West Point Cheating Incident Case Study

The West Point: The Cheating Incident case examines the events surrounding a cheating scandal that occurred in West Point Academy in April of 1976. West Point is one of the longest standing military academies in the United States. West Point aims to groom Army officers using a rigid program that features both academic and physical challenges, which enable its student body to develop the mental and carnal maturity and endurance needed for leadership roles throughout future combat on the battlefield. West Point’s program is so rigorous in order to mimic the stress that soldiers will endure during periods of war. West Point holds its student body to a very high standard and their honor code as dictated by the Cadet Honor Committee exalts the virtues of honesty and integrity by stating,

The cheating, although unacceptable, was the outcome of an organization whose culture had created an environment where counterproductive work behavior had become the norm. The sheer number of juniors implicated in the cheating scandal suggests that this was a learned behavior. Organizational culture is a collection of shared concepts, learned overtime, which influence behavior that impacts multi-level outcomes (Kinicki & Fugate, 2016). A healthy organizational culture produces positive organizational work behavior. Conversely, counterproductive work behavior (CWB) represents behavior that harms other employees, the organization as a whole, or organizational stakeholders. To truly understand how such a prestigious organization that has produced great military leaders like Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Patton faced the potential of expelling nearly 117 underclassmen for cheating and approximately 200 others who had knowledge of it, we must dissect how a civilian is transformed into a commissioned officer and prepared to give his life in defense of their