As a management professor, I have long believed that I have an ethical responsibility to encourage the students in my classes to cheat. (For reasons that will become apparent, I feel that responsibility keenly in the case of the students who aspire to roles as managers.) Recently, that belief was enhanced when my son applied for admission to the University of Virginia, an institution that prides itself on its honor system. Reading the application materials, he found: "On all written work done by students at the University of Virginia, the following pledge is either required or implied: 'On my honor as a student, I have neither given nor received aid on this assignment.'" He was also warned that anyone who breaches that pledge commits academic fraud, is in violation of the honor system, and will be expelled from the university.[133] Although other universities may not have formal honor codes, giving and receiving aid on written assignments, particularly examinations, is generally frowned upon and is usually accorded the more commonplace title "cheating." Regardless of the semantics used to describe such nefarious behavior, the penalties for engaging in it tend to be severe.
Does it strike you as odd, though, that virtually all educational institutions in our culture, from kindergarten through graduate school, define cheating as "giving aid to others or receiving aid from them"? More specifically, does it strike you as unusual that we define cheating as an act of helping or being helped by others? Does it seem in any way peculiar to you that an expression of altruism has become an avatar of behavior that is immoral, dishonorable, and sullied? Alternatively, does it not strike you as bizarre that by defining cheating as the process of helping others, we implicitly are saying that not being helpful — being narcissistic and selfish — is a prototypical expression of academic decency and honor?
It does me. In fact, I believe that defining cheating in that way is unethical, immoral, and, consequently, educationally unsound — unless, of course, one of our purposes as educators is to provide training in the attitudes and skills required for destroying ourselves and others. When that definition of cheating is imposed upon the future leaders and followers of our business community, we virtually guarantee that our organizations will lack the unity and spirit of teamwork essential to compete in the world economy.
To define cheating as giving and receiving aid creates a whole range of problems — problems that I know few of us want or intend to create.
In his classic study on how managers spend their time, Mintzberg found that typical managers spend about 20 percent of their time working alone.[134] The remaining 80 percent is spent talking with others on the telephone, in face-to-face meetings with other individuals, or in group meetings. Surgeons don't go into the operating room and say to the nurses, aides, and fellow physicians who surround them, "It is against my principles to give or receive aid during surgery." I know of no football player who, as a moral imperative, demands that his teammates leave the field before he agrees to carry the ball. And as my colleague Peter Vaill points out, he has never heard of anyone in any organization, other than academia, being given a job to do with the admonition, "As a matter of honor, don't seek help from anyone or give help to anyone as you do it." (You might be interested to know that when I called Peter to check the accuracy of his quotation, he refused to talk with me about it, asserting that to do so would constitute an unethical act of cheating.)
Most people will agree with the pragmatic observation that the world in which actual work is accomplished requires that we give and receive aid, rather than withholding or rejecting it. Consequently, defining cheating as we do has relevance only for organizations in which accomplishing real work is unimportant and perhaps even actively discouraged.
It Thwarts the Expression of Synergy
Requiring that business students work in lonely isolation from one another also thwarts the expression of synergy and teamwork. It denies what experts in management have long known: that is, when human beings work together, they can produce a piece of work that is superior to the work of individuals toiling alone. It denies the reality of the research on high-performing systems by my colleague Peter Vaill, who observed: "A .350 hitter is not just a .350 hitter, typically, but a .350 hitter in context."[135] Stated differently, most individuals can perform their best only in the context of working with others. In short, our definition of cheating ignores the reality of what we know and what, ostensibly, we ask business students to learn.
I say "ostensibly" because when examination time comes, we say, "Although we have asked you to read the literature on participation, collaboration, teamwork, and synergy, and although we have given you a number of opportunities to experience those dynamics in classroom demonstrations and exercises, we don't want you — or us management teachers — to have the opportunity to really experience it. We just want you to learn about it. We don't want you to actually practice it."
When we do that, the enormous difference between our espoused theories and our actual practices is exposed to view.[136] The fact that we sanction such educational hypocrisy has profound implications, not only for the training of business people but also for the culture at large. I am particularly struck by the cruel irony of the manner in which examinations on the topic of business ethics are conducted, with marasmic enforcers, called proctors, prowling the room to prevent any overt display of individual mental health and altruistic community building. Understanding that irony, I have become acutely aware of the momentous difference between teaching the ethics of organizational behavior and teaching organizational behavior ethically. In my opinion, unless we become aware of and act on our awareness of that difference, the teaching of business ethics will lose its credibility, which, I opine, is its only unique claim to relevance.
