Tolerance for Cheating From the Classroom to the Boardroom: A Study of Underlying Personal and Cultural Drivers

Abstract

Professors face increasingly diverse student bodies that exhibit divergent understandings and motivations to engage in academic dishonesty. Research suggests that collectivism/individualism is the cultural dimension underlying such differences. This study measures this dimension at the individual level using two constructs—agency-communion and self-construal—and their relationships to tolerance for academic cheating and unethical corporate behavior. Analyses show a positive relationship between tolerance for academic cheating and for unethical corporate behavior. Both measures of collectivism (interdependent self-construal and communion) exhibit positive relationships to tolerance for unethical business behavior, while interdependence is also positively related to tolerance for academic cheating.

Keywords

ethics skills/traits development in marketing education marketing education issues academic integrity learning approaches and issues global/cross cultural competence surveys methodology undergraduate education level/type of education

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