Social Responsibility, Professional Ethics, and Management

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference

2010 Ankara, Turkey, 24–27 November 2010

PERCEPTION OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR AMONG BUSINESS

STUDIES STUDENTS

Suzana Sedmak
University of Primorska, Slovenia
suzana.sedmak@fm-kp.si

Bojan Nastav
University of Primorska, Slovenia
bojan.nastav@fm-kp.si

ABSTRACT

Business practices are in terms of global economic crisis under greater scrutiny than
probably ever before. Unethical business practices have been identified as key
catalysts of the economic crisis. Today's business students will enter the workplace in
the next years and will need to define their ethical stance as business persons and key
decision makers in the future. The present study focuses on the management students'
perceptions and attitudes toward some ethically questionable practices with a special
attention to the cheating in the academic setting. The results of our study show there
are no statistically significant differences between male and female students with
respect to their evaluation of various activities from ethical point of view. On the
other hand, employed students are stricter than full-time students with respect to
judging activity as ethically unacceptable – leaving the chance that future managers
will react more in line with ethical guidelines.

Keywords: ethics, management, students, business-studies, cheating

INTRODUCTION

Business practices in the past few years have been under great scrutiny by the public,
the government and other stakeholders. The global, world economic crisis came about
with vast impacts on the population, workforce and business. Unethical business
practices have been put on display and identified as the key factors in the economic
crisis. The management is (supposedly) driven by profit-making motive and this
leaves very little room for other aspects, such as ethics. While with the global

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economic crisis the public consensus on the unethical behaviour of management and
business people reached the peak, the unethical behaviour in business has been highly
debated and covered topic in Slovenian media (at least) since the Slovenian
independence in 1991. Following the proclamation of independence from Yugoslavia
and the constitution of the Republic of Slovenia extensive political, social and
economic changes took place. The transition from the socialist country to the
capitalist market system was marked by privatization processes which were very often
characterized as "wild" privatization of the formerly socially owned companies by
which the new economic elite taking the advantage of the lax supervision and
inadequate legislation was constituted. One type of the "side effects" was often
massive dismissals of the employees. Many unethical practices by the managers (who
very often later transformed to the owners) were identified, however (mostly due to
the inadequate legislation) rarely these were characterized as illegal and/or properly
addressed, i.e. prosecuted.

We could claim that (also) this specific Slovenian context gave rise to a general
perception of the business and management as highly unethical. As if (from the point
of view of business) business does not need to consider the ethical character of the
choices made. De George refers to "the myth of the amoral business" (De George,
2006) where business is perceived as incongruous with ethics. It is not seen as
immoral but amoral – it has simply nothing to do with ethics and the primary concern
of business is profit. When referring to business ethics many would claim that it is an
oxymoron – business and ethics being seen as contradictory terms that do not interfere
with each other. After the global expansion of the economic crises many claims were
posed for the rethinking of the ethical standards in the corporate contexts and for the
status of the professional ethics to be redefined.

Tomorrow's business leaders and today's business students are subjects of our
research. Growing, learning, studying and developing themselves in the above-
sketched context they will need to define their ethical stance as business persons in
the future. The present study focuses on the management students' perceptions and
attitudes toward some ethically questionable practices with a special attention to the
cheating in the academic setting.1 Namely, some studies indicate that cheating in the
academic setting indicates the inclination towards cheating in the business context
after graduation. Furthermore, we aim at identifying possible differences among
different groups with respect to gender, age, level of study, and employment (full-
time students or part-time, employed students), and whether employed are on the
management positions.

1
The presented study forms a part of a larger study which examined the management students'
perceptions of the ethics in business and management.

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In order to achieve this aim we have conducted a survey at Faculty of management

Koper (University of Primorska, Slovenia). A convenience sampling procedure in
groups was applied, where classes at different levels and in different years of study
have been used as groups. With the use of a self-administered questionnaire their
attitudes toward some aspects of the ethics in management and business as well as
perceptions/evaluations of some ethically questionable situations were assessed. (In
the questionnaire, their perception of different activities with respect to being
(un)ethical was checked.)

