Cheating in Education

Cheating and its Consequences

Cheating is indefensible regardless of the context, whether conducted in an exam environment, plagiarizing, on a partner, failing to file income taxes, employees stealing from their employers, or in any other form. Violation of the generally established regulations and standards is unacceptable and wrong. Cheating contravenes the fundamental morals that define the society, and merely an excuse advanced by people not willing to achieve their desired objectives by putting in the hard work needed.

Plagiarism as a Form of Cheating

Plagiarism is one of the common ways of cheating witnessed in colleges and universities. This kind of fraud is perceived as both unethical and archaic. Expulsion usually is the best way to punish this type of offense (Griffin, Bolkan & Goodboy, 2015). The standard form of plagiarism practiced in educational institutions mainly involve duplicating someone else’s thoughts and ideas and representing them as your own. Plagiarism is similar to stealing someone else’s personal property and lying that it belongs to you. In this regard, it is treated as theft of the highest degree. An individual spends a lot of time researching and thinking over how to present his or her in written form. What is more painful and disrespectful is when a student or another individual decides to use such works without acknowledging the source. In some grievous instances, it involves direct copy pasted work presented as original ides.

The Ethical Arguments Against Plagiarism

There are no ethical arguments for plagiarism besides being convenient, and the popular talk of it is collaborative. However, risks far outweigh the benefits. Such arguments are self-serving notions to people who do not want to put extra effort in their research. There are three vital arguments against plagiarism, in that when one engages in this activity: they lie to their professors, steal other people’s work, and ultimately rob themselves of valuable educational opportunity when they are consequently kicked out of college.

Doping in Sports

Doping is another form of cheating evidenced in sports. For instance, in various, some of the most exemplary players often use steroids to have an advantage over their competitors. Such players can achieve an unhealthy competitive edge by gaining more power and energy compared to their fellow player by incorporating steroids into their diet and training. Doping is a goes beyond the rules of fair play by gaining an imbalanced advantage over competitors. Hosny and Fatima (2014) argue that it is utterly possible to gain any significant satisfaction when one engages in any act of doping. In baseball, for instance, some of the big names in the game have been caught up in scandals involving the use of steroids to boost their swing momentum. Consequently, what should be a challenging situation now becomes a walkover for some athletes because of their decision to use performance enhancing drugs or steroids for strength boosting.

The Unfairness of Doping

Doping is unfair to all the athletes who have chosen the healthy path and dedicated their time and energy towards being clean, hard work and morality. Moreover, it is an insult to athletes who dedicate their lives on practicing to be the better version of themselves. On the other hand, proponents for the use of performance-enhancing drugs argue that doping is both beneficial to the athletes and the sporting fraternity in general. For instance, they argue that doping helps athletes break records and make the performance more enjoyable. However, what they do not recognize is that cheating in its widest sense is not ethical, and can have severe ramifications for the athletes (Pulfrey & Butera, 2016). For example, some of the players found to have involved in doping have had lengthy suspensions which has ultimately negatively impacted their careers.

Negative Effects of Doping on Health

What is more, doping negatively affects the heath wellbeing of an individual. Most of the athletes often suffer from myocardial infarction due to increased heart beat rates. Regardless, of the short-term gains of using performance enhancing drugs to cheat in sports to gain medals and other prizes, the long-term side effects far outweigh such benefits.

The Importance of Integrity in the Workplace

Humans normally get the desire to cheat when presented with a chance to do so even in a workplace set up. Integrity determines the moral standpoint of an individual to dictate whether they are ethical or unethical in their dealings. An individual who has integrity will always undertake whatever they think and feel is right regardless of impending consequences their decisions might have (Clampit, Kedia, Fabian & Gaffney, 2015). Persons with integrity are most likely considered reliable, trustworthy, accountable and honest in whichever dealings they undertake. During recruitment, employers often hire based on honesty, which is among the core values most sought after by recruiters from potential candidates (McCann, Sparks & Kohntopp, 2017). Employees who display a high degree of integrity are in most cases honest. Besides, they always demonstrate sound, moral and ethical principles in the course of their work. Therefore, cheating is not plausible nor is it beneficial to any business concern. An organization requires reliable employees who mean what they say. Nonetheless, they should be steadfast and focused on the attainment of the business objectives through morally and ethically acceptable mechanisms.

The Importance of Trust in Relationships

In summary, virtually all relationships are based on the principle of trust. For a business, potential and existing clients need the confidence to hold the much-required connection between them and the business-and faith maintained play a crucial role in keeping the relationship. A customer should have the ability to trust the company with his or her information, and the organization should put the necessary measure to maintain the trust (MacDougall, Bagdasarov, Johnson, & Mumford, 2015). The same also extends to other spheres of life. Though cheating can make us achieve what we want in the short-run, the risks far outweigh the benefits in the long-run, and one might end up losing what he or she gained. Cheating negatively affects every sector of the economy, and what starts in one part sporadically extends to other parts of the society. For instance, a student, a politician or an employee might falsify their actions to achieve their desired outcome what they do not know is that such acts contribute to the overall mess where people who are capable are denied opportunities because of their selfish moves. In the end, the world ends up with incompetent employees, athletes or business executives. Cheating is a vice that is fast eating the world in an imaginable scales and should, therefore, be fought at different fonts (MacDougall et al., 2015). Engaging athletes in the fight against cheating can contribute to the war immensely because of their celebrity status and their actions often bring out immediate effects of the vise called cheating.

References

Clampit, J., Kedia, B., Fabian, F., & Gaffney, N. (2015). Offshoring satisfaction: The role of partnership credibility and cultural complementarity. Journal of World Business, 50(1), 79-93.

Griffin, D. J., Bolkan, S., & Goodboy, A. K. (2015). Academic dishonesty beyond cheating and plagiarism: Students’ interpersonal deception in the college classroom. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 16(1), 9-19.

Hosny, M., & Fatima, S. (2014). Attitude of students towards cheating and plagiarism: University case study. Journal of Applied Sciences, 14(8), 748-757.

MacDougall, A. E., Bagdasarov, Z., Johnson, J. F., & Mumford, M. D. (2015). Managing workplace ethics: An extended conceptualization of ethical sensemaking and the facilitative role of human resources. In Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (pp. 121-189). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

McCann, J. T., Sparks, B. H., & Kohntopp, T. F. (2017). Leadership Integrity and Diversity in the Workplace. Research in Economics and Management, 2(5), 177.

Pulfrey, C., & Butera, F. (2016). When and why people don’t accept cheating: self-transcendence values, social responsibility, mastery goals and attitudes towards cheating. Motivation and Emotion, 40(3), 438-454.