Professional Skills for Business: Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

This report delves into the critical aspects of academic plagiarism and its implications for professional skills in the business and finance sectors. It begins by defining plagiarism and emphasizing its unethical nature as a form of intellectual theft, highlighting the importance of original ideas in a business environment. The report then explores various types of plagiarism, including direct, self, mosaic, and accidental plagiarism, and discusses the role of the internet in facilitating and detecting such misconduct. It underscores the significance of academic integrity for professionalism, emphasizing that maintaining integrity builds trust and influences ethical practices. The report includes a real-life example of academic misconduct and outlines the consequences of lacking academic integrity, such as suspension or reputational damage. Finally, it offers practical strategies to avoid plagiarism and enhance academic writing, such as proper citation, paraphrasing, and using reliable sources.

Professional Skills for
Business and Finance

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Academic Plagiarism and its relevance in professionalism in Business environment................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
It is very important to have professional skills for the business and finance. These
professional skills are helping to generate own ideas without copying others(Helgesson and
Eriksson, 2015). Present study is based on Plagiarism and its relevance in academic writing.
Report will include various types of plagiarism and the role of internet in these misconducts.
Report will further include relevance of academic integrity for professionalism and the
consequences with respect to lack of academic integrity. Further, report ends with different ways
in order to avoid plagiarism in order to improve academic writing.
MAIN BODY
Academic Plagiarism and its relevance in professionalism in Business environment
Plagiarism in general terms mean, when a person use someone's idea and pretend that it is
new and its own idea(Yadav, Rawal and Baxi, 2016). If a person turns others work as its own or
just change the words and copy the respective ideas and words that other person have generated,
it is generally referred to as plagiarism. It is unethical as it is a form of Theft and one person is
stealing some other person's intellectual property.
Plagiarism is relevant in academic writing because it is very important to write in own
words as it helps in contributing something new for the benefit of society. If everyone start
copying each others ideas and concepts, then this will never help out in any way for the business
environment(Mohamed and et.al., 2018).
There are different types of plagiarism with respect to academic writing. Direct
plagiarism is when some other person's work is used word to word and without any attribution
or quotation mark. It is considered as academically dishonest and unethical practice. Another
type of plagiarism is Self Plagiarism where a person presents its previous idea as its new one
and this is unacceptable in business environment (uarara, Hamou and Rahmani, 2017). Mosaic
plagiarism is type of plagiarism where person either intentionally or unintentionally paraphrase
the other person's writing or thoughts without using quotation marks. On the other hand
Accidental plagiarism is one in which person either misquotes the respective sources or
unintentionally paraphrase similar words.
Nowadays, internet is playing an important role for plagiarism and is encouraging and
giving opportunity for people to cheat and threat others ideas. There are numerous databases
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available on internet and people are free to download and use them for there respective purposes.
Internet have made the plagiarism easy and have raised the convenience for growth of contract
cheating(David and Grosu-Rădulescu, 2018). However, Internet have also helped in detecting the
plagiarism with easy methods. Before internet, it was tough to detect the plagiarism, but now its
is easier in business environment to catch the plagiarism.
It is very important in business environment to have Academic integrity with
professionalism as this reflects the credibility of a person. Maintaining academic integrity is
important for professionals in order to build trust this is a key characteristic be successful in such
environment. Academic integrity also helps the professionals to have ethical practices in to
effectively handle the issues related to these misconducts(Al-Qahtani and Roff, 2017). The
professionals having high personal integrity generally have positive influence on the
environment and this helps in achieving the targets. Integral actions leads to productivity and
high personal integrity.
A real life example of academic misconduct was seen when assistant professor Peter
Boghossian of Portland State University faced sack after writing 20 fake scientific papers. These
papers were also went online and out of them 7 were also accepted by journals. The officials of
Portland State University accepted that the professor did not have any ethical approval for this
exercise. Lack of Academic integrity and such types of misconducts in business environment are
having many consequences as this dishonesty results in serious actions and may results in
suspension or expulsion(Denisova-Schmidt, 2018). These actions of a person generally results in
some sort of fine, future project loss and may also ruin the universities' reputation.
There are numerous ways to avoid plagiarism and to improve the academic writing.
Paraphrase the information that one finds perfect for the research and this must be taken into
consideration that copy of verbatim more than two words in a row is not there. Researcher have
to write the paper in its own words by generating own ideas. Another way is to do proper citation
and follow the formatting guide with respect to the document and also add online
sources(Mansour And et.al., 2017). It is also required to avoid reliable and untrustworthy sources
so that right information is in hand. Organising the work in own way and applying own logics
and ideas also helps to avoid plagiarism and academic integrity improves. In order to avoid the
repetition of generic words, its synonyms can be used. The sentence can be restructured and
voice can be converted from active to passive if information is very important.
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CONCLUSION
From the above study it is been concluded that is a person copy the respective ideas or
information that is given by other person, it is unethical and leads to plagiarism. It is important to
identify the plagiarism in academic writing as copying one's ideas is neither helpful for society or
business environment. Report also concludes that there are four types of plagiarism that are
direct, self, mosaic and accidental plagiarism. It is also been concluded from the above report
that internet is also playing an important role for plagiarism as it encourage and give opportunity
for people to threat others ideas. It is concluded that academic integrity reflects the credibility of
a person and have positive influence on the environment that leads to productivity. It is also been
conducted that lack of academic integrity results in many consequences and this dishonesty
results in serious actions that may results in suspension of the person. At the end report
concludes that in order to avoid plagiarism proper citation have to be there. Reliable and
untrustworthy sources also have to be avoided.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al-Qahtani, M. and Roff, S., 2017. Using the Dundee Polyprofessionalism Inventory I:
Academic Integrity to Map Student Professionalism in 3 Arab Gulf Countries.
MedEdPublish, 6.
Bouarara, H.A., Hamou, R.M. and Rahmani, A., 2017. BHA2: Bio-inspired Algorithm and
Automatic Summarisation for Detecting Different Types of Plagiarism. International
Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research (IJSIR). 8(1). pp.30-53.
David, I. and Grosu-Rădulescu, L.M., 2018. The Internet-Friend or Foe of Academic Plagiarism.
eLearning & Software for Education, 2.
Denisova-Schmidt, E., 2018. Corruption, the Lack of Academic Integrity and Other Ethical
Issues in Higher Education: What Can Be Done Within the Bologna Process?. In European
higher education area: The impact of past and future policies (pp. 61-75). Springer, Cham.
Helgesson, G. and Eriksson, S., 2015. Plagiarism in research. Medicine, Health Care and
Philosophy. 18(1). pp.91-101.
Mansour, E.S. And et.al., 2017. Improving knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the nursing faculty
members and postgraduate students towards plagiarism in academic writing. Journal of
Nursing Education and Practice. 7(9). pp.107-20.
Mohamed, K. and et.al., 2018. ACADEMIC PLAGIARISM IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER
EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: LEGAL PERSPECTIVE. International Journal. 3(13).
pp.245-253.
Yadav, S., Rawal, G. and Baxi, M., 2016. Plagiarism-A serious scientific misconduct. Int J
Health Sci Res. 6(2). pp.364-366.
Online
Ways to avoid plagiarism. 2019. [Online]. Available. Through<http://en.writecheck.com/ways-
to-avoid-plagiarism>
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