Plagiarism in the Business Environment - Report Example

Last week, having submitted my assignment to my professor, I was found plagiarized on the report submitted. I was surprised and shocked with the accusation. Due to the fact that I was accused of the plagiarism, many questions came into my mind are: (1) what the plagiarism means; (2) how serious is the plagiarism act for a student; and (3) what lessons I learned from writing this paper. To answer this question, I have conducted the following study on plagiarism. I. What “plagiarism” means First of all, I must know the definition of plagiarism. I have searched the term plagiarism which was defined in various sources. Plagiarism is defined as “taking the work or an idea of someone else and passing it off as one’s own”. It was also defined as “Plagiarism is the taking of ideas or words from someone else and presenting them as your own” (Concise Oxford Dictionary). Another similar definition was “"the act of passing off as one's own the ideas or writings of another." Plagiarism is typically seen as a form of fraud, intellectual theft, and "a transgression against our common intellectual values" (Foss, 2006, p. B12). Park (2003, p. 572) defines plagiarism as "literary theft, stealing (by copying) the words or ideas of someone else and passing them off as one's own without crediting the source”. The issue is not whether people's ideas are original, but that they do not properly attribute the credit for those ideas to whom it belongs (Taylor, 2003). According to Park, plagiarism would include stealing, buying, copying, or using material from another source and passing it off as one's own work as well as paraphrasing material without appropriate documentation. In addition, plagiarism may not be intentional, such as improper citation (Burnett, 2002). The origin of word can be traced back to Latin word with a meaning of “to kidnap”. In addition, it can also be traced back to a philosopher whose name is Plagiar in Greek. His works never contained original ideas and thoughts. The occurrence of plagiarism is accidental as well as unconsciously. In specific cultures, it is acceptable as there are many ways of interpretation on one idea (Wikipedia Dictionary). In academic, plagiarism is regarded as academic misconduct by students, professors, or researchers. Any student who plagiarized on academic report, research, or assignment, the student will be punished. Universities and colleges have their various policies and disciplinary measures to combat and take actions against plagiarism act and academic misconduct. With the advancement of new information technology, all text materials were published on the internet. Therefore, with copy and paste functions, students can commit plagiarism very easily. Academic dishonesty including plagiarism has been problem for more than 60 years (Davis et al, 1992). Cheating has become one of the major problems in the education today. Even the student dishonesty on college campuses throughout the nation has been recognized as epidemic (Haines, Diekhoff, LaBeff, and Clark, 1986). Plagiarism needs to be seen within a broader context of cheating that includes other unethical practices such as cheating on tests or assignments, falsifying data, misusing resources, taking credit for others' work, and manipulating academic staff (Park, 2003). Lambert, Ellen, and Taylor (2003) define academic dishonesty as behavior that breaches "the submission of work for assessment that has been produced legitimately by the student who will be awarded the grade, and that demonstrates the student's knowledge and understanding of the context or processes being assessed" (p. 98). The most common forms of academic dishonesty are copying a few sentences without proper citation, working on individual assignments with others, having someone check over a paper before turning it in, and getting questions or answers on a test from someone who had already taken it (Brown, 1996; Kidwell et al., 2003). Swift and Nonis (1998) found a significant relationship among students who cheated on exams with students who cheated on projects, which suggests that students who cheat engage in more than one cheating practice. In comparing the levels of academic dishonesty of business versus nonbusiness students, was significant, but in the opposite direction (nonbusiness students had higher levels of academic dishonesty). Brown (1996) in that business students did not cheat more than did nonbusiness students. There are several possible reasons. One could be that the professors involved in the study are extremely aware of cheating problems and are more vigilant. In addition, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) mandates that teaching ethics is a fundamental requirement for an accredited business school (Chapman et al., 2004). Finally, the business community's ethical problems have been well documented in the news (Chapman et al.). These reasons may all have heightened the business students' awareness of ethical issues. In general, we found that students with low self-esteem are more likely than are others to cheat. This could be because of the pressure to perform well and keep up with peers in the group. The sense of acceptance or belonging to a group plays an important role for students to engage in dishonest behaviors (McCabe & Trevino, 1997). II. How do I know I am cheating Foss (2006) said that if you are cheating or pugiarizing if you: 1. Reuse or rework a paper you turned in for another class. 