An SFA professor's award-winning research delves into the relationship between cheating in school and subsequent deviance in the workplace.

Sharron Graves, assistant professor of accounting, who recently won the "Best Paper" award at the International Business Research and College Teaching & Learning conferences in Las Vegas, has been studying students' cheating habits for a year and a half.

Graves has been comparing research done by others around the country to results from "a few small sample surveys" she conducted at SFA.

"The sample size is too small to release any official data about our campus yet," Graves said.

But through her studies, she has found a definite connection between students' cheating habits and the likelihood that those students will act unethically in the workforce.

On average, 70 percent to 75 percent of students in this country admit to cheating on exams or on homework in high school and college, compared to only 23 percent in 1941, according to the Center for Academic Integrity.

Graves credits this increase to business professionals who set a bad example by acting unethically and to the increased competition level in schools.

"As an effect, employees are 13 times more likely to be deviant at work than in 1980," she said.

According to Graves, there are two types of corporate deviance: property deviance and production deviance.

Property deviance describes the theft, defacing or destruction of a business's property by an employee. Production deviance, the more common of the two, includes surfing the internet during work, turning in false work hours and taking long lunch breaks.

"Production deviance leads to a loss in a company's production," Graves explained, "which forces it to raise prices. So ultimately, we as consumers pay for employees' irresponsible behavior."

Graves believes the remedy for such behavior is to start early.

"Honor codes should be implemented at schools to engrain ethical work and study values into students at an early age," she said. "What is our goal in college? Making it harder for people to cheat? No, I think it's to change the mind set about cheating. This, in turn, will reduce the amount of cheating."

Implementation of a student honor code is already on the college of business's list of long-term goals.