Introduction The Nevada Research Hospital was founded in 1991 to be a research center aimed primarily at developing and testing new cancer drugs and treatment regimes. The hospital is housed in the Neovida Center, in Memphis Tennessee; and its establishment was funded by the New-Life Fund set up a decade earlier by private philanthropists for cancer research. The hospital started as a small facility housed in a single building and with an entire staff comprising of twenty people only. The center continued to grow in both size and stature; influenced both by increased funding and better articulation of the research agenda. Today, the hospital has a workforce of over 1,500 employees; and the annual budget for the fiscal year 2008 was over $140 million. The focus of the center is research into the various aspects of cancer; including the causes, pathology, and possible means of treatment (See Appendix 1). This research is carried out in the facility’s laboratories and by the senior scientists (including physicians) who are permanently based there. Additionally, the center hosts researchers from other institutions who take advantage of the technical and human resources available; and who are adequately funded and have research agendas congruent to the center. The hospital has a capacity of over 300 beds, devoted entirely to the treatment and care of cancer patients. However, the hospital also has an emergency department to cater for the acute care cases that may arise in the surrounding community; this however only serves adequately insured patients. On average, the hospital admits over 3,000 patients every year; and approximately 30,000 patients are treated on an outpatient basis during the same period. Over the years, the center has been recognized for its major contributions to the knowledge of various neoplastic conditions; and other medical conditions and has received numerous awards for the same. The day-to-day activities are administered by the Hospital Management Board (HMB) whose members are drawn from heads of the various departments; and are chaired by one of the members, the Executive Director (ED), elected on an annual basis. The ED reports and is a member of the Board of Trustees. The latter is made up of appointees from the various endowment funds and honorary members from the academic and medical fraternity, and functions mainly to set the research agenda for the hospital. The board also vets the appointments of senior researchers. The board is chaired by the New-Life Fund representative; whose appointment is left to the fund’s discretion and who serves as the Hospital President. Problem statement There is a problem in the relationship between the Hospital Management Board and the Board of Trustees vis-à-vis both the selection of the research partners and the usurping of the HMB power by members of the BOT. The Problem Recently, a problem has arisen over the testing of an experimental drug on 200 cancer patients. Many of those who enrolled in the program from 2006 were severely ill, and most had died by late 2008. In addition, results from earlier tests by another institution showed that the drug had lower efficacy than earlier suggested; and that treatment with the drug offered little or no hope for patients with advanced stages of cancer, the main target for its development. The main point of conflict, however, wa