A cross-country evaluation of cheating in academia: is it related to ‘real world’ business ethics?

Today’s economics and business students are expected to be our future’s business people and potentially our tomorrow’s economic leaders and politicians. Thus, their beliefs and practices are likely to affect the definition of acceptable economics and business ethics. The empirical evaluation of the cheating phenomenon in academia has been almost exclusively focused on the US context, and the non-US studies involve, in general, a narrow scope of countries. In the present paper we perform a wide cross-country study on the determinants of economics and business undergraduate cheating which involves 21 countries from the American (4), European (14), Africa (2) and Oceania (1) Continents and 7213 students. We found that the average magnitude of copying among the economics and business undergraduates is quite high (62%) but with a significant cross-country heterogeneity. The probability of cheating is significantly lower in students enrolled in schools located in the Nordic or the US plus British Isles blocks when compared with their South Europe counterparts; quite surprisingly that probability is also lower for the African block. Distinctly, students enrolled in schools from the Western and especially from the Eastern Europe observe statistically significant higher propensities for perpetrating academic fraud. Our findings further suggest that average cheating propensity in academia is significantly correlated with ‘real world’ business corruption.cheating; corruption; university; economics; business; countries

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The Geopolitics of Academic Plagiarism

This chapter uses Tönnies’ notions of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to examine the issue of plagiarism from a culturalist perspective. According to this, plagiarism is understood not as a universal or unequivocal evil, but as one component of a particular ethical system that took hold within a specific historical and social context, roughly contemporary with the European Enlightenment. Today, that ethical framework is so deeply entrenched in the power structures of the modern world that its values go largely unquestioned in countries at the centre of the world economic system. However, as we move away from the centre towards the periphery, we find that those values become weaker, and may enter into conflict with another moral code, which is usually more traditional in nature, though no less coherent. Indeed, in some parts of the world, it is those traditional values that actually hold sway in local universities, raising serious problems for academic mobility and the internationalization of knowledge. The very concept of plagiarism is also full of inherent contradictions, caused, at least in part, by historical tensions generated by the passage from one kind of society to the other. Vestiges of the Gemeinschaft continue to penetrate all aspects of modern university culture, ranging from teaching practices (the persistence of imitatio in academic writing courses) and hierarchical relations (the power balance inherent in the tutor/student dynamic) to the very philosophy of knowledge underlying modern science (where the rhetorical implications of the citation procedure sit uncomfortably alongside a metadiscourse of transcendental truth). Hence, this chapter argues that, in a context of increased globalization, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the various dynamics at work in this complex concept

The metaphorical understanding of power and authority

No abstract available

Honesty above all else? Expectations and perceptions of political conduct in three established democracies

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the ESRC (grant number RES-000-22-3459) and British Academy (grant numbers SG-101785 and SG-52322). They would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions

Economic philosophy of V.K.R.V. Rao

Prof. V.K.R.V. Rao falls in the line of great Indian leaders and scholars such as M.G. Ranade, Gandhiji, J.K. Mehta, who emphasised the human values and ethics in the discipline of economics. For him the nature and purpose of economic activity is different from what is prescribed in the conventional economics. By conventional economics we mean the mainstream economics inherited from the West. The present paper attempts to examine the economic philosophy of Rao in the light of his numerous works and the criticism leveled by him against the conventional economics.V.K.R.V. Rao; Indian Economic Thought; Ethics and economics; cooperation; the myth of consumers' sovereignty;Human factor in economic development.

EVALUATING THE LEVEL OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR BY QUANTITY SURVEYORS IN THE NIGERIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Construction industry is one of the main drivers of financial development in numerous countries not leaving out Nigeria. The industry faces a long rundown of ethics/moral difficulties identified with practices from its professionals. So therefore, the supposition study of this report demonstrated that there are basic conduct of concern with respect to unethical practices among Quantity Surveyors in Nigerian construction industry. The motivation behind this paper is to evaluate the level of unethical conduct among Quantity Surveyors by featuring most normal unethical conduct by Quantity Surveyors in their administrations conveyance in the Nigerian construction industry. Questionnaires enumerating 21 unethical practices by Quantity Surveyors which were sent to professionals in construction firms within the Nigerian construction industry to assess. Altogether, 114 legitimate reactions were investigated by mean item score and exploratory factor analysis. In view of the mean score, “Supplanting”, “Concealing of professional errors” and “Conflict of interest” are the most widely recognized unethical behaviour and conduct of Quantity Surveyors in their administrations conveyance in the investigation territory. From the aftereffects of factor analysis, six main practices were extracted, these are: Dishonesty, Insincerity, Financial mismanagement, Information leaking, Negligence, and Conflict of interest. While this study fills in as significant wellspring of reference for general learning on ethical behavior and moral conduct of Quantity surveyors in construction industry. The methodology utilized in this study can be replicated by different professionals in the construction industry like Architect, Contractors, Builders and the Engineers. This can likewise be duplicated in different areas for further studies.  Moreover, further studies may utilize more techniques in gathered the information. . For this study, only questionnaire survey is utilized. Using several techniques will make the outcomes more adaptable and precise. Method such as interview, comparing data and many more can be adopted, this may explore the connections between the principal factors and their related factors. This study has given valuable data with respect to unethical conduct by Quantity Surveyors. However, the restriction is characteristic in the number of respondents in the investigation which is constrained just to the exploration zone. This study will be important wellspring of reference for general learning on ethical conduct of Quantity surveyors in Nigerian construction industry for researchers and various stakeholders in the industry. This study will be advantageous to all relevant parties that associated with the construction industry extending from those engaged with scholastic research, understudy and experts in the construction industry. The result introduced in this study give adequate confirmation and valuable pointers to illuminate a few confusions about unethical conduct in the construction industry