Author(s): Afzal Izzaz Zahari, Jamaliah Said, Nurisyal Muhamad
The study of ethics and integrity are current issues that deserve scientific attention, the concept and development of integrity models and research studies in their own right. The concept of integrity had been vague as more research is incorporating integrity into their models of research. Throughout the years, improved models of integrity are useful for governments, corporations and individuals for them to make improved decision making. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners stated that global fraud losses are at the levels of trillions of dollars a year. This could be prevented if the people in society act with higher levels of ethic and integrity. The purpose of this paper was to report the results of a systematically conducted literature review of studies related to integrity. The objective of this paper was to explore the development of integrity through literature and content review. This includes examining concepts that are considered part of integrity and the approach used towards assessing or integrating integrity in these studies. This study employed a structured review process that critically examined sources from various electronic databases. Electronic databases that only utilised strict content, scientific quality indicators and are peer-reviewed journals articles are the ones selected. Another selection criterion was that the selected article has high levels of citations. Most of the studies had associated integrity with positive ethical values practised such as leadership, honesty, and sincerity while including these values in their research models. The review briefly discusses the associated concepts of integrity and the underlying values that are connected with the use of the term integrity. The results of past studies related to integrity indicated that there are strong positive characteristics and positive values that are associated with the term integrity.