Dishonesty

What is dishonesty?

General definition

Dishonesty means the lack of honesty, to cheat, lying or being deliberately deceptive; lacking in integrity; to be corrupt, treacherous or fraudulent.

Dishonesty in criminal law

Dishonesty is the fundamental component of a majority of offences in criminal law.

Academic dishonesty

There can even be dishonesty in the academic sense, eg. plagarism, fabrication, deception, cheating and even sabotage. Today, academic institutions take a very strong view against academic dishonesty and students have been known to be expelled for such behaviour or not allowed to pass their examinations due to plagarism.

What causes academic dishonesty? The world is increasingly becoming a rat race and there is a lot of competition in schools and pressure for good grades. It also does not help that due to society becoming more affluent and parents spending less and less time with their children and inculcating ethical values among their children, many children grow up being very selfish and interested only in furthering their own goals at any cost.

What can schools do to tackle the problem? The teachers should be trained to detect academic dishonesty. Students should be advised of the standards required for conduct in school and they should be taught the repercussions of dishonesty. Perhaps the school could also take steps to minimise the opportunities for cheating and plagiarism. If cheating occurs, the school should respond swiftly with disciplinary measures and formal action.

Dishonesty in the workplace

What about in the workplace? In the old days, workers had more integrity and the key to success was sheer hard work. Nowadays, some workers will not hesitate to resort to flattery, dishonesty, scheming and back-stabbing to climb the corporate ladder to reach wherever it is that they are aiming to reach. Due to this, cliques are increasingly being formed in the workplace and schemes plotted in order to bring about the perceived downfall of a rival.

Everyday examples of lying in the workplace include embellishing the truth on personal resumes (quare: when was the last time you did not attach a glamour-shot photograph to your resume?) and company track records; suggesting to customers that a product is better than it actually is, telling tall tales to the boss, sabotaging a colleague, etc.

(Sources:

(1) Wikipedia

(2) Merriam-Webster dictionary)