Grounded on some previous research (listed later in the paper) we assume that
students that are employed have a higher standard of ethics than full-time students.
Furthermore, we hypothesise that being employed in the management has no clear
effect on the assessment of whether the listed activities are ethical or not. On the other
hand, we propose that age- and gender-wise differences are present: older and women
are more harsh on listed activities as being unethical.

The rest of the paper is structured as following: next section provides an insight into
previous research and related studies involving business students and aspects of
ethical behaviour/attitudes. Section three focuses on our research, presenting data and
methodology used, and lists main findings of the work. Section four concludes.

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF BUSINESS STUDENTS

Students' attitudes toward different ethic aspects of the business world and their ethics
beliefs have been researched in different studies. Special attention has been given to
the students of the business schools – to future employees and leaders in the business
sphere. Researches range from assessing students' attitudes and perceptions of the
business world to (some concrete) ethical aspects of their behaviour; in the latter
context cheating in the academic setting has been widely studied. As Lawson argues,
students' beliefs of ethical behaviour in the business world are important, since their
"perceptions of what constitutes ethical behaviour, whether accurate or not, will
influence the actions they take once they enter the business world" (Lawson, 2004).

Although cheating in academic setting is widespread and could not be limited to

business schools, several studies report business students being more prone to
cheating and using different dishonest practices while studying. McCabe and others
concluded from an extensive multicampus research, where the data where collected
from 5,000 United States and Canada business and non-business graduate students,
that "business students cheat more than their non-business peers" (McCabe et al,
2006). As far as the 1964 Bowers reported higher level of cheating among business
students in comparison to the non-business students; in his survey comprising 99

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campuses 66% of the business students reported cheating while the overall student
average was 50% (Bowers, 1964, in: McCabe and others, 2006). Another study in
1997 by McCabe revealed that 84% ob business students reported one or more serious
incidents of cheating (66% was the average for all students that participated in the
research) (McCabe, 1997). In a recent study Chapman and colleagues reported higher
level of cheating practices among marketing majors in comparison to other business
students (Chapman et al., 2004). Also Smyth and others concluded from their survey
results of almost 800 students that "non-business majors, on average, are more ethical
than business majors" (Smyth et al., 2009). While in another recent study comprising
286 students Klein and others could not confirm that cheating behaviour was more
evident with business students, they did however find out that business students'
"attitudes on what constitutes cheating are more lax than those of other professional
school students" (Klein et al., 2007). Luthy and colleagues report on a study done
with the college freshmen that business major students when compared to their peers
with non-business major show "lower familiarity with a number of moral perspectives
and ethical principles" (Luthy et al., 2009).

While not denying the alarming figures about the academic dishonesty, even more
concerns arise when considering some evidence suggesting that cheating in college is
related to cheating in the real life, workplace context (cf. Lawson, 2004, Chapman,
2004, Harding et al., 2004). Sims discovered a correlation between students' cheating
in academic setting and in the workplace setting. In an exploratory study Harding and
colleagues found out that "there is a relationship between self-reported rates of
cheating in high school and decisions to cheat in college and to violate workplace
policies" (Harding et al., 2004) and further concluding that encouraging ethical
behaviour in the academic setting might have positive effects on the "future ethical
decision-making in workplace settings" (ibid.). Lawson's results of the study indicated
a very strong relationship "between students’ propensity to engage in unethical
behaviour in an academic setting and their attitude toward such behaviour in the
business world" (ibid.). He found out that students who

cheat on exams or who plagiarize papers were more likely to be accepting of the need
for unethical behaviour in the workplace than those who did not engage in academic
dishonesty. /…/ Specifically, the "cheaters" are more likely to believe it is acceptable
to lie to a potential employer on an employment application and to believe it is
acceptable to use insider information when buying and selling stocks. In addition,
they were more likely to believe that they would have to compromise their ethical
standards in order to advance their careers, and were less likely to believe that people
in the business world generally act in an ethical manner or that good ethics is good
business. From these results it is clear that students’ propensity to cheat in school and
their beliefs regarding ethical behaviour in the business world are very much related.
(Lawson, 2004, 195-196)

