Academic dishonesty of future business leaders

Academic dishonesty is, alas, a feature of global student experience, and institutions of learning must deal with it. This is easier said than done, because perceptions of "cheating " differ among cultures, as do "ethics." To get a grip on this difficult problem, the authors conducted a study among MBA students in the U.S. based on Hofstede's four cultural dimensions: collectivism/individualism; masculinity/femininity; power distance; and uncertainty avoidance. These were related to the four dimensions of Rawwas and Isakson's model of attitudes toward academic dishonesty: receiving and abetting; obtaining unfair advantage; fabricating information, and ignoring prevalent practices. The detailed results should help teachers design ethics courses with students' cultural orientations in mind.