Resources

Summary and Findings

The proposed ETHical behaviour and Academic Integrity (ETHAI) project set out to produce:

• A central list of resources in this area;
• A critical systematic review of the literature (Denyer & Tranfield (2009) and
• A progress report on the development trajectories of UK Business Schools’ espoused and inuse attitudes (Argyris & Schön, 1974) in embedding sound ethical behaviours and academic integrity issues. 

It was also designed  to offer a pilot study for testing a sector wide benchmarking service for the future to allow stakeholders to see changes in how ethical behaviours and academic integrity are enacted as a  part of the tertiary education process. 

• The investigation found that there is a wealth of material available to support innovative and varied approaches to supporting students in developing ethical behaviours and values around academic integrity, but no single point where these resources are collated. Further collation of these resources would be a useful follow-up project.
• The production of a systematic literature review offers a step towards assisting stakeholders to make sense of the literature to allow investigation of and adoption of new practice. 
• However we encountered an indifference to this area in the Higher Education Academic BMAF community (low response rate to our survey from the group that should be most motivated to respond and similar evidence from other studies) and our interviews suggest that at individual university levels the espoused versus in –use attitudes are often contextualised in a series of top-down rules supported by "crime and punishment" enforcement, which may not be helpful. 
• The size of our project makes us very cautious about any generalisation of these conclusions.  
• Finally we recognise we are limited by the brevity of this report, so we are planning to develop this research to allow these resources to become available to the wider community in a follow up project

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