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Different studies tried to find out whether differences existed in ethical

perceptions/behaviours/attitudes among different student categories; does gender, age,
employment etc. affect "ethical characteristics" of these subcategories? There were
many reports on correlation between gender and perceptions of ethical behaviour or
attitudes toward acting ethically. Lawson (2004) reports "gender as a significant
variable with regard to perceptions regarding ethical behaviour." In his research
"women held, on average, more ethical beliefs than men" (ibid.). Alleyne and others
(2010) found in their study that men "possessed more unethical intentions" than
women in decision making (ibid.). Chapman and Lupton (2004) in their study
compared some aspects of academic integrity of business students in United States
and Hong Kong and came to an interesting finding; in the US sample gender
differences were evident whereas in the Hong Kong sample they did not find any
statistically significant gender-related difference. For the US sample they assessed
that "American male business students were more likely to be academically dishonest
than female business students" (Chapman and Lupton, 2004). Smyth and others
(2009) also reported female students to be more ethical than male students as well as
Gupta and colleagues whose study indicated that "female students were more likely to
behave ethically than male students" (Gupta et al., 2009). Female business students as
survey participants in a study conducted by Albaum and Peterson were "slightly but
significantly more ethically inclined than male survey participants" (Albaum and
Peterson, 2006). In a cross-national study comprising students from Australia,
Singapore and Hong Kong Phau and Kea found significant gender-wise differences;
however, contrary to some of the above mentioned studies, males proved indicated a
higher level of ethical attitudes when compared to females (Phau and Kea, 2006).

Regarding age-wise differences among (business) students, Lawson reports from his
research that "an ethical maturation process occurs as students progress through
school" (Lawson, 2004). On the other hand Gupta and others do not report in their
study age to have any impact on the ethical behaviour of the students (Gupta et al.,
2009). Alleyne and others concluded that age "is shown to be important variable when
assessing the ethical status of individuals" from the results indicating that older
students (over 35 years) were less likely to view the ethically questionable situations
as entailing an ethical problem when compared to younger students (16–20 years
group) (Alleyne et al., 2010). Smyth and colleagues report older students have higher
ethical perceptions when compared to younger students (Smythe et al., 2009). In a
study on cheating among business students Klein and others report that the younger
the students were, the higher the level of the cheating was (Klein et al, 2006).

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ETHICS PERCEPTION AMONG STUDENTS

In line with the literature review we have designed our study as to measure business
students’ perception of various activities, both in everyday life and in academic
environment, and to identify possible differences among students with respect to
various features, such as gender, level of study, and employment status.

Data and methodology

In the paper we focus on students at all levels and years of study at Faculty of
management Koper at University of Primorska, Slovenia (UP FM). The faculty has
approximately 1,800 students and we have applied the convenience sampling at the
level of groups: levels (under and postgraduate), years (first, second and third, and
first and second, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, respectively), classes
(undergraduate students in each year are divided into three groups). Once the group
was selected, all the students in the group were surveyed. In such a manner our final
sample comprised 389 students, which is more than one fifth of all the students,
indicating that our results have good representativeness grounds.

Our sample consisted of 133 male and 259 female students with age ranging from 18
to 53 year, averaging just over 27 years. The distribution of sample according to age
is represented in Figure 1. The age is (expectedly) positively skewed (asymmetric)
with the majority of students in the lower-age groups.

Figure 1: Distribution of sample with respect to age of students

Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

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Our sample also consisted of 230 undergraduate and 159 postgraduate students (3 of
the latter did not state their year of study), with years of their study as depicted in the
following table.

Table 1: Students in year of study at undergraduate and postgraduate levels

Year 1st 2nd 3rd Total

Level
Undergraduate 119 93 18 230
Postgraduate 60 84 12 156
Total 179 177 30 386
Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

In the sample 204 students said they did not have the job (were not employed) and
183 stated they were employed (2 did not report their status in this manner).

If we take and study the differences in (average) age between employed and regular
students, we can see that full-time students are on average just over 22 years, whereas
employed have an average age of almost 34 years, and the latter have a much higher
variability (see Table 2). Independent samples t-test has a value of -22.106 and with
over 200 degrees of freedom this means that the difference in the average age
between employed and full-time students is statistically significant with P-value =
0.000: we can conclude that full-time students are on average younger than employed
students.

