Students’ Responses to Ethical Dilemmas in an Academic Setting and in the Work Place

It is important for students to be prepared to act ethically when they face real world situations that test their ethical leadership. The purpose of this study was to examine university students’ responses to ethical dilemmas. One hundred and sixty two students in numerous majors and both undergraduate and graduate classifications responded to a survey that presented 13 ethical dilemmas. A low survey score represents more ethical responses and a higher score represents more unethical responses. The findings for respondents indicate that the mean ethics score was 5. Since all 13 scenarios were clearly unethical, a mean score of 5 indicates many student respondents stated they would act unethically in numerous scenarios. The findings also indicate that there is not a significant difference between gender and ethics scores. The findings of our study reinforce the importance of the need for educators to work toward making academic integrity valued by all university graduates. Business school administrators and faculty need to carefully examine their curriculum to see how well their school is fulfilling its obligation in providing employees who will be ready to lead and act ethically. With the extent of university student cheating reported in the literature and in our own research, it is clear that more insight into this problem would be helpful. Future empirical research is needed to explore the extent to which business school administrators and faculty are responding to the AACSB call to provide business students with the ability to be ethical leaders in the work place.