Santiago Iniguez - Dean IE Business School

The Fight Against Cheating

During a discussion with colleagues regarding the results of the study conducted by Donald McCabe, i.e. that management education students were the group who most admitted to cheating, some pointed out that MBA programmes are very demanding, sometimes beyond realistic expectations: how could you ask an MBA participant to work more than what is actually possible? In order to cope with these unrealistic demands, some students just cheat. Other colleagues referred to the prevalent culture at many business schools, which emphasizes performance at any cost, thus exacerbating the competition and prompting disloyalty among fellow students –in line with what Professor Sumantra Ghoshal stated in a posthumous article.

In their combat against cheating, business schools officials should not transfer the entire responsibility to students, but rather involve other school stakeholders, docents in particular. A whole set of measures should be displayed in order to make cheating really difficult or very risky, including the adoption of preventive measures along the publication of a list of condemned practices as well as the existence of effective bodies that decide and implement the sanctions.

Enactment of Honour Codes. The surveys released by the Center for Academic Integrity show that "cheating on campuses with honor codes is typically 1/3 to 1/2 lower than the level on campuses that do not have honor codes".

Involve students in the ethical governance bodies. Half of our ethics committee is made up of students making the agreed-on sanctions more legitimate in the eyes of students. At IE we see as key that the student knows the technical means we have at our disposal to prevent cheating (see "Technical Solutions" below). Nobody likes to have to tell a student that they have to leave the course, with the extreme financial discomfort that this would entail etc. We hope to dissuade rather then having to catch and punish students after the act. All this creates an environment where honesty and endeavour are the key elements that resonate; all resulting in a critical mass of fair play.

Empowering and improving the conscientiousness of faculty. According to CAI, faculty members are normally reluctant to take action against suspected cheaters. "In Assessment Project surveys involving almost 10,000 faculty in the last three years, 44% of those who were aware of student cheating in their course in the last three years, have never reported a student for cheating to the appropriate campus authority. Students suggest that cheating is higher in courses where it is well known that faculty members are likely to ignore cheating".

Balance the load of assignment to students.This may seem obvious but at times it might seem outrageous the workload that students are asked to do in some schools. In some cases this creates the sense of desperation necessary for some students to cross the line.

Technical Solutions. My school uses a Web based application called Turnitin to verify that our students are not plagiarising when handing in written assignments etc. Use of this tool sends a strong message that we take seriously the protection of the honest competively-minded student and this has a spill-over effect in the approach to other tasks, such as exams and presentations etc.

Indeed it is in the interest of all the top schools to use this tool to prevent inter-school plagiarism as the tool is constantly becoming more efficient with the many updates to the databases that it references, which include the students’ own assignments. On uploading a given assignment, the most popular academic databases are cross-checked, along with news and information sources, as to the level of originality of the work. The results can be surprising and reveal the most sophisticated cheats, who use, for example, paraphrasing. The disuassion effect can be enhanced by providing students with example reports on the originality of sample works.

Cheating and Personal Happiness

Last week, a report on cheating surveying 5,300 graduate students in the US and Canada, conducted by Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at New Jersey's Rutgers University and President of CAI (Centre for Academic Integrity), was widely released in different media, including the Financial Times and CNN.

The report, which will be published in the September issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education, reveals that 56% of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, as compared to 54% of graduate engineering students, 50% of physical science students, 49% of medical and health-care students, 45% of law students, 43% of liberal arts students and 39% of social science and humanities students. Previous reports published by CAI are likely if not more alarming: the results of a 2005 survey of 50,000 undergraduates on more than 60 US campuses showed that on most campuses, 70% of students admit to some cheating. This diagnosis may be aggravated since, as McCabe said, it's likely that more students cheat than admit to it.

Do more students cheat nowadays than, say, four decades ago? It is debatable, although some analysts explain that some facts such as the easy access to almost infinite sources on the Web and the flourishing of virtual communities of cheaters have contributed to make the phenomenon rampant.

In my opinion, given the magnitude of the problem, two extreme reactions should be avoided. The first one is to despise the phenomenon, or even more perversely, to justify, for example, that cheating is a form of innovation or that there are diverse degrees of cheating, some acceptable. The second is to embark in a sensational crusade that may harm some pillars that sustain education and prestigious institutions, thus affecting also negatively those students that comply with the rules.

In this and a subsequent post I will deal with some of the possible approaches that schools can undertake to combat cheating, taking into account that, although eradicating the phenomenon may be almost impossible –in an analogous way as to prevent all people from lying of being disloyal to their partners- it is somehow achievable a state of being where cheating becomes really difficult or very risky.

