Accounting Student Ethical Perceptions: An Analysis of Training and Gender Effects

This study examined accounting student responses to academic and accounting/business ethical vignettes and examined if gender or formal training in ethics affected their responses. The study also controlled for a student's tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner by including a social desirability response bias instrument as part of the research materials.The results indicate no general differences in responses between the students with and without formal ethical training, or between male and female students. However, comparisons between the academic and accounting/business vignettes revealed that although students perceived the unethical actions discussed in the cases similarly, they indicated they would be more likely to engage in the unethical actions in the accounting/business cases compared to the academic dilemmas.     

煤矿区队管理者安全素质能力提升研究

区队管理者在煤矿安全管理体系中起着承上启下的作用,其安全素质能力的提升对于提高我国煤矿安全管理水平具有重要的现实意义。本文结合我国煤矿企业实际,从区队管理者应具备的素质能力着手,构建了包含素质、能力、行为三个层面的区队管理者素质能力模型,系统地提出了区队管理者素质能力的提升路径及提升策略。     

Gender and Professional Ethics in the IT Industry

In this paper, we discuss the ethical responsibility of the Information Technology (IT) industry towards its female workforce. Although the growing IT industry experiences skills shortages, there is a declining trend in the representation of women. The paper presents evidence that the IT industry is not gender-neutral and that it does little to promote or retain its female workforce. We urge that professional codes of ethics in IT should be revised to take into account the diverse needs of its staff.     

Getting to the Bottom Line: An Exploration of Gender and Earnings Quality

For stakeholders, such as investors and lenders, to appropriately assess a company’s financial performance, the reported accounting earnings must closely reflect the economic reality of the organization’s financial activity throughout the reporting period. The degree to which reported earnings capture economic reality is called earnings quality. Managers have an ethical obligation to report high quality earnings to interested stakeholders in a timely matter. Accounting research has identified conditions within an organization, such as management compensation contracts and pending litigation that can impact earnings quality. We extend this line of research by exploring whether another characteristic of an organization, gender diversity in senior management, influences the quality of reported earnings. Companies with more women in senior management are found to be more profitable and have higher stock returns after initial public offerings than those with fewer women in the management ranks. Our findings suggest that the improved bottom line for companies with more women senior executives is not produced through the management of earnings or lower quality earnings. Instead, earnings quality is positively associated with gender diversity in senior management. Gopal Krishnan is an associate professor and holds the VSCPA Northern Chapter Professorship in Public Accounting at the School of Management at George Mason University. He has published several articles on corporate governance and the role of auditors in journals such as Accounting Horizons, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance and Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory. Linda Parsons is an assistant professor at the School of Management at George Mason University. She is the author of several papers that examine the value relevance of accounting in the nonprofit sector, especially as it impacts decision-making by donors. Her work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Research in Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting, and Journal of Accounting Literature.     

Revisiting Gender Role Stereotyping in the Sales Profession

This paper revisits the issue of gender stereotypes in sales professions given new views of what makes for effective sales performance and sales management. Women's continued disadvantaged position in the sales profession is documented, and the role of gender role stereotypes in sustaining this situation in the profession is examined. The paper then turns to the newly emerging, ostensibly "pro-female", view of sales. This emphasises the importance of building and sustaining relationships – qualities that women have traditionally been stereotyped as "good" at. Despite the positive emphasis accorded to women's skills in this new sales landscape, the ethical problems which arise from constructing this debate around the issue of gender are explored. In particular, the extent to which the view of women as "good at relationships" constitutes a stereotype is examined, and the value of this stereotype for redressing women's disadvantaged position from the perspectives of justice and utility is set out. In the final part of the paper we look at potential avenues for future theory and research which may help bring into focus a new view of gender role stereotypes in sales.     

Ethical Exemplification and the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct: An Empirical Investigation of Auditor and Public Perceptions

