Business & Finance: The Role of Academic Integrity in Professionalism

This essay elucidates the critical connection between academic integrity and professionalism within the business and finance sectors. It defines academic plagiarism, emphasizing its detrimental effects and the importance of upholding academic integrity to foster trust, honesty, and credibility in a professional setting. The report further examines the relevance of academic integrity in cultivating essential skills for career development and ethical conduct in the workplace. Practical strategies for avoiding plagiarism, such as proper source attribution and effective paraphrasing, are discussed, alongside methods for enhancing overall professionalism through observation, skill development, and clear communication. The essay concludes by reinforcing the significance of academic integrity as a cornerstone of ethical business practices and professional growth, encouraging individuals to prioritize honesty and integrity in all aspects of their work. This resource is available on Desklib, where students can find more solved assignments and study materials.

2. Professional Skills
for Business and
Finance

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Give meaning of the term Academic Plagiarism. Why Academic integrity is important to
professionalism in a business......................................................................................................3
Relevance of academic integrity in professionalism...................................................................4
Factors to avoid plagiarism.........................................................................................................4
Ways to Improve professionalism...............................................................................................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Every profession requires different skills to be possessed by the professionals for better growth
of the professional and individual. Business is yet another profession which requires a great zeal
and skill set to be followed by the business owners and managers if they want to take the
business to another level of success. Professional skills are an integral part of success for any
business (Tsigaros, and Fesakis, 2020). Business skills helps the owners and managers to start a
business and manage the different tasks related to the business. It gets important for the owners
to understand the need for academic integrity before starting with a new venture as the owners
are required to make different reports and provide information which is important to different
stakeholders. This report highlights the meaning and understanding of academic plagiarism and
how academic integrity is important for business.
MAIN BODY
Give meaning of the term Academic Plagiarism. Why Academic integrity is important to
professionalism in a business.
Academic plagiarism refers to an act performed by an individual or a group of people where
these people uses someone else's ideas , words, thoughts or written work as their own. It is
considered an offence according to academic integrity and different professional values. In
simple words, it refers the act performed by a writer who uses content written by someone else
and present it as their own without giving any credit to the original writer.
Academic integrity refers to a moral policy in the learning environment which is required to be
followed by every individual present in the learning environment (Crossman, and et. al., 2019). It
supports the educational values and behaviour which requires avoiding cheating, plagiarism and
maintaining the academic standards with honesty. Following are the importance of academic
integrity in a business environment:
Individuals while working in an environment which follows academic integrity have greater
chances of developing trust and honesty among the learning place. It also helps the individuals in
researching and choosing the career path which interests them. Academic integrity helps the
individuals in building up confidence as they know all the information related to the topic and
gives them right direction with growth. When an individual follows academic integrity, they
builds credibility of their work and gets better results with growth.

Relevance of academic integrity in professionalism
Academic integrity is an essential aspect for every scholastic environment. But it does not stop
there. Academic integrity is a skill which develops within the individuals which helps them
while being in a professional environment (Bertram Gallant, 2018). This is one of the
fundamental aspect which builds trust between the team of individuals working for a business
unit. This fundamental aspect helps in building confidence and a sense of clarity about what they
are required to do without being controlled by rules. It gets necessary for the individuals to
polish these skills while entering into a professional environment.
Factors to avoid plagiarism
Plagiarism, as discussed above is a crucial aspect which the learners need to focus on while
being in a academic environment. Following are the ways which can be used by them to avoid
plagiarism as and when required.
To credit the original writer about the piece of writing they have written and their thoughts, it
gets important to acknowledge all of these sources which have helped the secondary writer in
managing and writing the piece (Eaton, Sabbaghan and Takrimi, 2019).
A great tool which is used in literature is of paraphrasing. Paraphrasing helps the individuals in
writing the information in such a way which is new but means the same as before. This tool
helps the writers reduce their plagiarism index. This is also done with proper sourcing as these
are someone's ideas.
The main focus of the individuals can be on achieving business goals and they can create the
piece of information in such a way which is both related to the topic and inclined to the particular
business as well.
Ways to Improve professionalism
Professionalism is a skill which can be enhanced using other set of skills and knowledge. Above
discussion has made it clear how professionalism and academic integrity is important for an
individual. Following are the ways which can be taken up to enhance professionalism and
academic integrity.
The first thing that can help an individual improve their professionalism is being observant.
Individuals learn and enhance their ability by observing the owners and bosses. How they are
handling a situation can really help others in understanding the need and ways of professionalism

The other way they can improve professionalism is by enhancing their own skills and ideas from
different sources (Sousa-Silva, 2017). Employees growth and development is an important
aspect in the business unit and these can help the employees better understand their work and
needs of the business and in result help them being more professional.
The third way is by providing clear information and enhancing their communication skills in the
unit of business. This will help them understand better the needs and wants of the business.
CONCLUSION
The above mentioned essay had made it clear the importance of academic integrity in not just a
learning institution but in a professional unit as well. Plagiarism is a bad concept and every
individual should focus on eliminating this from their tasks and written data. The essay also
highlights the relevance of academic integrity in a professional setting and ways or improving
professionalism. At last it talks about the factors by which an individual can avoid plagiarism.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bertram Gallant, T., 2018. Part‐time integrity? Contingent faculty and academic integrity. New
Directions for Community Colleges, 2018(183), pp.45-54.
Crossman, K., and et. al., 2019. Academic Integrity: Faculty Development Needs for Canadian
Higher Education-Research Project Brief.
Eaton, S.E., Sabbaghan, S. and Takrimi, A., 2019. Plagiarism perceptions among post-secondary
students and faculty-A case study: Research project brief.
Sousa-Silva, R., 2017. Detecting plagiarism and contract cheating: New academic integrity
challenges. Plagiarism across Europe and beyond, p.125.
Tsigaros, T. and Fesakis, G., 2020, December. E-assessment and Academic Integrity: A
Literature Review. In International Conference on Technology and Innovation in
Learning, Teaching and Education (pp. 313-319). Springer, Cham.