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Abstract
Since the passage of Bayh-Doyle, universities increasingly participate in academic capitalist behaviors as they seek to connect to and increase revenue from various markets. This behavior leads to increasingly close relationships between universities and industry. In addition, academic capitalism has influenced faculty governance, structures, and incentives as institutional managers increasingly seek to monitor, manage, and control faculty work. Another result of the new behavior is an increased problem with conflicts of interest. Universities employ individual and institutional conflict of interest policies and procedures in order to mitigate and manage these conflicts. In general, the conflicts policies rely on voluntary disclosure and institutional management in order to properly function. High level trustees or trustees often are required to disclose potential conflicts to each other for management. Faculty members and researchers must disclose their individual conflicts to institutional managers so that these administrators can mandate management. Regardless of the specific policies and procedures, institutional and individual conflicts of interest can become litigious. Such litigation may come about for various reasons. For example, at the institutional level, a trustee or administrator may ignore the conflicts policy so that they may increase individual or corporate wealth. Accordingly, they may sue or be sued for damages incurred due to their non-compliance. In addition, a faculty member may be punished by a university for having an undisclosed conflict or alleging that a colleague or administrator has an undisclosed conflict of interest. The disciplined faculty member may sue alleging a violation of their Freedom of Speech, defamation, or intentional interference with a contract. This study examines case law where university conflicts of interest are a major issue. In doing so, the study utilizes academic capitalism and managed professionals as primary theoretical and conceptual lenses. The study concludes that university administrators are strategically managing faculty work and conflicts of interest management is a part of that phenomenon. In addition, traditional conflict management (e.g. case-by-case disclosure and management) does not prevent conflicts of interest from becoming litigious, at either the institutional or individual levels.