The type of conflicts of interest that Jennings and others who follow her research note are rampant all over the reservation. These include hiring relatives, supervising relatives, using property that belongs to the company (or tribe) as if it is one's own. People knew "in their gut" that behavior was wrong, but they just didn't say anything about it. In the cases of the companies Jennings studied, they lent hundreds of millions of dollars to their own CEOs and other high officers, spent millions of dollars of company money on their own apartments, houses or vehicles, hired unqualified friends and relatives, elevated them to high positions where they simply agreed with whatever the CEO said.
A hundred years ago, Indians considered themselves more ethical, less materialistic than the Europeans. Is this true today? In the Joe the Tribal Worker section of our Ethical Questions forum, we have had many examples posted of tribal employees who use tribal travel funds for an all-expense paid vacation, hire relatives as school employees, even when it means a worse education for the children, being paid thousands of dollars extra for work that was part of their job.
A conflict of interest occurs when you have one interest, for example, helping your family, which conflicts with another interest, for example, making the best use of the tribe's money and being fair to all of your employees. When you hire a relative for a position who is not very qualified to do the job, that serves your interest in helping your family, but it hurts your interests in getting the best performance for the budget you have, treating your employees fairly and giving your clients or customers the best service.
Jennings talks about an atmosphere of back-scratching, favoritism and nepotism that leads to unresolved conflicts. Again, we read about this in the Ethical Questions Forum all the time, with discussions of "ghost workers" who draw a paycheck but only come to work a few times a week - or month - but no one says anything because they have relatives on the tribal council, or
"they are on a board that oversees my relative's program and I don't want my son (or sister or husband) to have trouble at their job and maybe get fired."
If you live on the reservation and this doesn't sound familiar, you just haven't been paying attention.