According to recent empirical research (Transparency International, 2013), nearly 15% of people worldwide admitted to having paid a bribe in an educational setting. Given the nature of corruption,...

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students’ willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. (...) Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism– than a monetary behaviour –embezzlement–. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the high-corruption acceptance’s group. Practical recommendations need to address students’ perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices. (shrink)

There are hardly any instruments to measure teamwork behaviors from an individual approach. This applies both in interprofessional teams or not, and in teams involved in health, social care, and other areas. The Individual Behavior Analysis scale measures efficacious behavior in work teams. It is one of the few instruments proposed in the literature to measure personal skills necessary for teamwork. Only a previous exploratory analysis of the scale was informed in another study. This article analyzes its internal structure using (...) different confirmatory factor analyses and its internal consistency, with a sample of 815 employees working for Spanish social organizations in the geriatric field, both private and public. The results of the definitive version adapted to Spanish, referred to as Individual Behavior Analysis −25, indicate a good fit of the model to the data and good reliability. Factor analysis confirmed the existence of two factors: Communication skills and Acceptance, with good internal consistency coefficients. This scale is a useful instrument for assessing, based on the reviewed literature, two of the most important individual skills an efficacious team should have. (shrink)

Most research on corruption in educational settings has focused on a cross-national and macro-level analysis; however, to our knowledge, few papers have sought to explore individual perceptions that explain corruption in higher education. The present research aimed to disentangle students’ predictors of corrupt intention in a Spanish public university. A total of 933 undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. students filled out an online survey measuring four corruption scenarios: favoritism, bribery, fraud, and embezzlement. Path analysis revealed that justifiability, risk perception, and perceived (...) prevalence of corruption were significant factors in predicting corrupt intention. Moreover, willingness to report a corrupt act was predicted by corrupt intention, justifiability, and risk perception. Corrupt behavior is a complex phenomenon explained not only by peers’ behavior, but also by their individual justifications and perception of risk. Education is not free of corruption, and universities must address this urgent problem in order to avoid future economic, societal, and ethical problems. (shrink)