To start with, there is a need of clarifying a conceptual issue. Normally, cheating is considered a reproachable behaviour because, as the Oxford Dictionary explains, cheating is "to act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage". However, the first person who looses out is the cheater: first, by potentially exposing one’s personal reputation to be affected, sometimes for life; and second, and more importantly from a personal point of view, for relinquishing all the benefits that brings the learning process. The expression "You are only fooling yourself" springs to mind. We all know the intellectual satisfaction that results from understanding, memorising, rationalising and discussing theories, ideas and concepts. Those who take the shortcut and skip the wonders of learning are giving up a decisive part of personal development that is directly linked –I believe, in line with many philosophers- with happiness.

Student’s Opinions about the Bologna Process (Report)

Information about the evolution and stakeholder’s reactions to the Bologna Process is currently scarce and fragmented. The implementation of the process –the adoption of the necessary legislative measures to standardise higher education across Europe into the two degree level system (bachelor and master)- is delegated to the each member state. This makes even further difficult the access to aggregated information. It should thus be very welcome the interesting report "The Bologna Process: Students Plans and Perceptions"( 24 pages, 1MB), jointly published by EFMD and Trendence, the first of the series "EFMD Research Report Series". The survey tests the waters with the university students of over 30 European countries about their attitudes and expectations regarding the creation of the single Higher Education Area in the continent.

Let me highlight three of the findings summarised in the report. First, that overall reputation is the decisive factor in student’s decision as to which institution they will choose for studying abroad. Second, only half of the students surveyed were willing to continue into the masters’ level immediately after finishing their first degrees. This proportion is consistent with what happens, for example, in the UK, where the percentage of bachelors who enter the job market after graduation is even higher (estimated at 60%). Third, the language is the key factor considered for choosing a particular country where to study.

MOBILITY SCHOLARSHIPS (page 19) -(51% don't know of any such scholarship)

There are some findings that are, somehow, counterintuitive. For example, despite that the overall reputation of a school is considered a determinant factor in choosing an institution, 51% of the students surveyed have no interest in reports or rankings, which are instrumental in the projection of reputation. An interesting piece of information is that 25% of the surveyed students plan to work, gaining experience, after their first degrees and then later study for a masters’ qualification –this segment being the ideal target for MBA programmes.

Interestingly, the five preferred European countries where to study, both for students already studying abroad or for students currently studying at their home countries is the same and I enclose it below:

- United Kingdom 

- Spain

- France

- Germany

- Italy

Convictions and Conventions in Multicultural MBAs

In my previous post I defended that promoting multiculturalism in class is essential for the transformation of MBA students into cosmopolitan managers. In the context of a multicultural MBA class, the cornerstone of coexistence is the respect for others, that each class member shows equal respect to each other fellow, regardless one’s personal affinities. This is not at all easy, since we all have natural preferences in choosing our friends or partners, and to enforce respect a business school community should engage in a set of principles and practices that embody the basic convictions about basic duties and rights of its members. These convictions may be substantiated in a code of ethics that comprises not only norms related to student’s academic behavior –e.g., refusal from cheating or plagiarism- but also basic principles guiding interpersonal relations. Normally, codes of ethics contain prohibitions or duties –e.g., not insulting others- as well as aspirations formulated in the positive –e.g., assist fellow students in their basic needs, engage in constructive relationships with others-.

The convictions that inspire most business school’s codes of ethics tend to converge across the board and they do not necessarily reflect a concrete ideology, religion or morality but they rather substantiate what could be called as cosmopolitan ethics. In fact, in a multicultural class composed of people who may have different views of the world or about personal morality, the adopted set of convictions should only cover the core rules that guarantee a constructive coexistence among participants, a sort of minimum common denominator that balances diversity and respect to others with the adherence to common rules of behavior.

Besides convictions, conventions -customs shared throughout a community- do also play an important part in facilitating the relations among business school’s members, like in society at large. Indeed, the more diverse personal convictions among the members of the class, the more decisive it becomes the respect for the agreed conventions. In his recent book "Bien Educados" (Well Educated), professor Salvador Cardús develops the idea that conventions, although being the result of arbitrary choices by members of a given society –e.g., driving on a road’s right or left side-, are the basis of civism and fundamental for coexistence. Examples of conventions include dress codes, forms of salute and personal treatment or etiquette at the table. Cardús insists that conventions do not rely on values or moral principles –like convictions- and that being "a well mannered person" is not equivalent to being "a good person". It is plausible to think about someone with exquisite traits but immoral in his actions. However a person with bad manners –I am sure you will agree with me-will likely encounter the rejection of the group, in a different but analogous way to how immoral people experience the reproach of fellow citizens.

In recent decades, many educators have defended that fostering spontaneity in students is desirable in order to cultivate creativity. A perverse understanding of this idea, however, entails the relaxing of conventions on the basis that they inhibit students from freely develop their personality. Like Cardús, I believe that the observance of conventions is, precisely, a requisite to nurture students’ personalities since it facilitates the integration of individuals in a community, thus opening multiple vital options not available for anchorites.

