مصطفی رنجبر کبوترخانی

Conflict of Interest is a familiar phenomenon among Public Administration experts yet research wise, it has not received much attention. While government officials are accused of corruption and having Conflicts of Interest more than any other individual, research shows that only 1% of Conflict-of-Interest studies has been devoted to investigating the subject in the field of Public Administration. A Conflict of Interest occurs when an official is forced to choose between carrying out his/her administrative duties or following his/her personal interests. These interests include an individual’s financial or non-financial interests as well as the financial and non-financial interests of his/her relatives or friends. The research method of this article is based on citation analysis and drawing a citation network. The findings show that Sah, Moore, Loewenstein, and Cain are key experts in the field. The study of Cain et al (2005) is the key one that has the most relevance to other studies in this field and the study of Miller (2001) is also central which has been cited a lot. American Journal of Bioethics, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology are esteemed scientific journals that have been most benefited from publications, communications, and citations, respectively. Ethics is the concept that has been co-occurrence with the conflict of interest. This means that a conflict of interest is inherently a normative and behavioral concept. Finally, it should be noted that given the results of this research, the concept of Conflict of Interest will remain a foundation for corruption in governments and public organizations if Public Administration experts and scholars remain as inattentive to the issue as before. Research into Conflict of Interest has been mainly focused on normative and behavioral approaches which means that there is a need for new researchers taking new approaches to break out of this cycle.