Sunday, October 15, 2006

High School Students to be Ethics Trained by Businesses?

The Josephson Institute for Ethics released results from a study of high school students today.

61% have cheated on an exam in the past year
28% have stolen from a store
23% have stolen money from a parent or relative
39% have lied to save money


The researcher said fewer than 2% of cheaters are caught with less than half punished. He commented “It puts huge pressure on the workplace to retrain these kids.”

There is a problem should those kids work at any publicly traded company as a different study indicates approximately 30% manipulated their stock options over a 10 year period. The methods of cheating on their executive incentive compensation systems vary from backdating options to fraudulently giving them to non-existent employees.

Will only 2% of unethical business execs be caught with less than half punished? If so America would be surprisingly consistent.

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