Portfolio Project: Ethical Behavior of Business Students at Rocky University

During the global recession of 2008 and 2009, there were many accusations of unethical behavior by Wall Street executives, financial managers, and other corporate officers. At that time, an article appeared that suggested that part of the reason for such unethical business behavior may stem from the fact that cheating has become more prevalent among business students. The article reported that 86% of business students admitted to cheating at some time during their academic career as compared to 77% of non-business students.

Cheating has been a concern of the dean of the College of Business at Rocky University for several years. Some faculty members in the college believe that cheating is more widespread at Rocky than at other universities, while other faculty members think that cheating is not a major problem in the college. To resolve some of these issues, the dean commissioned a study to assess the current ethical behavior of business students at Rocky. As part of this study, an anonymous exit survey was administered to a sample of 90 business students from this year’s graduating class. Responses to the following questions were used to obtain data regarding three types of cheating.