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Prior research suggests both formal and informal norms influence employee behavior. While increased training is a typical recommendation to strengthen formal norms by increasing adherence to organizational codes of conduct, and therefore improve ethical behavior, there is little empirical evidence that code training actually strengthens formal norms or improves ethics-related behavior. Conversely, prior observations of unethical behavior serve as strong indicators of informal norms. These observations may be unknown to management and therefore difficult to moderate using other means, including with training on a code.

We test the impact of prior observations of unethical behavior and training for a code of conduct on intentions to report unethical behavior in the future, as well as possible mediators of these relationships. We find some support that training on the code increases intention to report and strong support for the notion that prior observations of unethical behavior decrease intentions to report. Responsibility to report and norms against whistle-blowing both mediate the prior observation-to-reporting intentions relationship, but not the training-to-reporting intentions relationship. An interesting by-product of training seems to be that, by increasing awareness of unethical behavior, and therefore the salience of prior observation, training may have indirectly influenced intentions in the opposite direction intended.

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between personality traits and students’ cheating behavior using the five-factor personality model and the fraud triangle factors. This chapter develops an evidential study that has the goal to determine the relationship between the students’ cheating behavior and personality traits by using fraud triangle factors. In this context, 251 surveys have been conducted on students of a foundation university located in Istanbul. As means of data collection, NEO – Five Factor Inventory and Academic Fraud Risk Factors have been used. Data have been analyzed by regression tree analysis. Risk and classification tables have been created before starting the study with a decision tree in which classification and regression trees algorithms were implemented. The results reveal that rationalization behind the cheating is the most important reason for students to copy and people who believed that they were extremely appropriate to copy were responsible ones when analyzed in terms of their personality traits. The results of this study contribute to the literature by discovering the characteristics of those who admit academic dishonesty and underlie the factors or predispositions for engaging in this behavior. For sure, three factors of the fraud triangle may have different levels of significance in this study; in addition, pressure is not associated with the cheating behavior.

This chapter describes culturally sensitive pedagogical strategies for post-secondary faculty and administrators in North America when dealing with international students from cultures that may not uphold the same standards that North American universities do with respect to academic integrity. Strategies are proposed for educators to help international (particularly Asian) students evolve from a culturally indoctrinated practice of repeating a master’s words verbatim (with or without citation) to interpreting the master’s words in their own voice. Evidence-based approaches are identified to encourage post-secondary educators and administrators to progress from a punitive, consequence-based approach toward plagiarism to an intrinsic reward and virtue-based approach toward student self-authorship.

As more students take online courses as part of their college curricula, the integrity of testing in an online environment becomes increasingly important. The potential for cheating on exams is generally considered to be higher in an online environment. One approach to compensate for the absence of a physical proctor is to use a remote proctoring service that electronically monitors the student during the examination period.

We examined the exam grades for 261 students taking two different upper division accounting courses to determine if a computer-based remote proctoring service reduced the likelihood of cheating, measured through lower exam scores, as compared to classroom proctoring and no proctoring. We examined both online and on-campus courses.

In qualitative and quantitative accounting courses, evidence shows that grades were significantly lower for students who were proctored using a remote proctoring service compared to students who were not proctored. In the quantitative course, remote proctoring resulted in significantly lower final exam scores than either classroom or no proctoring. However, in the qualitative course, both remote proctoring online and live proctoring in a classroom resulted in significantly lower final exam scores than no proctoring, and they are not statistically different from each other.

Academics and administrators should find these results helpful. The results suggest that the use of proctoring services in online courses has the potential to enhance the integrity of online courses by reducing the opportunities for academic dishonesty during exams.

The chapter focuses on the personal characteristics of top executives in companies involved in corporate financial crime as well as the introduction of human governance as one of the mechanisms in preventing corporate misbehaviour. This chapter discusses directors’ and top management teams’ personal characteristics – in the context of corporate governance – that may influence the occurrence of corporate financial crime. The study further proposes the human governance factor as a possible mechanism to improve corporate governance in preventing such misbehaviour. This chapter highlights the personal characteristics of top executives, which may become the indicators of corporate financial crime, as well as human governance, which is shown to be one of the most important mechanisms of corporate governance for corporate financial crime prevention.

