Let’s distinguish some legal conflict of interest moral conflict of interest
I think that what I described was not a legal conflict of interest, which would be where a senior staff member is faced with a decision that could benefit them.[1] IMO EAs should consider it necessary but not sufficient to avoid these.
I would call a moral conflict of interest any situation in which a senior member is faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isn’t in the best interest of the organisation for which they work. IMO these should also be avoided, or at least recognised as a serious cost to weigh against the upsides. Such situations put the staff in situations where it’s extremely difficult to recognise from the outside whether the decision process was really for the greater good, or a rationalisation. They seem at high risk of biasing support strongly towards the pet projects of the decisionmakers at the expense of many smaller projects that continually struggle for funding.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OP’s behalf. Asterisk is perhaps a similar example. If anyone else in the community had suggested ‘an EA magazine sponsored webzine’ I suspect it would have really struggled to get traction.
faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isn’t in the best interest of the organisation for which they work.
That’s already how I was using the term, fwiw.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OP’s behalf.
It sounds like maybe you’re saying you think there’s fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the
funds a lot of things at EVF and what’s best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally. It would be bad for OP if they granted money to EVF which then went to do things that OP didn’t want to be supporting, and having board representation is a way to make that less likely.
It sounds like maybe you’re saying you think there’s fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the funds a lot of things at EVF and what’s best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
Yeah, that sounds right. When you’re a senior staff member at an organisation you are, in some sense, supposed to be optimising for the health of that org. On this understanding you’re the senior staff member at multiple orgs you’re then supposed to be optimising for multiple variables, which isn’t logically possible.
Obviously you can optimise for some function of the two, but this involves a lot more subjective judgement, so a) could more easily go wrong without any bad faith, and b) it can obfuscate genuinely bad faith decisions (such as prioritising support for an org with which you’re associated because it gives you greater social status) - even to the people making them.
I don’t assert (or think) anyone at EVF is acting in seriously bad faith, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I think we should assume a) non-0 probability that they sometimes do so in minor ways and b) that if they continue to stay in a position that incentivises them to do so the risk will continue to increase.
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally.
It doesn’t ‘miss’ it. I understand there are other considerations—they’re discussed everywhere; I’m just stating that there exists this downside which isn’t discussed nearly as much, and doesn’t seem to be acknowledged by the people it applies to.
I guess I could see it that way, but this is a pretty non-central CoI. My understanding is EVF took on an OP staff member as a board member because both EVF and OP wanted to be more closely aligned. They understand that the orgs have somewhat different interests, and by putting someone in a position to embody both they’re pulling the two orgs closer together.
Let’s distinguish some legal conflict of interest moral conflict of interest
I think that what I described was not a legal conflict of interest, which would be where a senior staff member is faced with a decision that could benefit them.[1] IMO EAs should consider it necessary but not sufficient to avoid these.
I would call a moral conflict of interest any situation in which a senior member is faced with a decision where they have an incentive to do something that isn’t in the best interest of the organisation for which they work. IMO these should also be avoided, or at least recognised as a serious cost to weigh against the upsides. Such situations put the staff in situations where it’s extremely difficult to recognise from the outside whether the decision process was really for the greater good, or a rationalisation. They seem at high risk of biasing support strongly towards the pet projects of the decisionmakers at the expense of many smaller projects that continually struggle for funding.
Wytham Abbey seems like an example of this, if as I understand members of the EVF board were involved in the decision making on OP’s behalf. Asterisk is perhaps a similar example. If anyone else in the community had suggested ‘an EA magazine sponsored webzine’ I suspect it would have really struggled to get traction.
Possibly this is a ‘conflict of loyalty’? I haven’t found much around the legal term.
That’s already how I was using the term, fwiw.
It sounds like maybe you’re saying you think there’s fundamentally a conflict of interest in having someone from OP on the EVF board, because OP is the funds a lot of things at EVF and what’s best for EVF could be different from what OP wants?
This misses why OP would want to have one of their employees on the EVF board: they are providing so much funding to EVF I expect they want someone to formally represent them internally. It would be bad for OP if they granted money to EVF which then went to do things that OP didn’t want to be supporting, and having board representation is a way to make that less likely.
Yeah, that sounds right. When you’re a senior staff member at an organisation you are, in some sense, supposed to be optimising for the health of that org. On this understanding you’re the senior staff member at multiple orgs you’re then supposed to be optimising for multiple variables, which isn’t logically possible.
Obviously you can optimise for some function of the two, but this involves a lot more subjective judgement, so a) could more easily go wrong without any bad faith, and b) it can obfuscate genuinely bad faith decisions (such as prioritising support for an org with which you’re associated because it gives you greater social status) - even to the people making them.
I don’t assert (or think) anyone at EVF is acting in seriously bad faith, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I think we should assume a) non-0 probability that they sometimes do so in minor ways and b) that if they continue to stay in a position that incentivises them to do so the risk will continue to increase.
It doesn’t ‘miss’ it. I understand there are other considerations—they’re discussed everywhere; I’m just stating that there exists this downside which isn’t discussed nearly as much, and doesn’t seem to be acknowledged by the people it applies to.
I guess I could see it that way, but this is a pretty non-central CoI. My understanding is EVF took on an OP staff member as a board member because both EVF and OP wanted to be more closely aligned. They understand that the orgs have somewhat different interests, and by putting someone in a position to embody both they’re pulling the two orgs closer together.