“Integrity is the essence of everything successful” (Buckminster Fuller 2014) Corruption can be considered a major threat to social development, as well as to sustainability. It can spread like an epidemic, and when it does, it can cause the destruction of society in all fields, leaving communities without moral principle, shriveling up wheels of development and making society suffer. To counter this, members of public and private sectors should be able to face the risks of corruption head on, by applying overall principles based on integrity and honesty.
Universities are respected institutes of socialization, laying foundations for major social constructions. With this comes responsibility for any output they produce, which should reflect positively on social renaissance. As such, it is imperative to educate all involved stakeholders in concepts of integrity, which should be embedded in moral culture, where everyone is committed to sound academic rule. Academic integrity consist of a long chain of interlinked values, if one breaks down, the full cycle may disrupt.
Although this may have its repercussions both on and off campus, it also extends beyond that, including the educational externals. Therefore, academia should aim to grow away from cronyism and personal interest, applying principles that positively reflect on the whole To achieve academic integrity, faculty members must deal with their students as if they were long-term investments, deserving full attention and care.
Behaving like this, teachers could invoke proper respect for their ethics, scientific integrity and honesty, representing the university with good practice and in a honorable manner. Raising students in honesty and (scientific) integrity will contribute positively to protection and promotion of other people’s rights and will enable a sense of responsibility towards that. At SABIC, we give great importance to integrity in all business, we consider a culture of responsibility which must work out throughout the whole.
SABIC therefore has developed a Code of Ethics, which emphasizes on its commitment to integrity (SABIC 2014). This code provides guidelines for employee behavior, and confirms the support for core values, ?? such as commitment to employees, standards for doing business, and relationships with involved stakeholders. SABIC embraces the laws of morality, every day, with every business dealing in any part of the world. SABIC performed campaigns to identify internal rules for behavior in all company sites.
Also it annually campaigns to actively raise awareness and promote understanding of the Code of Ethics, including an internal portal for the education of employees.
In conclusion, I think it is useful to consolidate integrity in educational environments. A charter for integrity in academics could describes the rights and duties of teachers and learners, which need to be implemented, preserved, protected and pledged to. I also think there is a necessity to develop integrity across the board, not as a managers’ directive, but willfully applied throughout academies, covering all gaps.
