Abstract
Plagiarism, a phenomenon not unique to academia, recently made headline news when it was referred to in plagiarism by politicians and media. It is a duty of higher education institutions in growing future leaders to acquaint students, not only with the notion of business ethics, but also equip students with the writing skills to avoid plagiarism. This article reports on a study where the extent of plagiarism was compared for demographic and academic context variables. The extent of plagiarism, using Turnitin™’s similarity scores, of 120 postgraduate students was examined. Robust ANOVAs revealed no significant differences between men and women; however, statistically significant differences were found for age, home language,
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academic discipline, and course grades. Management educationists face the tasks of identifying and developing potential at-risk students who could commit plagiarism, in order to uphold academic values and ensure that such students, particularly non-native English-speaking students, are adequately prepared to excel academically.