Hi,

I'm new to the list and have been reading all of the responses.  Having seen
this before in a previous position, there were a couple things I learned that
may apply here.  First of all, as an independent contractor (consultant to
some folks), the individual would not be "hired" in the conventional sense,
but rather, would be "engaged" to perform a service.  In other words, this
isn't an employment situation, but a procurement.  This may not be an
important distinction to some, but to me, it acknowledges that there should
be no employer/employee relationship created as a result of using an
independent contractor. The second point then is that there should be no
supervision by the PI of any of the work to be performed and, accordingly,
there should be no need to assign anyone else to "supervise" the spouse.
With this in mind, I believe there is definitely an appearance of a conflict
of interest, but if it can be reasonably proven that the spouse is the best
person for the job and if the relationship created is properly disclosed and
managed via your institutional COI policy, the PI should be able to proceed.
Hope this helps a bit.

Franc

Francois D. Lemire, Director
Research Administration
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
100 Institute Road
Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Tel. (508) 831-5359
Fax. (508) 831-5789
Web: http://www.wpi.edu/Admin/Research/

________________________________

From: Research Administration List on behalf of Susan B Metosky
Sent: Fri 11/19/2004 12:20 PM
To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
Subject: [RESADM-L] Conflict of interest?

Good afternoon,
I was wondering if any universities have conflict of interests policies
that address the following type of scenario.

A PI wants to hire his spouse to be a consultant on a grant that he
received. The PI claims that his spouse is one of the experts in the field.

Would your institution view this as a conflict of interest, and if so, how
would you address this issue?

Susan

Susan Metosky, MPH
Research Compliance Coordinator
2035 Hughes Hall
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529
Telephone: 757-683-3686
Fax: 757-683-5902
xxxxxx@odu.edu

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 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
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