Altruism — which Vaillant tells us is "the constructive and instinctively gratifying service to others,"[137] the process of "getting pleasure from giving to others what you yourself would like to receive."[138] — is one of the most constructive expressions of mental health in an individual. According to Vaillant, it allows us to "integrate reality, interpersonal relationships and private feelings."[139] It "provides a protective filter for the most searing emotions."[140] It allows us to express empathy and sympathy for others. It is a truly elegant adaptation to life.
Viewing the process from a physiological rather than a psychological perspective, stress researcher Hans Selye contends that altruistic egotism — the process of earning the love of one's neighbor — "permits you to express your talents by the most powerful means of maintaining security and peace of mind."[141] Expressed in the synergy of teamwork, such altruism permits the experience of stress to inspire "not only physical endurance and fortitude, but even mental feats."[142]
Sociobiologist Edmund Wilson suggests that altruism, "generosity without hope of reciprocation," is a "transcendental quality that distinguishes human beings from animals," is transmitted from generation to generation genetically, and is a requirement for the survival of any culture.[143]
Once again, it is a matter of no small consequence when educators define cheating as "giving and receiving help on examinations." It is not inconsequential because we are saying, in essence, that it is immoral for students to develop their capacities for expressing altruism, one of the truly healthy adaptations to life. Ultimately, we are saying that to assist in the culture's care and survival is dishonorable and that one of our jobs as educators is to ensure, if possible, that an important skill required for survival is not transmitted to future generations. Thank God that his Department of Genetics is deaf to our mindless babble.
Apart from its mundane consequences in the world of work, our definition of cheating causes anaclitic depression — the primitive, universal form of depression that occurs when we are deprived of people to lean on for emotional support. As I have stated before, anaclitic depression leads us to marasmus — that is, a wasting away, both physically and mentally. Spitz, for example, found that infants who were deprived of emotional support became weepy and lethargic, suffered insomnia, refused to eat, and withdrew into themselves. In short, they developed anaclitic depression; and in the absence of intervention by a supportive adult, they went into a state of marasmus — a condition that, at times, resulted in death. Of those who recovered physically, Spitz saw evidence that they suffered permanent emotional damage.[144] Or as Carl Jung might describe it, they received irreparable injuries to their souls.
Anaclitic depression and marasmus also affect adults. In The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness, James Lynch provides persuasive evidence that in our culture, loneliness is a major cause of premature death from heart disease and of a number of other maladies that cause early death.[145] Loneliness, in turn, is the word we adults use to describe our feelings of anaclitic depression. That loneliness, if prolonged, leads to marasmus no less severe in adults than in infants. As I have said before, competent cardiologists believe that the broken heart is more than a figment of the poet's imagination.
Anaclitic depression and marasmus occur not only in individuals but also in organizations and institutions. For example, Philip Slater, in The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point, contends that in a misguided quest to ensure our sense of individuality, we have designed bureaucracies and institutions that thwart our needs for community, engagement and dependence; in doing so, we have brought our culture to the breaking point.[146] Translated into my language, he is saying that we build organizations and institutions that create anaclitic depression and marasmus on a massive scale; by doing so, we are destroying the human fabric required to ensure our culture's survival. The anguish of "corporate life" stems from the competition, loneliness, and alienation that individuals often feel in the midst of a crowd that, ironically, was assembled for the purpose of cooperation.
For me, then, it is not a trivial matter when management professors in particular, or educators in general, define cheating as "giving and receiving help." It is not trivial because, by doing so, we are creating an environment that fosters anaclitic depression and marasmus, thus threatening the survival of individuals, organizations, institutions, and cultures. In addition, we are denying our students and ourselves the opportunity to express one of the highest forms of human decency — altruism.
