Abstract:

According to research by the international organization EY (Ernst & Young, 2014), which maps out attitudes to unethical behaviour, 69% of Czech managers consider corruption in their country to be a widespread phenomenon. The same percentage of managers are willing to get or keep a contract with the help of unfair practices. Every fifth Chief Executive Officer was asked for a bribe, and every tenth considers the distortion of the data in the final accounts as justifiable. These disturbing findings have led to the need to map out attitudes to unethical behaviour among students at VŠB - Technical University in Ostrava. The students will work in the top management or statutory bodies of companies in the future and will be directly responsible for adhering to the ethical code in companies. The students’ attitudes towards unethical behaviour were mapped in two stages, in 2014 and 2018. A survey questionnaire was used to identify attitudes; it included 21 cheating options at work. In the first phase, they had to decide whether or not certain behaviour could be classified as cheating. In the second phase, they checked if they could imagine that they would do act like that at work. In both phases, they were students of Bachelor’s degree programmes aged 20-21. Already in 2014 it was found that cheating associated with a lower rate of employer damage was widely accepted and was often not considered to be cheating. However, the students would not avoid even the actions that they themselves described as immoral. The 2018 results indicate only a very slight improvement, namely in the perception of immoral behaviour, rather than in its avoidance. High tolerance for unethical behaviour 29 years after the fall of the Communist regime is a warning. A possible solution to the unfavourable situation could be to include the teaching of ethical behaviour in the offer of social science subjects taught at technical universities.

Keywords:

Unethical behaviour, university students, attitudes to cheating.