Search results

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the (in)tolerance level of accounting major students in Oman toward identified integrity destroying academic activities.

A triangulation approach was adopted whereby a questionnaire survey on academic fraud (AF) was administered to a group of Omani major accounting students. The descriptive statistical results were further analyzed and validated using in-depth interviews in exploring further the students’ tolerance decisions.

A conceivably low and non-disturbing tolerance level toward the myriads of integrity destroying academic activities was documented. The tolerance is, however, observed to be dynamic in nature as it is sensitive to fraud “severity” and “seriousness”, i.e. it increases as AF activities become less severe and serious. Minor free-ride is tolerated the most, followed by minor plagiarism and seldom forgery. These AF activities were tolerated most by female and academically weak students. The varying results suggest that demographic factors do play a role in shaping Omani future accountants’ AF tolerance. The interview results further point to the intertwined factors of academic, family and peers, as well as religion that primarily influence their AF tolerance levels.

The research fills the extremely scarce accounting education literature in Oman by documenting fresh evidence of AF (in)tolerance among future members of the country’s accountancy profession. As academic is the primary source of accountants’ accountability and integrity knowledge and training base, investigating accounting students’ tolerance toward integrity in the acute context of AF would effectively provide a reflection of the profession’s future integrity environment.

There is a gap in scholarly investigation when it comes to issues of academic integrity and corruption in higher education. The major research question this chapter addresses is: How is corruption in higher education in the United States and Russia reflected in the media? The frequency with which the media reports on higher education corruption varies. The variation in reporting can be attributed to particular reforms and major changes undertaken in the higher education sector as well as in-depth reporting of some high-profile cases. The scope of problems reflected is very broad, but some important forms of corruption are either underreported or overlooked. The major problems, types, and forms of higher education corruption are nation-specific: in Russia they are bribery in admissions and grading, while in the United States they are fraud and embezzlement of state funds, among others. These types and forms of corruption in general correlate with those analyzed in the scholarly literature. This chapter also presents some policy recommendations for both Russia and the United States regarding anti-corruption efforts in higher education.

This study aims to address a systematic literature review (SLR) using bibliometrics on the relationship between academic integrity and artificial intelligence (AI), to bridge the scattering of literature on this topic, given the challenge and opportunity for the educational and academic community.

This review highlights the enormous social influence of COVID-19 by mapping the extensive yet distinct and fragmented literature in AI and academic integrity fields. Based on 163 publications from the Web of Science, this paper offers a framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.

With the rapid advancement of technology, AI tools have exponentially developed that threaten to destroy students' academic integrity in higher education. Despite this significant interest, there is a dearth of academic literature on how AI can help in academic integrity. Therefore, this paper distinguishes two significant thematical patterns: academic integrity and negative predictors of academic integrity.

This study also presents several contributions by showing that tools associated with AI can act as detectors of students who plagiarise. That is, they can be useful in identifying students with fraudulent behaviour. Therefore, it will require a combined effort of public, private academic and educational institutions and the society with affordable policies.

This study proposes a new, innovative framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.

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.

The role of academic libraries in dissemination of information and facilitating research of academic community is well-established world over. However, a significant role of libraries in ensuring fair use of information to promote an ethical research culture at the higher education institutes is also flourishing. This study aims to explore the perceived causes of unethical use of literature by university scholars and deterrents to plagiarism in universities of Pakistan.

The design of the study was qualitative, and interviews were conducted on nine university library heads in Pakistan who were officially administrating anti-plagiarism (Turnitin) software service at their universities and were providing “similarity index certification” of PhD and MPhil research work through the software. They were purposively selected for the interviews because of their direct interaction with the researchers and faculty on matters of information searching as well as its ethical use. The study is based on PhD thesis work of the first author.

The findings of the study depicted that conceptual unawareness of plagiarism, lack of information skills, socio-cultural factors and weak policies were the prime reasons for unethical research practices among graduate scholars. Participants were positive that a role of university library in combating plagiarism through provision of anti-plagiarism software and guidance could prove more beneficial for both the researchers and libraries.

Multiple studies have been conducted, in and out of south Asian region, to gather the views of the students and faculty on the matters of academic misconduct. However, no study was found presenting the views of the other stakeholders in promotion of academic integrity. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is first of its kind in South Asian context and provided observation-based views of a group of university library heads who are also administrating anti-plagiarism service in their universities on the causes and deterrents to plagiarism.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Although the academic literature provides extensive insight into the motivations for the unethical use of information technology in online classes, little is known about how perceived justice, the opportunity to cheat and spiritual legitimacy mitigate unethical behavior among young academics. The purposes of this study are two folds: first, to determine how perceived lecturers’ justice and opportunity to cheat may mitigate academic misconduct in online classes, and second, to evaluate the moderating effect of spiritual power on the relationship between perceived lecturers’ justice and opportunity to cheat and academic misconduct.

This research was conducted at universities in three Southeast Asia countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with a total of 339 respondents. The research questionnaire was distributed using Google Forms. The analytical method used to test the research hypothesis is moderated regression analysis (MRA).

The findings of this study reveal that spirituality moderates the relationship between lecturer justice and the opportunity to cheat online. Even though the justice level of the lecturer is low, individuals with relatively high spirituality will show much less cheating behavior than when there is a low level of lecturer justice and a low level of student spirituality, and vice versa.

Cheating occurs when students develop an intention to cheat, which leads to actual involvement in cheating, meaning that theoretically, the findings extend the fraud triangle theory. In addition, the practical implications of this research are that lecturers need to conduct fair teaching, such as transparency of exam conditions, assessment, the right to an opinion and supervision during exams, consequently, the students cannot cheat. Spirituality is also an essential factor that can reduce online cheating, so instilling spirituality in specific courses is a fruitful solution.

The contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study gives testable theories on how spiritual help works. Second, this study offers tailored and more humanistic assistance, such as a mechanism that adjusts to the academic world’s usage of more positive technologies. This study contributes to the literature on online cheating in higher education across three Southeast Asian nations (Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand).

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of undergraduate students toward plagiarism and its change (if any) during their four-year study at a Pakistani university.

The students who participated were majoring in electrical engineering; there were 106 first-year students and 127 final-year students. The students were asked to complete a plagiarism attitude scale (Harris, 2011) survey and reveal their attitudes toward plagiarism.

Rasch analysis was conducted on the scale to optimize its measurement qualities. Analysis indicated no significant changes in the attitude of the students, which remained very lenient and soft toward plagiarism despite the strict policy of the higher education commission of Pakistan and the university. These results indicate that the students lacked an understanding of what constitutes as plagiarism. Therefore, more awareness toward the ethical aspects of plagiarism is needed to reduce academic misconduct.

Plagiarism is an academic offense yet very few studies have been conducted to understand the perceptions of the students in order to minimize it.

This paper aims to examine academic dishonesty and research misconduct, two forms of academic fraud, and provides suggestions for future research informed by criminological theory.

After reviewing prior literature, this paper outlines four general criminological theories that can explain academic fraud.

While criminological theory has been applied to some studies of academic dishonesty, research misconduct has rarely been examined within a broader theoretical context.

This paper provides a blueprint for future theoretically informed analyses of academic fraud.

This paper represents a unique attempt to apply general criminological theories to diverse forms of fraud in higher education settings.