Report on Academic Integrity and Professionalism in Business

This report critically analyzes the importance of academic integrity in the context of professionalism within the business environment, focusing on the consequences of academic plagiarism. It defines plagiarism as the representation of another's work as one's own, highlighting its damaging effects on a business organization's reputation and ethical standing. The report details the legal, professional, ethical, and monetary repercussions of plagiarism, including destroyed reputation, legal action, and financial penalties. Academic integrity, characterized by honesty, trust, and accountability, is presented as essential for building respect and trust within an organization. The report concludes that maintaining academic integrity is crucial for avoiding plagiarism, upholding ethical standards, and ensuring consistency and efficiency in both academic and business operations, ultimately safeguarding the organization's image in the competitive market.

Professional Skills for
Business and Finance

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task - 1............................................................................................................................................3
“What is Academic Plagiarism and why is academic integrity relevant to professionalism in a
Business environment?”.........................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................5
Books & Journals...................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Business Environment envelops large number of elements that helps in influencing an
organization's tasks and incorporates clients, contenders, partners, providers, industry patterns,
guidelines and other government activities, social and monetary variables along with
technological advancements. Also, professionalism encourages a decent culture, which should
consider conflict handling in the right manner. Proficient workers are considered as a key
component of the business organization that helps in developing an ethical environment. In this
report, the importance of academic integrity is critically analysed in context ti the
professionalism in the business environment. Also, the report will also be focussing on the
component of academic plagiarism in order to understand its relevant consequences on the
business environment.
Task - 1
“What is Academic Plagiarism and why is academic integrity relevant to professionalism in a
Business environment?”
Plagiarism is the portrayal of one more creator's language, contemplations, thoughts, or
articulations as one's own unique work. In instructive settings, there are contrasting meanings of
copyright infringement relying upon the foundation. Plagiarising is viewed as the violation of
scholastic honesty and a break of editorial morals. Academic Plagiarism happens when a writer
extensively utilizes multiple words from a printed source without the utilization of quotes and an
exact reference to the first source in a work introduced as the research and scholarship of the
writer. Plagiarism is something that damage the reputation of the business organization to a
greater extent (Slade, Rowland and McGrath, 2019). In the professional capacity, the standards
and the image of the company gets affected negatively hampering the whole business
environment. This kind of activity portrays that the business organization is lacking in its key
areas of orders as well as honesty. As academic plagiarism in context to the business
environment of considered as morally and ethically unlawful, it may result into copyright
infringement which basically means, when an individual copies the work done by some other
individual leads to breaking of the law ultimately resulting into legal, professional, ethical and
personal consequences which are explained below:

Destroyed reputation: Academic plagiarism is considered as an ethical offense which may affect
the reputation of an individual in academic capacity or professional capacity (Velliaris, ed.,
2019). In order to keep a check, organizations are now having integrity committee which can
help in preventing such kind of activity.
 Legal repercussions: academic plagiarism may result into serious legal repercussions on
the basis of copyright laws. Because it is considered as an act of using the content of
some other individual. Therefore, the real author of the content do have the right file a
case against the plagiarist.
 Monetary repercussions: According to some recent articles and reports have exposed
many of the journalists, authors and researchers. For performing such kind of unlawful
act they had to pay the monetary penalties and fines as a compensation for their
misconduct.
Academic integrity can be defined as the performing with a certain set of values along with the
components of honesty, trust, accountability and responsibility in the sectors of learning,
teaching and research (Groves and Mundt, 2021). Business professionalism in business builds up
regard for power figures, customers and colleagues. Keeping an expert demeanour with
customers who act improperly shows the degree of regard a representative has for the client and
the business organization. Any act of breaching the academic integrity affects the professional or
academic performance in a serious way. It is considered that all the essential components of
academic integrity such as maintaining the accuracy, abiding by all the policies of research
authenticating the sources if information by referencing the data from the original sources helps
in maintaining the efficiency levels of the business and academic operations in the most
consistent an effective way. It helps in building a considerable level of trust between an
individual and all the related parties in an organization so that it can create a level of honestly
and operations and activities can be performed without being constantly monitored. It is basically
an important element of scholastic respectability implies incorporating those qualities by being
straightforward in the scholarly work you do at college, being reasonable for other people, and
assuming liability for learning, and following the shows of grant. Also, academic integrity is
considered as a crucial concept which helps in inculcating the element of trust in a business
organization so that it can succeed in the long run (Pupovac, Popović and Blažina, 2019). The

major significance of this concept of academic integrity in context to the business environment
are explained below:
 It basically helps in understanding the importance of learning and is considered as a
vital and the most important requirement of academic quality so that proper level of
efficiency can be maintained throughout the business or academic operations or
activities.
 It is not only concerned with avoiding the dishonest activities which may include
plagiarizing, copying in exams but also focus and prioritize an effective engagement
in context to learning the importance of genuine and decent efforts along with good
proficient skills.
 It also helps in having a two-fold impact on an individual or a group to develop
certain competitive advantages and skills along with an ethical perspective in order
to perform decision making in context to business environment in an efficient
manner (McKay, Cray and Mittelman, 2019).
 Academic integrity also helps in developing and maintaining high standards of
brilliance in an academic or business organization so that motive of expressing the
general idea is done under the ethical framework without any type of dishonesty or
misconduct.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above report that it is very important for any organization whether
it is in the format of academic or business, it should maintain the academic integrity in its
working so that any kind of academic plagiarism do not affect the end objective that is to be
ascertained. Also, academic plagiarism is considered as an unlawful activity which may have
impacts in the organizations such as destroyed reputation, legal repercussions and monetary
repercussions which bring inefficiency and inconsistency in the organization. Also, it will
deteriorate the image of the company in the competitive market place.

References
Books & Journals
Slade, C., Rowland, S. and McGrath, D., 2019. Talking about contract cheating: facilitating a
forum for collaborative development of assessment practices to combat student
dishonesty. International Journal for Academic Development, 24(1). pp.21-34.
Groves, M. and Mundt, K., 2021. A ghostwriter in the machine? Attitudes of academic staff
towards machine translation use in internationalised Higher Education. Journal of
English for Academic Purposes, 50. p.100957.
Pupovac, V., Popović, S. and Blažina, V., 2019. What prevents students from reporting academic
misconduct? A survey of Croatian students. Journal of academic ethics, 17(4). pp.389-
400.
Velliaris, D. M. ed., 2019. Prevention and Detection of Academic Misconduct in Higher
Education. IGI Global.
McKay, R., Cray, D. and Mittelman, R., 2019. We're not in Kansas anymore: Academic honesty
in an international business program. The International Journal of Management
Education, 17(1). pp.1-14.