Realizing the foregoing consequences of the conventional definition of cheating, I had a heart-to-heart conversation about my academic ethics with the dark side of my soul — the part of my psyche that Carl Jung would undoubtedly refer to as my shadow. I report the conversation verbatim:
| My Shadow: What is the purpose of all those simulations of managerial incidents, business exercises, and experiential events you use in the classroom? In essence, what do you hope to accomplish using them? |
| Me: I want to give business students the opportunity to experience the effect of trust, participation, collaboration, teamwork, synergy, and stuff like that. |
| My Shadow: That "stuff' you describe seems to deal primarily with values. Do you actually think that those values are worthwhile in the' real world"? |
| Me: Of course. If I didn't, would I spend so much time and energy trying to help students understand their relevance for the way organizations operate? |
| My Shadow: Well, if you really believe that those values are important and relevant, do you allow those future leaders and followers to collaborate, cooperate, participate, synergize, or whatever the hell you want to call it on their tests? |
| Me (rather lamely): Not on the actual tests. But I strongly encourage them to study together right up to the time of the exam. |
| My Shadow (smiling sardonically): Oh. So you back down when the crunch comes and do it like the rest of us. Well, let me tell you what I think. The difference between you and me is that I'm no hypocrite. I believe you have to kick ass and deal one-on-one. I do exactly what I say I believe in. You don't. That kind of hypocrisy must be tough on you and your students. |
As my shadow turned on his heel and walked our, I realized that he had shot an arrow into my heel and that my Achilles tendon was bleeding. I also realized that he must have seen in me what I have seen in managers who espouse the glories of collaboration and teamwork in one breath and in the next announce a competitive bonus plan that pits individual salespersons against one another. When I see that hypocrisy in them or me, I tend to feel both angry and sad. On my better days, I can laugh at the ironic foolishness of it all.
Hence, we are on shaky ethical and moral grounds anytime we choose to define cheating as giving and receiving aid on any assignment. By doing so, trainers of managerial talent are saying that it is moral and ethical to create anaclitic depression and marasmus, to deny the opportunity to express altruism, to ensure that the competence and elation of synergy cannot be experienced, and to train people to behave in ways that real work is unlikely to be done. We are saying that it is our job to create the dynamics of sickness. Further, in a stroke of Orwellian doublethink, we claim that it is our job to call such sickness "health" and to convince ourselves and others of the efficacy of that euphemism by contending that it is an expression of decency and honor. I don't believe that any of us intend to say and do those things, but for reasons I don't comprehend, we say and do them nevertheless.
Believing that the conventional definition of cheating reflects poorly on the integrity and credibility of educators, I have redefined cheating and express that redefinition in the form of a letter that participants receive the first day of my class. It is designed to fulfill a small part of what I believe to be my moral responsibility as a professor to encourage cheating. The letter goes as follows:
You may take the examination alone, with another person, or with as many other people as you would like. I frown on cheating. In fact, I go blind with rage if I catch anyone cheating. I define cheating as the failure to assist others on the examination if they request it. ... You may refer to notes and reference materials during the exam. You may bring friends, relatives or associates to help you. You may also bring equipment, such as typewriters, computers, musical instruments, sewing machines, cookstoves, cameras or any other contrivance which will provide assistance to you in your work. You may not cheat. If possible, have fun. If not, be competently miserable.[147]
Operating on the assumption that cheating is the failure to assist others on an examination if they request it has not been easy. Put mildly, I have experienced more than a few problems and gained more than a few important insights from this foray into what my shadow calls "nonhypocritical professing." Student reaction has been one of the sources of insight and problems.
I have been surprised how frequently students have chosen to work with one another. When I first offered the possibility of collaborating when it counted, I predicted that, at best, 10 percent would take advantage of that opportunity. Although I have not kept precise records over the past five years, I can say without doubt that at least 95 percent of the 350+ students who have taken the course have chosen to work on their examinations with at least one other person. To date, the largest number who have chosen to work together on a single examination is twenty-one. Apparently, students, like most other normal human beings, have a tremendous desire to help and be helped by others. Truly, altruism is distributed widely in the population. All that is needed is the opportunity to express it legitimately.
In what may appear to contradict what I have just said, I am equally impressed by the intensity with which some students have rejected the idea. Although few in number, those who have rejected it have done so with a vengeance. In fact, a short time ago, six students wrote their department chairman requesting that the course I profess be removed from their curriculum. One of the major concerns was that defining cheating as the failure to help others was a violation of everything they had learned during their academic program, a program in which they said they had always been required to work alone.
In the chapter about phrog farms, I pointed out that a fundamental purpose of many contemporary organizations is to turn good people into phrogs. Discussing the tragedy of life in the organizational swamp, I indicated that it is a lonely life on the lily pad and that the ultimate goal of phrogfessing in schools of swamp maintenance is to prepare tadpoles to live in the shadows of the swamp. To me, those six students poignantly demonstrated in their letter that the goals of the phrogfessors had been achieved all too well.
As for the 5 percent who have chosen to work alone, I have had no indication that any have cheated. I am pleased, because I don't know what I would do if someone did. Go blind with rage, I suppose.
