Do perceptions of the utility of ethics affect academic cheating?

Academic cheating is an epidemic that higher educational institutions have struggled to contain. The pervasiveness of cheating among business majors is alarming as students who cheat in the academic setting are more likely to engage in unethical behavior while in the workplace (Carpenter et al., 2004; McCabe et al., 1996; Nonis & Swift, 2001). While the business and accounting literature has previously explored academic and demographic characteristics associated with cheating, the extant research has not explored whether there is a relationship between students' perceptions as to the utility of ethics in the workplace (defined as the importance employers place on ethics when hiring applicants for entry-level positions) and the prevalence of academic cheating. Thus, the purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between undergraduate business and accounting students' perceptions of the utility of ethical behavior in the workplace and their likelihood to cheat in school. Using PLS-SEM, this study concludes that the frequency of cheating in each of the four categories examined (planned cheating, spontaneous cheating, plagiarism, and improper use of resources) was predicted to increase for every standardized increase in rank of ethics toward less important. The relationship existed even when testing for social desirability bias.