Exploring the consistency of ethical perceptions by business and economics higher education students: Looking from academia towards the corporate world

Abstract Understanding how business and economics higher education students ethically appraise corporate behaviour nowadays may contribute to anticipating how they will behave in the future as corporate actors and leaders. At present, students observe and perceive academic behaviour; in the future, they will make decisions and act within a corporate context. We investigated the hypothesis, which is concerned with consistency between the perceptions of the aforementioned two contexts evaluated at the same time (academic at present and corporate in a hypothetical future), through a questionnaire administered to business and economics undergraduate students at a top Portuguese institution. We found evidence of such consistency in perceptions. Students who perceived academic misconduct to be more serious also held more ethical views on corporate behaviour. Female students and students from higher education family backgrounds expressed stricter views on corporate ethics than those of their peers. By exploring this alignment, it is thus possible for higher education institutions to affect the ethical perceptions of academic (mis)conduct and promote more ethical behaviour at present and potentially in the future.