Cheating: A Cultural Phenomenon

There's been a lot of discussion over the past few weeks about the ethics of MBA students since studies carried out recently found that more than half of all business school students admitted to cheating in one form or another at some point on their Master's degree course. There's an interesting article on the phenomenon by Market Watch's Thomas Kostigen:

The corporate scandals that have plagued Wall Street in recent history are setting a fine example for young students looking to make their mark in the business world: They are learning to cheat with the best of them.

Students seeking their masters of business administration degree admit cheating more than any other type of student, from law to liberal arts.

"We have found that graduate students in general are cheating at an alarming rate and business-school students are cheating even more than others," concludes a study by the Academy of Management Learning and Education of 5,300 students in the U.S. and Canada.

Many of these students reportedly believe cheating is an accepted practice in business. More than half (56%) of M.B.A. candidates say they cheated in the past year. For the study, cheating was defined as plagiarizing, copying other students' work and bringing prohibited materials into exams.

While the findings are indeed alarming, I think it's much more likely that that business school students are just being more honest than others in taking this survey. That possibility means that measures taken by academic departments may be wholly misplaced in curing the intellectual ailment inherent in the findings.

That's a big statement, but it makes more sense when you look at the overall picture. Cheating is not a practice confined to any one particular discipline (i.e. with inherently greater rewards in one over another), it's a cultural phenomenon which affects a wide-ranging level of students, from the arts to the sciences to law to business. While it's possible to argue - as this article does - that the recent exposure of corporate fraud may be influencing to some degree the students who decide to pursue MBA's, fraud is still as rampant a phenomenon in the sciences and in law as it is in business, it's just less spectacular - i.e. it doesn't usually involve billions of dollars - so it doesn't make for great headlines. Fraud, like cheating, is a cultural, rather than a generic phenomenon; it's driven by a societal value system which places enormous merit upon coming in first place and a shaming of coming anywhere else. In academia at least, business is just like any other discipline in most respects, unevenly sharing the spoils amongst the Magna and Suma graduates.

Where business is different - and this is where my argument that business school students are just being more honest in their answers kicks in - is that there's no inherent stigma in cheating in the way that there is in the law and science disciplines. Indeed, admitting cheating to some degree may even be seen as a desireable way to behave if the results paid off. This is not the case in law and science, where intellectual originality is prized foremost amongst other attributes, out of the necessary demands of those disciplines. A law or nuclear science student is therefore far less likely to admit to cheating in a finals examination than a b-school student, because of the serious shaming-effect it has on his or her intellectual integrity, which is critical to his or her ultimate success. In business, where intellecutal integrity is not so highly prized, one can admit quite freely to having dodged the odd goal-post if one has results to show for it.

If schools are serious about cracking down on cheating, then what needs to be remedied is not a stricter enforcement of anti-cheating measures by b-school academic departments, but a general paradigm shift by all academic departments on how they merit their elite. By placing such a huge premium on coming first, cheating - in any discipline - will always be rampant as students seek out the glory and favour of their peers and principles.

Comments

[nh]

'Fraud, like cheating, is a cultural, rather than a generic phenomenon; it's driven by a societal value system which places enormous merit upon coming in first place and a shaming of coming anywhere else'

The point i would make in response to this is that there is no such thing as a 'societal value system' that works for every sector of society. I am pretty certain that the value system in operation in a cut throat business environment is radically different from the value system in operation in a drug dependency unit.

The entire point of the criticisms levelled at the corporate world and the current scandals cannot be written off as a malaise that affects every aspect of society. It is true that we have evolved to lie and cheat, but the extent to which we do this is determined to a great degree by the environment we find ourselves in. Im guessing that what these studies reinforce is that there is a greater motivation to cheat in a business environment than others. i dont realy see how this conclusion is challenged by reasserting the fact that cheating is an intregal part of human culture.

[Daniel M. Harrison]

"I am pretty certain that the value system in operation in a cut throat business environment is radically different from the value system in operation in a drug dependency unit."

I'm not so sure, Neil, especially when it comes to achievement and more specifically recognition. Sure, the day-to-day minutae is different, but the emphasis on succeeding is huge.

Even in such a philanthropic activity such as teaching, the goal of recognition is often confused with that of imparting knowledge - hence the problems with lecture style teaching at the big Universities.