special law on this matter in Iranian legal system; some general and traditional laws have, by way of combating corruption, explicit or implicit references to this concept. Recently, there is political will for management of conflict of interests situations and a Draft-bill by The Government is prepared, and, some general laws such as Code of Commerce are amended. These legal initiatives seems to be less based on rasions d etre of management of conflict of interests and its techniques and methods. Therefore, this article intends, based on comparative study, to firstly conceptualize the concept of conflict of interests and then explains theoretical foundations of it , and, finally, main areas of conflict of interests and their methods of management.