Today’s higher education paradigm places emphasis on the broader context of globalization, economics, the environment, and society. Divergent from traditional silo-based, discipline-specific models, this broad and complex challenge necessitates the continued investigation of innovative interdisciplinary approaches for higher education. The 360 Degree Model for Educating Socially Responsible Global Citizens developed by the authors (360 Global Ed model) addresses these current needs through a structured approach for developing students as global citizens through purposeful engagement (Breitkreuz & Songer, 2015; Songer & Breitkreuz, 2014).

The 360 Global Ed model includes a theoretical framework, educational environment, academic coursework, and evidence-based outcomes. At the core of the model is an international service learning (ISL) experience. The model’s ISL experience provides a collaborative, interdisciplinary classroom environment combined with an authentic international field experience (Songer & Breitkreuz, 2014).

This study examines the effectiveness of instruction in accounting ethics as measured by the impact of that instruction on the incidence of student plagiarism in a college writing assignment.

This study avoids the potential problems inherent in measuring Machiavellianism via a psychological questionnaire by using a “reverse methodology,” whereby Machiavellianism is assessed directly from behavior.

The results support past research suggesting that traditional collegiate ethical education may not affect students’ ethical choices. The findings also suggest that increasing penalties for ethical failures may be an effective means of deterring students and business professionals from engaging in inappropriate activities.

This study supports the use of a behavioral measure of Machivellianism as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of alternative instructional methods in ethics. This behavioral approach is superior to the traditional questionnaire methodology because Machivellianism is judged based on actual behavior rather than having students respond to hypothetical and often stereotyped ethical cases, whereby the student can provide an artificial response that will be viewed favorably by the evaluator.

The findings suggest that higher education needs to recognize the relevance of factors beyond mere ethical education when preparing students for the ethical challenges they will face in the business world.

This paper employs a unique “reverse methodology” to measure Machiavellianism. This reverse methodology has greater external validity in quasi-experimental ethical studies because the results can be extrapolated to real-world scenarios where there is a cost to behaving ethically.

Academic dishonesty is a global challenge, with organizational and economic repercussions of the most undesirable kind. Worldwide, efforts are made to establish external and internal factors that contribute to the spread of unethical behavior, so that based on empirical evidence the most useful approaches to mitigating the phenomenon can be found. The present chapter has two major objectives. A first objective is to explore the steps taken by higher education institutions in Romania regarding the construction of an ethical infrastructure, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses. The author will refer to civil society initiatives and universities’ efforts, including legislative efforts. The second objective is to identify a set of lessons from international research that will support the intervention in the direction of building an academic ethical culture in Romania. Given the level of academic fraud demonstrated through research, the process of building university integrity is extremely difficult in Romania. The intervention of the political factors at the university level contributes to a great instability, sabotaging the process of implementing ethical standards. Ethics infrastructures from Romanian universities are incomplete, focusing on two formal components, namely the ethical code and the ethics commissions. There is no coherent chain of ethical decision, ethical management does not actually work. In conclusion, in Romanian universities, ethical principles are not a top priority, as they clash with organizational and governance practices.

Academic integrity in tertiary education is a global concern. This chapter describes academic integrity in Australian universities and proposes an “it takes a village” framework to guide universities toward a re-evaluation of academic integrity education. It takes a village to raise a child – a child needs role models and positive influences from multiple people for healthy growth and development. With regard to academic integrity, the parallel is that the entire university community needs to be involved to foster development of students of integrity. The institution and its community need to provide structures, multiple positive and effective learning experiences, and clear guidelines to support both staff and students. In this chapter, we argue that academic integrity needs to be seen as a complex system, one in which everyone involved has responsibility to develop and maintain a culture of integrity and one which supports a student throughout their academic journey.