Academic Integrity as a Way to Promote Workplace Ethical Behaviour

This chapter explores the relationship between the ethical behaviour of a person as a university student and their conduct in the workplace. It explores what may be considered ethical behaviour in the professional environment, those behaviours that are common to professionally well-done work. It proposes that the construction of a culture of academic integrity can become an effective strategy to achieve moral development. The chapter is based on the findings of a study about the relationship between the ethical behaviour of a person during their undergraduate studies and their ethical performance in their professional work, where 845 professionals and students from Mexico participated. Statistically significant correlations between ethical work behaviour and independent variables such as academic integrity behaviour and quality of the ethics and compliance program were found. Ethical behaviour in the work environment of a person can be explained based on their academic integrity behaviours when they were a university student, their peers’ behaviour, the perceived quality of the ethics program in their business environment, and their level of rejection of dishonesty. The chapter offers recommendations for educational institutions and professional organizations to promote ethical behaviour and some possible projects for future research