Study says when it comes to cheating, MBAs are the champs

Who's most likely to cheat in graduate school?  MBAs.

A survey of 5,331 students at 32 graduate schools in the United States and Canada found an "alarming" amount of cheating across disciplines, but more among the nation's future business leaders. Fifty-six percent of graduate business students admitted they had cheated at least once in the last year, compared with 47 percent of non-business students.

The students, who were surveyed between 2002 and 2004, told researchers from Pennsylvania State, Rutgers and Washington State Universities that the most important reason for cheating was that they thought that other students were doing it.

"People tend to do what they think other people are doing," said Linda Klebe Trevino, one of the researchers and a professor of organizational behavior at Penn State's Smeal College of Business. "The fact that other people are doing it creates an environment where this is normative."

The study asked about 13 different types of cheating, ranging from copying a classmate's test answers to lifting sentences from the Internet without attribution.

The results come amid a growing list of corporate ethics scandals, including faulty accounting to boost earnings, and, more recently, the backdating of stock options grants, a tactic that makes executive pay even more lucrative. While there is no proof that students who would cheat on a test might later cheat stockholders, the researchers said it made sense that people who would bend one rule might bend another.

In light of the scandals, area business schools have been beefing up their ethics education....

Why business students would cheat more than others is a matter of conjecture. Trevino said it might be that students who were drawn to business school were more self-interested or bottom-line-oriented. Some studies also suggest that business school, with its emphasis on the free market and maximization of shareholder value, changes student attitudes.

Donald McCabe, a management professor at Rutgers who led the study, said one reason business students might cheat more is that they were more likely to encounter questions they could answer with one word or number, not an essay. "Compared to many of the other disciplines, if you can glance over and see somebody else's test or exam, there's a high premium for that," he said....

Survey: M.B.A. students more likely to cheat - Philadelphia Inquirer