The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management

Chapter 8. Encouraging Future Managers to Cheat

As a management professor, I have long believed that I have an ethical responsibility to encourage the students in my classes to cheat. (For reasons that will become apparent, I feel that responsibility keenly in the case of the students who aspire to roles as managers.) Recently, that belief was enhanced when my son applied for admission to the University of Virginia, an institution that prides itself on its honor system. Reading the application materials, he found: "On all written work done by students at the University of Virginia, the following pledge is either required or implied: 'On my honor as a student, I have neither given nor received aid on this assignment.'" He was also warned that anyone ...