Governance
In South Africa, CECS operates as both a Registered Non-Private Company and a Non-Profit Organisation. The activities of this organisation are governed by its Constitution, Memorandum, and Articles of Association. While one of CECS’s objectives is to promote research on policy-related issues, the organisation does not adopt any institutional policy positions nor does it endorse specific political parties. CECS research may present various perspectives on policy; however, neither the Trustees of the Non-Profit Organisation nor those of the Company conduct prior reviews of its publications. The opinions articulated in the published research are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of CECS.
To enhance oversight in critical areas and allow the full Board to focus on strategic matters, two sub-committees of Trustees have been established. These are the Finance, Audit, and Risk Committee (FARCo) and the Appointments and Remuneration Committee (ARCo).
Code of Conduct for Researchers
The Centre’s code of conduct addresses issues of ethics and disclosure of interests.
1. The treatment of ethical issues within the code of conduct is predicated on six fundamental principles of ethical research that should be addressed whenever applicable:
2. Research must strive to maximize benefits for individuals and society while minimizing risks and harms.
3. The rights and dignity of individuals and groups must be respected.
4. Participation should, whenever feasible, be voluntary and adequately informed.
5. Research must be conducted with integrity and transparency.
6. Clear definitions of lines of responsibility and accountability must be established.
7. The independence of research must be preserved; in instances where conflicts of interest are unavoidable, they should be explicitly disclosed.
To effectively implement these principles, the following eight practices should be adopted:
8. The principal investigator and the respective research or employing organization bear the responsibility for conducting research in accordance with the relevant principles.
9. The researcher or the research organization that holds an award with CECS, or who is coordinating collaborative research involving multiple organizations, is responsible for ensuring that the research undergoes appropriate ethics review, approval, and monitoring.
10. Research organizations are required to establish clear, transparent, appropriate, and effective procedures for ethics review, approval, and governance whenever necessary.
11. Efforts should be made to minimize risks.
12. Research designs must ensure that the dignity and autonomy of research participants are respected and protected at all times.
13. Research should be developed in a manner that ensures participants are not harmed at any stage.
14. Ethics reviews must always be proportional to the potential risks involved, whether they pertain to primary or secondary data.
15. While the secondary use of certain datasets may be relatively uncontroversial and may require only minimal ethics review, novel applications of existing data, especially data linkage, as well as specific uses of administrative and secure data will present ethical challenges. Research involving primary data collection will inevitably raise ethical considerations that must be thoroughly addressed.
Conflicts of Interest and Disclosure
The Centre’s Disclosure Policy mandates the reporting of funding sources as well as any “material and relevant” external financial activities related to a specific research paper. The key points are as follows:
1. The source of funding for the research must be acknowledged at the beginning of the research paper.
2. Researchers are required to disclose any significant financial relationships that pertain to their research. This may include employment, consulting, or ownership ties with firms that could be significantly influenced by the research outcomes.
3. Disclosure requirements are specific to both the author and the project: a researcher may have relationships pertinent to one project but not to another. The obligation to disclose applies to relationships that have been active in the preceding three years. Additionally, financial relationships involving spouses and partners must also be disclosed.
4. All co-authors of papers disseminated through CECS, including those not affiliated with CECS, are obligated to adhere to the disclosure policy.