Table 2: Number of students, their average age and age standard deviation

Number Mean Standard deviation

Full-time students 204 21.22 1.953
Employed students 180 33.82 7.424
Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

Furthermore, studying only those that work we see that out of 183 employed, 63
worked in the management, 118 not in the management, and 2 did not report their
level of employment. This distribution over gender is revealed in the following table,
clearly indicating (and supported by Pearson’s Chi Square test) that there is no
significant difference between males and females (among UP FM students) with
respect to them being employed in management or not.

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Table 3: Crosstabs between gender and employment in management

Employed in management
No Yes Total
Gender Male 40 28 68
Female 78 35 113
Total 118 63 181
Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

On the other hand, age-related differences among employed students remain:

employed in management are on average older (37.5 years) than those not employed
in management (31.7 years) – independent samples t-test has a value -5.4 and with
176 degrees of freedom P-value has a value of 0.000.

Next, we turn to the questions in the questionnaire, namely activities that the
respondents evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale: from being completely immoral or
morally unacceptable (value 1) to completely morally acceptable (value 5). Table 4
reveals that in general the respondents were more prone to answer as listed activities
to be morally unacceptable, with standard deviation in all cases around 1. In Figure 2
it is clearly seen that UP FM students have depicted activities keeping the money and
disposing of found wallet, asking other student to take the exam for you, stealing
newspaper from neighbour, forging student-status paper, and calling in sick even
though not in fact being sick, as being morally unacceptable. On the other hand, the
data reveal that some activities are not being judged as morally unacceptable, namely:
looking at other students’ exam, cheating on exams (using scrib notes), car-insurance
fraud, doing not your job-related work while on job, using business mailing for
private use, writing seminar work for others, and conducting plagiarism.

After looking at the results in general, we now turn to our analysis of these responses:
with respect to gender, age, year of study, and employment issues. We apply different
approaches, from using independent-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance
(ANOVA) to test differences in averages between different groups, to calculating
correlation coefficient or Pearson Chi Square (with crosstabs) to check whether
variables are correlated. This is represented in next (sub)section.

Table 4: Mean, standard deviation and number of responses for evaluated activities

Activity Mean Standard Number

deviation
Reporting own-inflicted car damage to the insurance
2.66 1.11 376
agency as being inflicted by third party

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Taking office accessories (pens, paper, etc.) for own

2.31 0.96 380
home use
Finding a wallet, keeping the money and disposing of
1.60 0.88 382
the wallet
Taking newspaper from neighbour's post-box 1.84 0.95 381
Calling in sick, even though not in fact sick 1.93 0.94 380
Forging the student-status papers in order to obtain
student-status-related benefits (e.g. cheaper food in 1.88 1.00 381
restaurants)
Leaving personal post to be mailed among business post
2.60 1.00 380
(on company's expenses)
Conducting non-job-related activity while on job 2.66 0.93 379
Stating false reasons for not attending the classes 2.47 1.00 379
Looking at other students' exam papers during the exam 2.88 1.12 381
Writing seminar work for other student 2.57 1.12 380
Asking other student to take the exam for you (in your
1.68 0.99 380
name)
Using unallowed techniques (cheating) during the exam 2.73 1.16 381
Copying seminar work from sources, not listed in the
2.56 1.15 379
bibliography
Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

Figure 2: Mean values of evaluated activities with respect to theri morality

Source: Survey among UP FM students, own calculations

The following figure represents the distribution of answers for activities cheating on
exams (panel a) and looking at other students’ exam (panel b), to reveal that students
tend perceive this activity as morally unacceptable only in a limited number of cases.

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(a) (b)
Figure 3: Distribution of answers for activities Cheating on exams (a) and Looking at
other students' exam (b)

Results
First we study above-mentioned results with respect to different issues: gender, level
of study, and employment. We separately study all students and then those who are
employed.

All students
First we compare how students differ in their responses with respect to gender. The
following table presents results, stating average values of their responses for males
and females.