2. Order a term paper from a paper mill or copy one from a site and turn it in as your own work. 3. Take group work and turn it in as your own or do not contribute to the group work, but take credit for doing the work. 4. Ask for extra time claiming technical difficulties such as a broken disk, computer, or printer problems. 5. Take an idea from a source and present it as your own. III. How I can avoid plagiarism Foss (2006) advised that in order to avoid being accused or plagiarism: 1. Keep all notes you make while doing your research. 2. Keep all revisions or drafts you do. Printing out your paper as you work is a good practice. Not only will printouts act as a backup in case of computer problems, but they will provide a paper trail of your work. 3. When using the Internet for research, copy the information you need, because it is possible for a site to disappear from the net, and the copy may be the only proof that it existed. 4. Periodically ask your teacher for advice on your progress. Show your paper to your teacher and ask for opinions or suggestions. 5. Be sure to check your LAHS Student Writing Handbook for proper source citation, and, when in doubt, ask your teacher for help. IV. How schools encourage honesty and integrity Shools are adivsed to encourage honesty and integrity by the follwoings (Foss, 2006): 1. Survey your students and use their responses to focus school, district, and community interest on the issue of honesty and integrity in our schools. 2. Develop, implement, and enforce a districtwide Academic Integrity Policy that has broad communitywide support and has been officially adopted by the governing board or update and publicize existing policies. 3. Develop, implement, and enforce a districtwide Research Integrity Policy that supports a writingacross-the-curriculum program. An excellent example from Joyce Valenza is online at http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/acadintegrity.html. 4. Publicize the Academic Integrity Policy and Research Integrity Pohcy with posters and orientations for students, faculty, administration, governing board members, and parents. Provide a Plagiarism Guide bookmark to each student prior to beginning a research unit. 5. Actively promote close collaboration between teacherlibrarians and all the teachers in the school so that all writing-across-the-curriculum assignments support the antiplagiarism efforts. 6. Focus on and grade the entire research process instead of simply grading the research paper. 7. Introduce students to several online paper mills so they know you know about them. 8. Emphasize that intentional and unintentional plagiarism both are wrong. Teach the skills students need to know in order to avoid unintentional plagiarism. Focus on the concept: ethics of learning. 9. To prove the student actually located each source, require that all sources be documented copies of title pages and any page from which a quote is taken, copies of online information with retrieval date and URL, 10. information about the library or other place where each source was located. 11. Keep a positive focus on honesty and integrity. Emphasize to students the importance of their learning to conduct competent research and to write well. V. What the difference between “plagiarism” and “copyright infringement” It is found that there is a difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. One may find similar meaning of the two terms, however their emphasis is different with focusing on different aspects. Copyright infringement is defined as any one who violates the rights of the copyright holder using the copyrighted materials without the consents of copyright holder. It involves the loss of income, money, and control use of one own artistic and creative materials. Plagiarizing involves using the author’s work without properly acknowledging the work of the owner. It involves unearned increment to the plagiarizing author’s reputation. Both of them are concepts and they vary by culture (Wikipedia Dictionary). VI. Self-plagiarism It is surprisingly found that when one author is copying his/her own work without proper citation of the original work, he/she comitted self-plagiarism. Researchers, professors, scientists, and students must respect themselves and must acknowledge their previous work when re-using one’s own work. In academic fields, self-plagiarism is committed when an author, researcher, or scientist reuses portions of his or her own published and copyrighted work without properly acknowledging and crediting the pervious work in his/her subsequent publications (Hexham, 2005). It is difficult to idetify self-plagiarism is because it involves legal issues regarding fair use (Samuelson, 1994). Professional organizations, such as Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) have established policies which they can specifically deal with self-plagiarism acts (ACM, 2006). Unlike plagiarism acts, the acts of self-plagiarism do not have well-established regulations. In some universities, there are no regulations in regard to self-plagiarism. They consider self-plagiarism as “oxymoronic” because a person cannot be accused of stealing from his own property. VII. Punishments for committing plagiarism