Today’s business environment promotes the importance of teamwork. A company’s successful results frequently depend on how well team members respect one another to combine skills and collective thinking towards the completion of a project or to reach a particular goal.

Business leaders, then, should be concerned about a recent survey of high school athletes who voiced an extremely cavalier attitude about cheating, sportsmanship and teamwork.

The traditional view among most people is that participation in sports is excellent training for young men and women because team athletics in particular are supposed to show them how to work together, to sacrifice individual gain for team success and to respect good leadership and one another in the common drive for success. It goes without saying that these attributes are essential in the workplace.

But something has gone wrong, according to the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a non-profit organization that promotes character and good conduct among youths and other groups.

President Michael Josephson, commenting on the organization’s Web site, noted: “The bad news is that many coaches, particularly in the high profile sports of boys’ basketball, baseball and football, are teaching kids how to cheat and cut corners. In addition, far too many boys and girls engage in other dishonest, deceptive and dangerous practices without regard for the rules of traditional notions of fair play and sportsmanship.”

Fortunately, not all the news is bad. Josephson adds that secondary schools throughout the nation are filled with exceptional coaches and student participants. But the statistics reveal that negative influences are gaining too much ground and one wonders what the future holds for kids—not to mention for their employers—who will someday enter the workforce with an indifferent attitude toward doing the right things.

Here are just a few of the findings from the survey of more than 5,200 high school athletes:

· High school students involved in sports cheat in school at a higher rate than their non-sport classmates. This could have something to do with pressures to stay eligible or the demands on their time, the report said.

· Boys engaged in team sports are more likely to cheat on the field and in school than their counterparts in individual sports like swimming, track and field, golf and tennis.

· Girl athletes display a much deeper commitment to honesty and fair play than their male counterparts.

· Forty-one percent of boys saw absolutely nothing wrong with using another team’s playbook illegally obtained in advance of a game.

· One in three of the boys and a quarter of the girls surveyed said it is proper for a coach to instruct a player to fake an injury in order to get a needed time out.

· Forty-two percent of the boys (54 percent among football players) approve of trash talking their opponents after a score. Nearly half approved of elaborate showboating in front of the opponent’s bench.

· More than one-third of the boys, but only 12 percent of girls, approved of their coaches swearing at officials and using profanity and personal insults to motivate players.

Although the majority of those surveyed thought highly of their coaches for setting good example, many players criticized high school coaches for teaching negative lessons and bad sportsmanship.

Years ago, the coach of my Little League baseball team sat us down after practice one day and gave us two important rules: 1. never criticize your teammates; and 2. never criticize your opponents.

I always remembered them and passed along the same instructions to my four children in their athletic endeavors and to the youth teams I coached in basketball, baseball and hockey. Unfortunately, I had experiences with players, coaches and parents in all three sports who never learned those lessons. Furthermore, other disconcerting studies have revealed a much higher rate of cheating in the classrooms among all students than in the past.

With the growing emphasis on teamwork in the business world, parents, school administrators, business leaders and their professional organizations should be watchful to make sure that kids are not hearing the wrong lessons from win-at-all-cost coaches.

Employers, even those who are non-parents, have a vested interest in this issue because the youth who demeans his opponents on the field or cheats in some way might someday repeat such indignities to your organization’s co-workers or clients.

By the way, the Josephson Institute’s Web site (www.josephsoninstitute.org) contains some good information about ethics, character and responsibility. It offers booklets for sale, including “The Making of Ethical Decisions.”

Mike McGinty is a Business Ledger reporter and freelance writer. Contact him at mmcginty@the businessssssledger.com