In the same way that I was unprepared for the consistency with which students have accepted my idea, I was equally unprepared for the uniformity with which it has been rejected by my colleagues. In fact, with the exception of a few close friends, faculty members have repudiated it. The strength of their repudiation has varied from the passive, benign neglect one would accord the aimless mental wanderings of an eccentric dotard who feeds the birds ("Harv, you are a nice guy, but your idea is for the birds") to the active rejection one would generally reserve for a suspected terrorist who carries a suspicious-looking package aboard one's favorite shuttle flight to New York ("What are you trying to do — infect the brains of our young people with immoral, communistic thoughts? It's your kind of thinking that led to the demise of the Roman Empire").
Considering the intense fear I have experienced while pursuing an idea foreign to my own background and training, I have not been perturbed by the failure of colleagues to accept the definition and try it out. I have been disturbed, though, by the unwillingness of many colleagues to join me in exploring its moral and intellectual foundations and in thinking about its implications. Perhaps this chapter will provide us an opportunity to engage in that kind of thoughtful exploration.
If the reader is interested in doing that, contemplate this one: What do you do when a student approaches you during an examination and says, "Professor, you have said that the failure to help is cheating and that I can seek help from anyone or anywhere. So would you read what I have written and give me some suggestions for improving it?"
I have become aware of the marked contrast between the desire of students to provide altruistic assistance to one another and the belief of faculty members that they have an unquestioned obligation — one that I find distasteful — to ensure that students are kept isolated from one another and from the faculty. By pursuing the false belief that they have such an obligation, educators create — unintentionally, I think — destructive depression in both students and themselves. Although the creation may be unintentional, its effect is no less devastating. That monstrous creation is unethical, immoral, destructive, and, in its own way, evil; for I believe that the suppression of altruism in ourselves and others for the purpose of enhancing or maintaining personal power is always an expression of the darkness of our souls.
Most of us see clearly those acts of evil when they occur outside the halls of ivy and are generally quite critical of them. Why do we spare alienating management education the opprobrium we would heap upon managers if they callously disregarded the belongingness needs of their employees?
For instance, during the recent economic recession, the management of the Census Bureau in Suitland, Maryland, summarily rejected an altruistic employee offer to take proportional furlough days rather than losing co-workers to layoffs. Apparently, the top managers believed that the right to fire — to create anaclitic depression and marasmus — was a managerial prerogative that was essential to assure the bureau's efficient operation. Immediately after the RIFs were announced, approximately 200 appeals were filed — appeals that drained the organization of resources that could have been used to do truly productive work. Because of the energy that was wasted as the appeals were processed, the bureau experienced a clear case of organizational marasmus.
I suspect that most organizational behavior professors would agree that the managers who ordered the RIFs under those circumstances were, at best, insensitive or incompetent or, at worst, unethical or immoral. I believe that the reluctance of management faculty to define cheating as the failure to help one another is equally incompetent and immoral and no less debilitating. Stated differently, our decision to define cheating as "giving and receiving help" deprives the 95 percent of students and faculty who want to express altruism of the opportunity to do so and, in addition, produces no less organizational marasmus in our institutions than the census officials did in theirs. I am saddened that academic policymakers have denied one another the marvelous experience of altruistic synergy that would arise if they defined cheating as the failure to assist others on an exam. I am sure, though, that the world's bureaucratic managers are grateful to them for serving as role models who provide subtle legitimacy for their convoluted psychology.
I am also sure that neither the management of the Census Bureau nor business academicians fully realize that the anaclitic depression and marasmus they supply to others is also the anaclitic depression and marasmus they award to themselves. The managers and academicians seldom call it anaclitic depression and marasmus, but they frequently call it burnout, unaware that it emanates from the loneliness they both give and receive.[148]
Someday, I hope that we develop academic policies that offer the community-building support and compassion most of us feel toward ourselves and others. I'm sure that managers of the world's bureaus would appreciate that even more. I have seen very few managers who have received satisfaction from hurting or being hurt by others; so I think they might be particularly pleased if business educators became role models for the legitimate expression of altruism.
Defining cheating as I do has again raised questions for me: "What is the purpose of an examination?" and "What is the meaning of a grade?"
Prior to defining the term, I did not have a satisfactory answer to either question. Now I have a semisatisfactory answer for one — the first: An examination is an opportunity to learn to work in an environment that allows us to solve problems in the best way we can. Thus, an examination is the equivalent of producing a movie and finding out how audiences treat it at the box office, writing a novel and discovering whether anyone sees fit to read it, or creating a product and ascertaining whether anyone in the marketplace wants to buy it. Ultimately, it is an opportunity to learn to use whatever knowledge and skills we have to master a particular problem. As far as I am concerned, an examination has no other purpose beyond that.
