Selected Ethical Issues in the Analysis and Reporting of Research: Survey of Business School Faculty in Malaysia

Abstract

This study reports the perceptions of business school faculty on ethical behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting as well as the prevalence of such behaviors in their academic environment. Survey data for the study were obtained from a sample of 102 business school faculty from five government-funded universities in Malaysia. Study results showed that a majority of the respondents considered practices such as fabrication, manipulation, and distortion of data to be ethically unacceptable, and these behaviors were reported to be least prevalent. In contrast, the practice of misapplying statistical techniques was considered ethically acceptable and reported to be quite prevalent. On research reporting, although a majority of the respondents agreed that plagiarism and taking undeserved authorship credit were ethically unacceptable, they also reported having observed the frequent occurrence of such behaviors. Finally, practices such as cutting up research data and simultaneous submissions to more than one publication outlet at the same time were less likely to be viewed as unethical and seen to be quite a common practice. In general, the findings of this study indicate that the perceptions of the ethicality and frequency of occurrence of behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting vary among business school faculty.

Plagiarism, Replication of Published Material without Citation and the Policy of the European Management Review

“…There are a number of formal definitions of plagiarism from a range of disciplines, which share some common elements. These elements include the idea that there is an intention by one author to misappropriate somebody else's thoughts, ideas, intellectual frameworks, results and words without proper acknowledgement of the source (Gotterbarn et al ., ; Enders and Hoover, ; Bedeian et al ., ; Poon and Ainuddin, ; Honig and Bedi, ; Amos, ; Lenz, ; Pupovac and Fanelli, ; Ayondele et al ., ; Smart and Gaston, ). As plagiarism involves denying recognition to another person whose ideas are being used, Thomas and de Bruin, ; see also Haviland and Mullin, ) describe it as ‘intellectual theft’.…”

“…Plagiarism, although of only recent interest in academic publishing (Smart and Gaston, ), has been gathering reported momentum in management and cognate disciplines (Bedeian et al ., ; Poon and Ainuddin, ; Honig and Bedi, ; Sonfield, ; Thomas and de Bruin, , p. 78; Karabag and Berggren, ; Ayondele et al ., ; Horbach and Halffman, ). Hitherto, the evidence is inconsistent, possibly because of variations in definitions and the use of different methods of evidence collection.…”

“…Whilst we are sympathetic to the pressures that many academics face, often without adequate institutional support; in our role as editorial team members of a learned journal, it is incumbent on us to protect the integrity of knowledge creation and dissemination, as well as respect the copyrights enshrined in published articles. We are entrusted as gate keepers by the academic communities we serve and implicitly assumed to uphold the value of intellectual contributions to the highest standard by the public at large, policy makers and funding agencies included (Bedeian et al ., ; Stenmark et al ., ; Poon and Ainuddin, ; Honig and Bedi, ; Thomas and de Bruin, ). Of course, there are costs involved in journals seeking to detect plagiarism and questions have been asked whether those costs are too high when it may not be possible to impose sufficiently meaningful sanctions on those who perpetrate damaging practices (Gotterbarn et al ., ; Poff, ).…”

“…Hitherto, the evidence is inconsistent, possibly because of variations in definitions and the use of different methods of evidence collection. These inconsistencies add to the need for this journal to respond to the calls to provide guidelines on how instances that have been defined as plagiarism may be dealt with (Gotterbarn et al ., ; Poon and Ainuddin, ; Godercharle et al ., , p. 79; Lenz, ). While journals in some disciplines have not found a need for policies (Enders and Hoover, ), others have responded to such calls (Pupovac and Fanelli, ; Smart and Gaston, ).…”

“…The European Management Review ( EMR ) has a distinctive set of needs. There are some suggestions that publication cultures vary both between the different countries that comprise Europe and between European countries and the rest of the world (Poon and Ainuddin, ; Honig and Bedi, ; Albers, ) from which EMR receives contributions. As the official journal of the European Academy of Management ( EURAM ), EMR aims to cater for authors from all European countries and beyond, at different stages of an academic career, from PhD student to senior professor; and to support them all as they seek to prepare articles worthy of publication.…”