This research applies the impression management theory of exemplification in an accounting study by identifying and measuring differences in both auditor and public perceptions of exemplary behaviors. The auditors were divided into two groups, one of which reported self-perceptions (A-S) while the other group reported their perceptions of a typical auditor (A-O). There were two separate public groups, which gave their perceptions of a typical auditor and were divided based on their levels of accounting sophistication. The more sophisticated public group was comprised of bank loan officers (LO) while the less sophisticated public group consisted of investment club members (IC). Comparisons were made on 30 behaviors contained in the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, which served as the basis for the research instrument. Profile analysis, a special form of MANOVA technique, was used to analyze the results. A-S perceptions were the highest of the four treatment levels and were significantly higher (i.e., more exemplary) than the perceptions of both the A-O and LO groups. The more sophisticated user group (LO) provided the lowest perceptions of the four treatment levels. For at least four of the six measures, the LO treatment group perceived the typical auditor to be less exemplary than both the IC and A-O treatments. There were no differences in perceptions between the A-O group and IC. Additional analysis revealed that auditors overrated the degree to which the public relied on financial statements. However, both public groups reported a reasonably high level of reliance on financial statements when making decisions. Philip A. Brown is an Associate Professor and Directtor of the Accounting Program at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. He has a bachelor's degree from Harding University, an MBA from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi. His research interests are in accounting ethics and in accounting education. He has published in Advances in Accounting, The Journal of Accounting and Finance Research, and others. He is a CPA in the State of Arkansas. Morris H. Stocks serves as the Dean of the Patterson School of Accountancy at the Universtiy of Mississippi. He received his undergraduate degree in accounting from Trevecca Nazarene University, his Masters degree from Middle Tennessee State University and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. He is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Mississippi. He is a behavioral accounting researcher and has published in Accounting, Organizations and Society, Accounting Horizons, Behavioural Research in Accounting, Decision Sciences Journal, Advances in Accounting, Advances in Accounting Information Systems, Advances in Behavioral Accounting Research, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Advances in Taxation and others. W. Mark Wilder is KPMG Lecturer and Associate Professor of Accountancy at The University of Mississippi. His educational background includes a bachelor's degree in mathematics from The University of Alabama, an MBA from the University of South Alabama, and a Ph.D. in Accounting from Florida State University. He is a CPA in the State of Mississippi. Mark has published in Accounting Horizons, Advances in Taxation, the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, the Journal of Computer and Information Systems, the CPA Journal, and others. In the past 2 years he has received several awards, including the top two campus-wide faculty awards at Ole Miss and also the MSCPA Outstanding Educator Award. In 2004 he was inducted into the Alabama Tennis Hall of Fame.     

Some Evidence on the Ethical Disposition of Accounting Students: Context and Gender Implications

Research into the ethical disposition of students hasbeen popular in recent years. However, research intothe ethical disposition of accounting students inparticular has been sparse. Because of the uniquecharacteristics of those who choose to enter the fieldof accounting, generalizing findings of businessstudents to accounting students may not be valid. Consequently, additional studies of accountingstudents are useful.This study investigates context (academic vs.business)-based and gender-based differences inaccounting students ethical intent. We find mixedsupport for gender-based mean differences; theseresults are consistent across context. With regard tocontext we find a greater variability in respondentsbehavioral intent in an academic context relative toa business context. We also find gender-baseddifferences in how ethical issues are grouped (thatis, the perceived cognitive structure of ethicalissues). Implications of these findings are discussedwith particular interest relative to education.     

Role of the Internet Site in the Promotion Management of Sports Teams and Franchise Brands

This study examines the role that a website plays in the development of fan allegiance and as a promotion management tool for a sports team and brand. Research indicates that the combination of sports, media (television in particular), and sponsorships when employed in an integrated manner, can develop consumer connection to brands. This study suggests that the Internet is also an important part of an integration strategy of sports, media, and promotion. By working with a new team in the AIFA indoor football league, the researchers were able to determine what helped make fans allegiant to the team before the franchise's inaugural game. The results show that even before the team played its inaugural home contest, fans had become allegiant to the franchise brand and team by using the team internet site. These results indicate that an internet site can serve as a strong promotional tool in an integrated marketing plan of sports, media, and promotion to move fans toward brand loyalty and toward primary goals of the firm, including increased sales.     

伦理经营：现代企业管理创新的理性选择

本文从企业内部生产经营活动以及企业与外部的交换活动出发,论述了企业伦理存在的必然性,并详细阐述了企业伦理的内容和研究意义,提出了实现企业伦理化经营管理的对策建议。     

The Influence of Nationality and Gender on Ethical Sensitivity: An Application of the Issue-Contingent Model

When a member of an organization has to make a decision or act in a way that may benefit some stakeholders at the expense of others, ethical dilemmas may arise. This paper examines ethical sensitivity regarding the duties to clients and owners (principals), employees (agents), and responsibilities to society (third parties). Within this framework, ethical perceptions of male and female managers are compared between the U.S. and Turkey – two countries that differ on power distance as well as the individualism/collectivism dimensions. Our results show that ethical sensitivity varies depending upon whether the interests of principals, agents, or third parties are affected by a given ethical dilemma. We also find that, contingent upon the principal-agent–society relationships, the nationality and gender of the decision-maker influences ethical sensitivity. Can Simga-Mugan is a Professor of Accountancy at Department of Business Administration of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her Ph.D. in accountancy from University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. Her current research interests are ethics, international financial reporting issues, manipulation in the stock market and effect of news on the stock market. Bonita A. Daly, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the School of Business, University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine. She teaches auditing and financial accounting to both undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Daly also teaches business ethics in continuing education programs for practicing accountants. Her research on the accounting profession has appeared in Critical Prespectives on Accounting, Accounting, Organizations, and Society, and the St. Johns Law Review, among others. Dilek Onkal is a Professor of Decision Sciences and is currently the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at Bilkent University, Turkey. She received a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences from the University of Minnesota, and is doing research on ethics judgements, risk perception, risk communication, and judgmental forecasting. Lerzan Kavut is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Business Administration of Istanbul University. She has received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Istanbul University. Her current research interest is in the area of behavioral auditing.     

