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Students’ Ethical Behavior in Iran

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Abstract

Most of research on fostering ethical behavior among students has taken place in US and Europe. This paper seeks to provide additional information to both educators and organizations about the ethical perceptions of Iranian students by investigating the effect of gender on students’ ethical behavior. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 203 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at one of the public universities in Iran. Statistical analysis revealed that male students have a significantly less ethical behavior in three factors (selfishness, academic cheating and computer ethics) than female students. While the topic of students’ ethical behavior and its relationship with gender has been extensively studied before, there have been contrasting findings by different researchers. This paper is among the very few first researches conducted among Iranian university students to investigate the effects of gender on students’ ethical behavior under the four categories of violation of school regulations, selfishness, academic cheating, and computer ethics, hence making an important contribution to the ethics literature on the developing countries, since the study was conducted in Iran.

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Acknowledgement

The first author, Mr. Mehran Nejati, would like to thank Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for its support by providing financial support through Vice-Chancellor Award which made this research possible. Also, the third author, Mr. Mostafa Nejati would like to acknowledge Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for supporting toward the publication of this paper through USM Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Minden, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

    Mehran Nejati & Mostafa Nejati

  2. Department of Economics, Management and Accounting, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

    Reza Jamali

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  1. Mehran Nejati
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  2. Reza Jamali
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  3. Mostafa Nejati
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Correspondence to Mehran Nejati.

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Nejati, M., Jamali, R. & Nejati, M. Students’ Ethical Behavior in Iran. J Acad Ethics 7, 277–285 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-010-9101-4

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