Academic integrity as ethical culture: Institutional responsibility and moral order

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes academic integrity culture as an institutional moral condition constituted through the alignment of regulative–structural arrangements and normative–cognitive expectations across organizational levels. Drawing on the literature on ethical culture and moral order, it develops an account of academic integrity as sustained through the coupling of formal governance structures and informal peer-regulatory processes and reproduced over time through routinized practice and socialization. The paper develops a conceptual measurement model that treats academic integrity institutionalization as a latent construct and specifies its observable indicators. It further articulates a verification logic that clarifies the inferential conditions under which such indicators can support claims of cultural institutionalization. An institutional illustration shows how convergent, longitudinal, and multi-level indicators may be interpreted in relation to processes of stabilization and norm reproduction. The paper concludes by outlining the methodological and ethical implications of treating academic integrity as a cultural property of universities and clarifying the institutional responsibilities that such claims entail.