In the academic world, plagiarism by students is a very serious academic offense, which can result in punishments include (1) a fall grade on assigned subject, or (2) a fall grade for entire course. If the student is found committed for a severe type of plagiarism such as copying an entire article, and submitting it without acknowledging the owner pervious work, he/she will be suspended or expelled from the school or his academic degree or award will be revoked. Professors and researchers are found committing plagiarism acts by publishing their works, they will be given punishments including sanctions such as (1) suspension to termination, (2) demotion with the loss of their credibility and integrity. In most cases, the international disciplinary committees of the academic institutions will investigate the case of plagiarism and they will punish according to the regulations which both students and professors have agreed upon. Case study of Martin Luther King, Jr. There was a case of plagiarism at a university in US. It was in 1991, when an allegation of academic dishonesty and misconduct was filed to university administrators at Boston University. In the case, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been accused of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. The University formed a committee which includes scholars to investigate the case of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr who completed his doctoral degree in 1950s. Recommendation by the Committee includes not to revoke the doctoral degree awarded to the King, but there was an attachment made to his doctoral thesis in the library. The attachment to the doctoral theiss said that many pages in the thesis included without the appropriate citations of reference sources (Dionne, 1918). VIII. Conclusion Plagiarism is a serious act of committing academic dishonesty and misconduct. The problem of plagiarism has been in the epidemic situation for more than six decades. The plagiarism can be committed knowingly or unknowingly. Even citing one own work, he/she has to fully acknowledge his/her work. Otherwise, he/she may be punished by the regulatory body of the academic institution. Punishment can vary from case to case and the degree of seriousness of plagiarism. This is especially concerned with one’s moral and ethics. I believe that I should adhere honesty and avoid any academic misconduct acts and dishonesty including plagiarism. References: ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism (October 2006). Brown, B. S. (1996). A comparison of the academic ethics of graduate business, education, and engineering students. College Student Journal, 30. 294-301. Burnett, S. (2002), Dishonor & distrust. Community College Week, 14, 6. Chapman, K. J., Davis, R., Toy, D., & Wright, L. (2004), Academic integrity in the business school environment: I'll get by with a little help from my friends. Journal of Marketing Education, 26, 236-249. Concise Oxford Dictionary, 10th ed. Davis, Stephen F.; Grover, Cathy A.; Becker, Angela H.1992. Academic Dishonesty: Prevalence, Determinants, Techniques, and Punishments. Teaching of Psychology, Feb92, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p16 Davis, Stephen F.; Grover, Cathy A.; Becker, Angela H.1992. Academic Dishonesty: Prevalence, Determinants, Techniques, and Punishments. Teaching of Psychology, Feb92, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p16 E.J. Dionne, Jr. (September 18). Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not "Malevolent". The New York Times Foss, Kathleen. 2006. The Myth of the Plagiarism - Proof Paper. CSLA Journal, Fall2006, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p12-13 George Town University http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/hc/plagiarism.html Hanies, V. J., Diekhoff, G. M., LaBeff, D. C. and Clark, R. E. (1986). College cheating: Immaturity, lack of commitment, and the neutralizing attitude. Research in Higher Education, 25, 342-354. Irving Hexham (2005). Academic Plagiarism Defined. Isserman, M. (2003). Plagiarism: A lie of the mind. Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, B12. Kidwell, L. A., Wozniak, K., & Laurel, J. P. (2003). Student reports and faculty perceptions of academic dishonesty. Teaching Business Ethics, 7. 205-214. Lambert, K. D., Ellen, N., & Taylor, L. (2003). Cheating - What is it and why do it: A study in New Zealand tertiary institutions of the perceptions and justifications for academic dishonesty. Journal of American Academy of Business, 3. 98. McCabe, D. L., & Trevino, L. K. (1997). Individual and contextual influences on academic dishonesty. Research in Higher Education, 38, 379-396. Pamela Samuelson (August 1994). "Self-plagiarism or fair use?". Communications of the ACM 27 (8). Park, C. (2003). In other (people's) words: Plagiarism by university students—literature and lessons. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2S, 471-88. Swift, C. O., & Nonis, S. (1998). When no one is watching: Cheating behaviors on projects and assignments. Marketing Education Review, 8, 27-36. Taylor, K. R. (2003, November). Bracing for cheating and plagiarism. Retrieved November 6, 2006, from http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/eddigest/resutts.htmt?st=hasic&QryTxt=Bracing+for+ cheating+and+ptagiarism Wikipedia Dictionary Read More