Managing Conflict of Interest - Organisation for Economic Co ...

Chapter 4Codes of conduct in thepublic sectorCodes of conduct are a useful tool used throughout the worldto establish standards for ethical and appropriate behavior in publicadministration. Many countries have incorporated targetedprovisions into their constitutions, their laws, or public administrationemployee handbooks and training activities. In this chapter,practitioners from the People’s Republic of China (P.R. China) andAustralia provide two different but equally successful approachesto implementing a code of conduct to guide their respective countries’public sector employees.As noted earlier, prevailing social, cultural, political, and economicnorms affect the extent to which conflicts—apparent, potential,or real—are dealt with in various countries. Prevailing normsalso determine what approaches—formal or informal—may provemost effective. Song Dajun, Deputy Director General for AdministrativeSupervision and Inspection with the Ministry of Supervisionin P.R. China, relates his country’s top-down centralized approachdesigned around a series of control and compliance mechanisms,while Mike Jones, Senior Executive Advisor with the AustralianPublic Service Commission (APSC) based in Jakarta, describes theprinciples-and-values-based approach enforced through a workplacemanagement framework guiding the APS.These examples demonstrate how political, social, and culturalmores influence how conflict of interest is perceived and handled.P.R. China’s code of conduct emphasizes what public sector employeesmust not do, whereas Australia’s code of conduct emphasizeswhat public sector employees must do. While vastly differentapproaches, both offer effective examples of how to implementand enforce a code of conduct to prevent conflicts of interest fromoccurring in the public sector.ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific