The impact of self-leadership and involution stress on academic ethics among university faculty members in China

Academic ethics are the moral standards or ethical rules by which the academic community is governed. Academic ethics is an ethical standard for all researchers to follow and a prerequisite for the credibility of a research result. Therefore, it is meaningful to conduct research related to academic ethics. In this study, a questionnaire survey was administered to Chinese university teachers. According to social cognitive theory, 10 research hypotheses were formulated to construct a cognitive model of academic ethics, and structural equation modeling was applied. This study found that: i. Self-leadership was negatively related to involution (内卷; neijuan) stress and academic moral disengagement, but was positively related to academic moral judgment and academic ethics risk perception; ii. Involution stress was negatively related to academic ethics risk perception and academic moral judgment, but was positively related to academic moral disengagement; iii. Academic moral judgment was positively correlated with academic ethics risk perception, but was negatively related with academic moral disengagement; and iv. Academic ethics risk perception was negatively related to academic moral disengagement. Therefore, this study concluded that academic institutions need to help researchers develop academic self-leadership and minimize the factors that lead to involution stress in order to reduce the occurrence of academic ethical problems.