Case 4: Ethical Behavior of Business Students at Bayview 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 (Chronicle of Higher Education). The article reported that 56% of business students admitted to cheating at some time during their academic career as compared to 47% of nonbusiness students.

Cheating has been a concern of the dean of the College of Business at Bayview University for several years. Some faculty members in the college believe that cheating is more widespread at Bayview than at other universities, whereas 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 Bayview. 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.

During your time at Bayview, did you ever present work copied off the Internet as your own?

Yes_________

No_________

During your time at Bayview, did you ever copy answers off another student's exam?

Yes_________

No_________

During your time at Bayview, did you ever collaborate with other students on projects that were supposed to be completed individually?

Yes_________

No_________

Any student who answered Yes to one or more of these questions was considered to have been involved in some type of cheating. A portion of the data collected follows. The complete data set is in the file Bayview.

Managerial Report

Prepare report for the dean of the college that summarizes your assessment of the nature of cheating by business students at Bayview University. Be sure to include the following items in your report.

Use descriptive statistics to summarize the data and comment on your findings.

Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of all students, the proportion of male students, and the proportion of female students who were involved in some type of cheating.

Conduct a hypothesis test to determine whether the proportion of business students at Bayview University who were involved in some type of cheating is less than that of business students at other institutions as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Conduct a hypothesis test to determine whether the proportion of business students at Bayview University who were involved in some form of cheating is less than that of nonbusiness students at other institutions as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

What advice would you give to the dean based upon your analysis of the data?