The Social and Environmental Responsibilities of Multinationals: Evidence from the Brent Spar Case

This paper argues that multinational corporations face levels of environmental and social responsibility higher than their national counterparts. Drawing on the literatures of stakeholder salience, corporate reputation management, and evidence from the confrontation between Shell and Greenpeace over the Brent Spar, in 1995, two mechanisms – international reputation side effects, and foreign stakeholder salience – are identified and their contribution in creating an environment more restrictive, in terms of environmental and social responsibility, is elaborated on. The paper concludes with discussing the links of the work presented here with a number of ongoing debates within the filed of international business ethics, and the managerial implications of the two mechanisms identified.     

Linking Ethics and Risk Management in Taxation: Evidence from an Exploratory Study in Ireland and the UK

Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débacle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management.     

供应链管理的蛙鸣博弈分析

本文认为,蛙鸣博弈与供应链管理具有相似性,将其应用于描述供应链管理合作问题,可以得出互补是供应链企业合作的基本前提;市场是解决合作与竞争矛盾的关键;“双赢”是供应链企业合作的结果。文章提出,企业加盟供应链战略联盟,必须学会与其他企业进行合作,建立相互间信任机制,优化信息沟通渠道,实现信息充分共享,消除冲突,协调一致,以保证供应链整体决策的优化,提升供应链的整体竞争力,并进而提高企业的综合竞争力。     

Gender-based Barriers to Senior Management Positions: Understanding the Scarcity of Female CEOs

Although the number of women in middle management has grown quite rapidly in the last two decades, the number of female CEOs in large corporations remains extremely low. This article examines many explanations for why women have not risen to the top, including lack of line experience, inadequate career opportunities, gender differences in linguistic styles and socialization, gender-based stereotypes, the old boy network at the top, and tokenism. Alternative explanations are also presented and analyzed, such as differences between female leadership styles and the type of leadership style expected at the top of organizations, feminist explanations for the underrepresentation of women in top management positions, and the possibility that the most talented women in business often avoid corporate life in favor of entrepreneurial careers.     

A Multinational Comparison of Key Ethical Issues, Helps and Challenges in the Purchasing and Supply Management Profession: The Key Implciations for Business and the Professions

This paper presents the findings of a study of purchasing and supply management professionals in India conducted to identify the key ethical issues they face in carrying out their work related responsibilities as well as to determine the extent to which various factors appear to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically in the course of their work. The Indian findings are then compared to those for studies conducted among purchasing and supply management professionals in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Key findings for the four studies are summarized and implications for business and the professions are presented.     

A Network Perspective on Stakeholder Management: Facilitating Entrepreneurs in the Discovery of Opportunities

The problem of opportunity discovery is at the heart of entrepreneurial activity. Cognitive limitations determine the search for and the analysis of information and, as a consequence, constrain the identification of opportunities. Moreover, typical personal characteristics – locus of control, need for independence and need for achievement – suggest that entrepreneurs will tend to take a central position in their stakeholder environments and thus fail to adapt to the complexity of stakeholder relationships in their entrepreneurial activity. We approach this problem by adopting a network perspective on stakeholder management. We propose a heuristic approach of stakeholder analysis, which requires two mappings of the entrepreneurial constituents. The first mapping focuses on current interactions between the entrepreneur and their stakeholders, while the second focuses on a specific issue and the stakeholders that constitute it. In effect, such a stakeholder analysis requires entrepreneurs to use the complexity of stakeholder relationships in order to go beyond their cognitive limitations and thus facilitate the discovery of new opportunities. As we will argue, this has clear implications for the ethics and activities of entrepreneurs.     

Intelligence Vs. Wisdom: The Love of Money, Machiavellianism, and Unethical Behavior across College Major and Gender