Table 5 also provides information on independent-samples t-test value and P-value –

to test for the statistical significance in their difference. We can see that in no case do
male and female students differ; the highest, almost statistically significant difference
between those two groups is with evaluating activity of taking office accessories
(pens, paper, etc.) for own home use (here the P-value is just above the threshold of
0.050). Otherwise, we can conclude there are no statistically significant differences
between male and female students in this respect.

Table 5: Differences in responses among students with respect to gender

Activity Gender Mean T-test

(P-value)
Reporting own-inflicted car damage to the Male 2.67 0.120
insurance agency as being inflicted by third party Female 2.66 (0.904)
Taking office accessories (pens, paper, etc.) for Male 2.45 1.923
own home use Female 2.24 (0.056)
Finding a wallet, keeping the money and Male 1.68 1.254

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disposing of the wallet Female 1.56 (0.211)

Male 1.87 0.534
Taking newspaper from neighbour's post-box
Female 1.82 (0.594)
Male 2.02 1.317
Calling in sick, even though not in fact sick
Female 1.88 (0.189)
Forging the student-status papers in order to Male 1.97 1.184
obtain student-status-related benefits Female 1.83 (0.238)
Leaving personal post to be mailed among Male 2.65 594
business post (on company's expenses) Female 2.58 (0.553)
Male 2.77 1.707
Conducting non-job-related activity while on job
Female 2.60 (0.089)
Male 2.61 1.831
Stating false reasons for not attending the classes
Female 2.41 (0.068)
Looking at other students' exam papers during the Male 2.97 1.071
exam Female 2.84 (0.285)
Male 2.65 0.922
Writing seminar work for other student
Female 2.53 (0.357)
Asking other student to take the exam for you (in Male 1.72 0.563
your name) Female 1.66 (0.574)
Using un-allowed techniques (cheating) during Male 2.76 0.374
the exam Female 2.72 (0.709)
Copying seminar work from sources, not listed in Male 2.65 1.091
the bibliography Female 2.51 (0.276)
Source: survey among UP FM students, own calculations

Undergraduate students are in all the listed activities statistically significant different
from postgraduate students. Furthermore, they (undergraduate) are less strict in
assessing the level of (im)morality of activities in the questionnaire – their averages
are higher. This, ethically more problematic sign of undergraduate students is rather
worrying as they will, after finishing their studies, have the potential to become
managers. However, somewhat reassuring is the fact, that postgraduate students act
(judge) more strictly these activities.

Lastly we check how students that are employed differ (if at all) from full-time
students. Results reveal that in fact in all aspects (activities) full-time students and
employed student differ statistically significant (only in one case is significance near
the threshold for P-value of 0.050) from each other. Furthermore, in all cases are
employed students stricter than full-time students. This provides basis for conclusion
that as students become employed they follow ethical issues to a grater extent.

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Employed students
Among employed, we further check whether there are any differences in responses
with respect to gender, age, level of study, and employment in management.

Comparing employed male and female students we can conclude there are no
significant differences, expect for the activity: stating false reasons for not attending
the classes, where females have statistically significant (t-test is 2.229 and P-value is
0.023) lower average – meaning they (on average) evaluate this activity as more
immoral than male employed students. For female employed students this is morally
unacceptable activity (average 2.23), whereas for males it is somewhat more towards
neutral (2.54).

Table 6 shows how the employed students at under- and postgraduate levels differ
with respect to their evaluation of morality of listed activities. Here we can find that
the several of activities are statistically significant (P value less than 0.05) different
among under- and postgraduate students. These activities are: taking office
accessories (pens, paper, etc.) for own home use, stating false reasons for not
attending the classes, looking at other students' exam papers during the exam, asking
other student to take the exam for you (in your name), using un-allowed techniques
(cheating) during the exam, and copying seminar work from sources, not listed in the
bibliography. In all cases undergraduate-level students are more inclined towards such
activities being morally less unacceptable, pointing in direction that undergraduate
students use these, mostly study (or testing) related activities in their every-day
(study) life. Although this is somewhat worrying for business-study students, the
“relaxing” fact is that postgraduate employed students are stricter in this sense –
leaving the chance that future managers will react more in line with ethical guidelines.