Cosmopolitan managers actively cultivate those conventions that make business relations with people from different cultures not only possible but fruitful. A golden convention is to treat others like they want to be treated. This is a lesson that business schools’ educators can not omit, indeed an exciting challenge for those who aim at moulding cosmopolitan managers.

Cosmopolitan Managers

A major challenge for international business schools nowadays is the transformation of their students into “cosmopolitan managers”. By this I mean persons who consider themselves citizens of the world and who are able to manage their companies effectively in multicultural contexts for the creation of wealth of their stakeholders and society. Cosmopolitanism is thus opposed to nationalism, and its adherents consider their membership to a particular country as circumstantial, like the colour of their skin or their height, but at the same time is compatible with a sense of belonging to or being proud of one’s community. The archetypal profile of a cosmopolitan manager prioritises cross-cultural skills and understanding of diversity over traditional analytical capacities or technical knowledge.

How can business schools better prepare its students to become cosmopolitan managers? I will offer three recommendations –here and in subsequent posts- that are, obviously, addressed to institutions that aim at becoming truly global, even though I respect those schools that have a domestic mission and serve their local management cadres –although every educational institution will face the same challenge at some stage.

The first recommendation is that international schools promote multiculturalism in class and foster cross-cultural integration. The more diverse a class is, the more it potentially reflects the wide range of differences that global managers may encounter in real life. The key question, however, is not just how diverse the class is in terms of, for example, the number of nationalities represented, gender, age, religion, professional or academic background and other vital criteria. Diversity should be also reflected in the composition of nuclear class units like, for example, working teams. In addition, and more importantly, diversity should be effectively managed by docents and programme directors for participants’ personal and professional development, as part of the learning process.

Let me tell you about a recent illustrative anecdote at my school, taking into account the highly diverse composition of our International MBA (*). Some months ago, a German MBA student told me that, generally, he felt more satisfied working with his American counterparts than with other fellow participants from Latin America. Let me put it bluntly, although his words were much more subtle: he believed that Latinos, in general, were lazier, did not contribute enough to teamwork, were always ready to start a fiesta and mostly superficial. He admitted that Latinos, again in general, had some virtues such as passion and “joie de vivre” but in the end he preferred Anglo-Saxons as workmates. As such, his views coincided with many clichés spread by cross-cultural studies on management. My response to him was that he could learn more from Latinos –very divergent to his own cultural idiosyncrasies- than from similar people. Certainly, sameness is much less enriching for the learning process than diversity. I believe I did not convince him but I made a bet with him. He is now in his exchange programme at a US business school, with a much lesser diversity in its class profile, and I asked him to tell me when he comes back if the learning environment there or here was potentially richer. We made a bet –you can guess what mine was- and I think I'll win it.

Constructive interpersonal relations among students from diverse cultures create the best context for the education of cosmopolitan managers. In addition, it helps participants to unmask prejudices that, very often, are obstacles to cross-cultural management. Contrary to what my German friend thought, Latinos are not genetically superficial, they are not more prone to cheating and they may be as rigorous as the Anglo-Saxon exemplar, but the best way to learn this is by knowing and dealing with them.      

(*) The class starting in the fall this year is composed of 93% non-Spanish participants with 50 different nationalities represented.

A Day to Remember

We all remember where and what we were doing at the time of the terrorist attacks to the World Trade Centre (WTC). It is an historic episode made up of a web of different individual stories. In my case, I was at a nearby restaurant to my school with my Marketing Director –I was the then Director of External Relations of IE. My cellular started to ring incessantly and we both left our meals unfinished and rushed to find out more.

Last time I had been at the WTC was May of that same year, on the occasion of IE Foundation’s constitutive meeting, a session that took place at the offices of Thacher, Proffitt & Wood –our legal advisors in the US-, located on WTC’s 2, the South Tower. I remember that during that meeting, the emergency bells rang twice but we did not pay much attention since they were false alarms. From that moment on, our representative in NYC operated out of our legal advisors’ offices in WTC, a very convenient and elegant location in the heart of the city.

I spent most of 9/11’s evening on the phone. First, trying to reach Margarita, then our representative in NYC, who, to our great relief, contacted us early to confirm that she was safe at home. I was also trying to get more information about our legal advisors -Kofi in particular, also a member of our school’s Advisory Board- and fortunately he was out of the office that day. I later learnt that Thacher, Proffitt and Wood had no casualties, indeed a miracle since they were located on the 81st floor of the South Tower. I later tried to contact close friends and IE alumni in NYC, some of whom lived or worked near the attacked buildings. Indeed, the communication lines were busy during a vigil that lasted until the early morning of Tuesday.

Many feelings came to my mind during those intense hours but solidarity is the one that stands out in my memories. We all felt like fellow citizens of the world related to the victims of the attacks. Since, in some way, our own personal stories have been affected and we utterly condemn the irrationality and uselessness of terrorism. Every 9/11 since, we all relive these same feelings and, again, consider ourselves citizens of New York and the World.