Friday smorgasbord: Moralists, ethicists and philosophers

1. MBAs are the biggest cheaters.
More than half of MBA students said they cheated in the last year, according to a survey by the Academy of Management Learning and Education. I started to blog about how people need to change admissions procedures which not only favor cheats but also candidates who hire admissions consultants.

But then I read that almost 50% of all graduate students cheat. Not sure what to make of this except that the same problem that makes grad students cheat — no ability to separate themselves from their grades — is the thing that makes businesspeople cheat — so wrapped up in their work that they are willing to sacrifice their morality.

So what should you do? Get a life outside of work, outside of school. That way when things go bad, you can remember that you have a life that is separate from what is going bad and you won’t feel compelled to cheat to fix it.

2. Ethical leadership means getting enough sleep.
I have written before about the importance of getting enough sleep. But Charles Czeisler takes the sleep discussion to a new level in this month’s Harvard Business Review (subscription):

“We now know that 24 hours without sleep for a week or sleeping four or five hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1%. We would never say, ‘This person is a great worker! He’s drunk all the time!’ yet we continue to celebrate people who sacrifice sleep for work.”

He says this sort of behavior puts employees and companies at risk and companies should create strict guidelines for acceptable sleep behavior that function similarly to substance abuse guidelines.

What should you do? Face the fact that for most of us, lack of sleep is due to lack of prioritizing, and get better at time management.

3. Cosmo isn’t the only place for fun quizzes
If you want a quiz about your sex life (or lack thereof) check out Cosmo. But for issues that are (hopefully) more career related, check out the philosophical health quiz. Why do you need to be a solid philosopher to have a solid career? Because knowing yourself is an integral part of figuring out what you want to do. And if your world view is bungled, then your view of yourself is probably bungled as well.

What should you do? Take the test.