This research investigates the efficacy of business ethics intervention, tests a theoretical model that the love of money is directly or indirectly related to propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB), and treats college major (business vs. psychology) and gender (male vs. female) as moderators in multi-group analyses. Results suggested that business students who received business ethics intervention significantly changed their conceptions of unethical behavior and reduced their propensity to engage in theft; while psychology students without intervention had no such changes. Therefore, ethics training had some impacts on business students’ learning and education (intelligence). For our theoretical model, results of the whole sample (N = 298) revealed that Machiavellianism (measured at Time 1) was a mediator of the relationship between the love of money (measured at Time 1) and unethical behavior (measured at Time 2) (the Love of Money → Machiavellianism → Unethical Behavior). Further, this mediating effect existed for business students (n = 198) but not for psychology students (n = 100), for male students (n = 165) but not for female students (n = 133), and for male business students (n = 128) but not for female business students (n = 70). Moreover, when examined alone, the direct effect (the Love of Money → Unethical Behavior) existed for business students but not for psychology students. We concluded that a short business ethics intervention may have no impact on the issue of virtue (wisdom). Thomas Li-Ping Tang (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University) is a Full Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, Jennings A. Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). He has taught Industrial and Organizational Psychology at National Taiwan University and at MTSU. Professor Tang teaches, has taught, MBA/EMBA courses in China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), France (Nantes), and Spain (Valencia). He serves, has served, on 6 editorial review boards and reviews papers for 28 journals. His research interests focus upon compensation, the Love of Money, business ethics, pay satisfaction, and cross-cultural issues. He has published more than 100 journal articles in top behavior sciences and management journals (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Management, Management Research, Management and Organization Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Business Ethics.) and presented more than 190 papers in professional conferences and invited seminars. He was the winner of two Outstanding Research Awards (1991,1999) and Distinguished International Service Award (1999) at Middle Tennessee State University. He also received the Best Reviewer Awards from the International Management Division of the Academy of Management in Seattle, WA (2003) and in Philadelphia, PA (2007). Yuh-Jia Chen (Ph.D., Columbia University) is an Associate Professor of Business Statistics in the Rinker of School of Business at Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, FL 33416. He has taught statistics at Middle Tennessee State University and Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests lie in money attitude, choice and decision-making, risk-taking behavior, and compensation. His publications have appeared in behavior sciences and management journals (e.g., Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Business and Psychology, and Journal of Business Ethics).     

Stakeholders Management Systems: Empirical Insights from Relationship Marketing and Market Orientation Perspectives

This paper explores the managerial aspects of the relationship with stakeholders, under the assumption that transfer of knowledge is being made from relationship marketing and market orientation perspectives. These marketing tools may prove useful to manage the relationship with other stakeholders, as has been the case with customers. This study focuses on a sample of Spanish companies representing 43% of listed companies with the largest market capitalization. Given that this is the first time that corporate relationship with stakeholders is analyzed in Spain, a qualitative technique (case analysis) was used. The main conclusion of the study is that most of the participant companies have a reactive position vis-à-vis stakeholders management systems. This attitude is reflected in their concern exclusively about ethical indexes managers. J. García de Madariaga Assistant Professor, Marketing Department, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Ph.D. in Marketing and B.A. in Advertising, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His work has been published in refereed international journals and also in Spanish journals. He has also published numerous refereed articles in the proceedings of major national and international conferences. He is also an active marketing and marketing research consultant. Carmen Valor Ph.D. (Marketing) at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), MBA (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain). Currently, Visiting Teacher at Universidad Pontificia de Comillas-ICADE. She is also an active Research Member at Economistas Sin Fronteras Foundation and GEIES (Universidad San Pablo-CEU). Her work focuses on several issues related to corporate social responsibility and consumer behaviour. Her research has been published, inter alia, in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business and Society, Business and Society Review, or Investigación y Marketing.     

The Ethics of Management Control Systems: Developing Technical and Moral Values

In this paper, we review the conventional analyses of management control systems, to conclude, first, that the illusion of control can mislead managers into believing that everything can be controlled and monitored, and, second, that no incentive system based only on extrinsic rewards can motivate individuals properly. Then, we investigate the philosophical foundations of the basic assumptions that, implicitly or explicitly, are made about the nature of the acting person. Based on personalist phenomenology, we show how the development of technical and moral values is crucial to the long-run survival of organizations. We end by offering some guidelines as to what control systems should be like in order to be compatible with the nature of human persons.     

Developing Moral Principles and Scenarios in the Light of Diversity: An Extension to the Multidimensional Ethics Scale

The purpose of this article is to develop the multidimensional ethics scale and moral scenarios that allow or even support diversity in managers’ reactions when measuring their moral decision-making. This means that we expand the multidimensional ethics scale with a female ethics dimension and take a critical look at the previously used scenarios in the light of diversity. Furthermore, we develop two new scenarios in order to better attain diversity in managers’ moral decision-making. Diversity is primarily looked at from a gender perspective, meaning that we pay attention to the femininities and masculinities of the scale items and scenarios. In addition, we use the concept of social desirability to assess diversity as we presume that social desirability works against diversity. Our article builds on previous research using the multidimensional ethics scale. First, we present a summary of the theoretical dimensions of the original multidimensional ethics scale and extend the scale with female ethics principles to foster diversity. Second, we analyse and assess previously used moral scenarios in order to see how they permit the expression of diversity. Third, we develop two new scenarios based on the interviews conducted with female managers.