I never have had any idea of what a grade means on an individual's academic transcript. Now, since the person's work was probably done in collaboration with others, including me, my ignorance of the meaning of a grade is even more pronounced.
For instance, after reading a draft of this paper, my wife said, "Would you want to be operated on by a medical doctor who received an A on an examination during which he or she received a lot of help? How would you know whether he actually knows the location of the appendix he ostensibly is going to remove from your rather ample gut? He may not know an appendix from an earlobe." An astute person might correctly surmise that she is not exactly a supporter of the idea. Removing any doubt, she continued, "If the person who really knows the difference between an appendix and an earlobe — the real A student who gave your surgeon help on exams during their 'groupy' days of medical school — is not there to provide similar assistance, you are going to look funny when your hat slips down around your neck because your ear is missing. How would you like that?" My knee-jerk response — born of years of defining honor as the process of being unhelpful to others — was, "I wouldn't." But then I realized that she based those fearful questions on the identical knee-jerk assumptions. By redefining the assumptions, I think the question becomes, "How would you like to have surgery performed by a physician who has learned to solve surgical problems in the most effective manner, even if that means collaborating with others?"
Let's cut through to the most crucial issue: Does the system based on my new definition of cheating prepare students for the world of work?
I have reached the unequivocal conclusion that it does not. But as I mentioned before, I do think that it prepares them to do real work. There is a difference. After graduation, many of us become employees of phrog farms, where we seldom get rewarded for how well we sing in the chorus.
More profoundly, is it the function of business professors to certify students as competent carriers of anaclitic depression so that they can comfortably take their places in the swamps? Or, alternatively, is it to certify that both students and faculty have been provided an altruistic environment in which they can learn to perform real work and live real lives to the best of their abilities?
Again, the question is not trivial. For instance, a colleague has asked, "What happens to the certification process? A part of the value of education is providing some assurance that the person has gained some knowledge and skills. With the new rules, the certification process becomes only one of competency in eliciting help. Would a university remain viable once this became known?"
Although I think that the "new rules" make the certification process even more complicated than the question implies, I certainly believe that my colleague is asking the right questions. I know that they are the kinds of questions that have both plagued and stimulated me.
As you might guess, I have answered some of those questions for myself by concluding that for me to be competently ethical, I must try to provide not an echo but a choice, even if the choice is made on the basis of beliefs and values whose viability is not assuredly known. More specifically, if we should choose to adopt the new definition of cheating on a massive scale, I doubt that universities, as we know them, would remain viable. On the basis of my experiences thus far, though, I believe that universities as we don't know them would become even more viable. For me, that exploration of what we don't know would offer a rich opportunity for spiritual growth, intellectual stimulation, and much relief.
Although I don't sense any burgeoning desire on the part of professional educators to provide that choice, I do see a groundswell of hope being offered by the students whom they ostensibly teach but from whom they have much to learn.
For instance, the University of Delaware recently published a study that indicated that at least one-third of its undergraduate students had engaged in forms of cheating that involved giving and receiving aid.[149] The study also indicated that the data from that institution were similar to those reported by other institutions of higher learning. Furthermore, it reported that the percentage of students cheating in institutions of higher education has steadily increased over the past forty years.
However, my redefinition should not be dismissed as an effort merely to legitimize an irrepressible vice. Nor should it be seen as cynical surrender to deceit or trickery in commerce. Quite the opposite — I consider my redefinition to be an impassioned plea for business ethics. Those of us who are committed to the proposition that it is important to train our young in the skills of anaclitic depression, marasmus, and lonely individuality will look upon the Delaware data with alarm. Those of us who are committed to the proposition that it is important to train our young in the skills of altruism, community building, and synergy will see those same data as bright rays of hope. Seeing the data as rays of hope, I personally believe that it is the ethical and moral responsibility of those who educate our future leaders and followers to nourish that hope.
As far as I am concerned, failure to provide such nourishment would further educate our students in the pursuit of marasmic loneliness and would thereby make an important contribution to carrying me, you, them, and the culture as a whole to the breaking point. I don't think many of us want to do that. I know I don't.
If we do fulfill what I believe to be our moral and ethical responsibilities by encouraging students to cheat, then someday our grandchildren may be signing honor codes in which they pledge, "On my honor as a student, I certify that I have both given and received aid on this assignment." If that happens partly because business educators have championed the effort, then I believe that we can be justly proud of our contribution to the culture's growth and survival.