Table 6: Differences in responses among employed students with respect to level of

study

Activity Level of study Mean T-test

(P-value)
Reporting own-inflicted car damage to the Undergraduate 2.61 1.541
insurance agency as being inflicted by third party Postgraduate 2.31 (0.125)
Taking office accessories (pens, paper, etc.) for Undergraduate 2.51 2.162
own home use Postgraduate 2.12 (0.035)
Finding a wallet, keeping the money and Undergraduate 1.54 1.000
disposing of the wallet Postgraduate 1.40 (0.319)
Undergraduate 1.76 0.705
Taking newspaper from neighbour's post-box
Postgraduate 1.66 (0.482)
Undergraduate 1.93 1.007
Calling in sick, even though not in fact sick
Postgraduate 1.77 (0.316)

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Forging the student-status papers in order to Undergraduate 1.90 1.172

obtain student-status-related benefits Postgraduate 1.72 (0.243)
Leaving personal post to be mailed among Undergraduate 2.46 -0.068
business post (on company's expenses) Postgraduate 2.48 (0.946)
Undergraduate 2.59 1.051
Conducting non-job-related activity while on job
Postgraduate 2.42 (0.295)
Undergraduate 2.66 2.540
Stating false reasons for not attending the classes
Postgraduate 2.26 (0.012)
Looking at other students' exam papers during Undergraduate 2.98 2.003
the exam Postgraduate 2.61 (0.047)
Undergraduate 2.54 1.713
Writing seminar work for other student
Postgraduate 2.24 (0.088)
Asking other student to take the exam for you (in Undergraduate 1.68 2.701
your name) Postgraduate 1.30 (0.009)
Using un-allowed techniques (cheating) during Undergraduate 2.85 2.877
the exam Postgraduate 2.33 (0.004)
Copying seminar work from sources, not listed in Undergraduate 2.73 3.627
the bibliography Postgraduate 2.09 (0.000)
Source: survey among UP FM students, own calculations

Last (but not least), employed students are divided into two groups: working in
management and not working in management. Their responses (average values) for
listed activities are revealed in the following table. The results show there are no
major differences among those employed students, but for one activity: asking other
student to take the exam for you. With this activity the employed in management are
statistically significant (t-test of 2.913 and P-value of 0.004) different from those
employed, but not in management: both are judging this activity as highly immoral,
the former are even stricter in this respect.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Based on the research we can conclude there are no statistically significant

differences between male and female students with respect to their evaluation of
various activities from ethical point of view. Furthermore, comparing employed male
and female students we can conclude there are no significant differences.
Furthermore, in all cases undergraduate-level students are more inclined towards such
activities being morally less unacceptable, pointing in direction that undergraduate
students use these, mostly study (or testing) related activities in their every-day
(study) life. Although this is somewhat worrying finding for business-study students
(i.e. future business people), the “relaxing” fact is that postgraduate employed

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students are stricter in this sense – leaving the chance that future managers will react
more in line with ethical guidelines. Similar pattern can be found when comparing
full-time students and employed student: they differ statistically significant from each
other with respect to all listed (and evaluated) activities. Furthermore, in all cases
employed students are stricter than full-time students with respect to judging activity
as ethically unacceptable. This provides basis for conclusion that as students become
employed they follow ethical issues to a grater extent. The results also show there are
no major differences among those employed students that work in management and
those who work elsewhere (on lower positions).

Findings of the research are somewhat worrying: student tend to evaluate cheating,
looking at other students’ exams and similar activities as morally acceptable. Taking
into consideration that they will in a few-years time become employed and represent
future decision makers, what does this mean for the future economy? Will the current
economic crisis enable management to shift its consideration of ethics in business and
will management students accept or adapt to such changes? These are (among others)
the issues to be studied in further work on this research.

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Measuring ethical perceptions and intentions among undergraduate students in
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Chapman, K. J. and R. A. Lupton. 2004. Academic dishonesty in a global educational

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Chapman, K. J., R. Davis, D. Toy and L. Wright. 2004. Academic integrity in the
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De George, R. T. 2006. Business ethics. Upper Saddle River (New Jersey): Prentice
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Proceedings of the 11th International Conference
2010 Ankara, Turkey, 24–27 November 2010

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