Ethical Attitudes of Accounting Practitioners: Are Rank and Ethical Attitudes Related?

We address a previous finding in the business ethics literature in which accounting professionals in higher rank levels, i.e., “manager” or “partner” of auditing firms, appear to have lower moral reasoning ability than their junior counterparts. Prior investigations have relied upon a similar methodology for estimating ethical beliefs, namely testing “moral reasoning ability” using either the Moral Judgment Interview or Defining Issues Test. In the present study, we use a multiple vignettes approach to test for the existence of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs effect. With only 2 of the 30 vignettes resulting in both managers and partners being more accepting of the ethically charged behaviors, the results presented here using this alternative methodology are generally not supportive of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs phenomenon. We also use a multivariate analysis in order to control for demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that the most robust predictor of ethical attitudes among accounting practitioners is age, not rank within a firm.     

Do Perceptions of Ethical Conduct Matter During Organizational Change? Ethical Leadership and Employee Involvement

Ethical leadership matters in the context of organizational change due to the need for followers to trust the integrity of their leaders. Yet, there have been no studies investigating ethical leadership and organizational change. To fill this gap, we introduce a model of the moderating role of involvement in change. Organizational change and involvement in change are proposed as context-level moderators in the relationships of ethical leadership and work-related attitudes and performance. We employ a sample of 199 supervisor–subordinate pairs from a wide variety of organizations. Results support a three-way interaction (ethical leadership, organizational change, and involvement in change) for performance and OCBs. Our results have important implications for organizational change since ethical leadership appears to complement follower involvement when change is happening.     

Business Executives’ Perceptions of Ethical Leadership and Its Development

This paper summarized the findings of a qualitative study that examines the perceptions of ethical leadership held by those who perceived themselves to be ethical leaders, and how life experiences shaped the values called upon when making ethical decisions. The experiences of 28 business executives were shared with the researcher, beginning with the recollection of a critical incident that detailed an ethical issue with which each executive had been involved. With the critical incident in mind, each executive told the personal story that explained the development of the values he or she called upon when resolving the ethical issue described. The stories were analyzed through the use of constant comparison, which resulted in the development of two models: (1) a framework for ethical leadership illuminating valued aspects of ethical leaderships and the value perspectives called upon when making ethical decisions, and (2) a model explaining how the executives’ ethical frameworks developed. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on virtue ethics, experiential learning, and human resource development.     

Ethical Culture,Ethical Intent,and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Moderating and Mediating Role of Person–Organization Fit

A multidimensional measure of ethical culture (EC) was examined for its relationship to person–organization (P–O) fit, ethical intent and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), using a sample of 525 employees from the financial industry in Spain. As hypothesized, relative to studies using unidimensional assessments, our measure of EC was more strongly related to ethical intent and organizational citizenship. Also, significant differences were found in the degree to which each the EC dimensions related to both ethical intent and OCB. Finally, in a first for the literature, we demonstrated the important role of overall P–O fit in connection with EC, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship. Specifically, as hypothesized, P–O fit moderated positively the association between EC and ethical intent, but mediated the EC–OCB relationship.     

Managerial and Other White-Collar Employees’ Perceptions of Ethical Issues in their Workplaces

Understanding what types of issues working adults perceive as ethical in their workplaces will allow better teaching of business ethics. This study reports findings of a thematic analysis of 764 ethical challenges described by working adults in a part-time MBA program and combines its findings with the other published studies on perceptions of ethical issues in the workplace. The results indicate that most people are assured about what they describe as ethical transgressions although experts might disagree. It also highlights certain issues and contexts as being more frequently perceived than others. Ideas for future research in this area are also explored.     

Investigating the Effects of Gender on Consumers’ Moral Philosophies and Ethical Intentions

Using information collected from a convenience sample of graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with a Midwestern university in the United States, this study determined the extent to which gender (defined as sex differences) is related to consumers’ moral philosophies and ethical intentions. Multivariate and univariate results indicated that women were more inclined than men to utilize both consequence-based and rule-based moral philosophies in questionable consumption situations. In addition, women placed more importance on an overall moral philosophy than did men, and women had higher intentions to behave ethically. The marketing and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and the limitations of the research are presented along with several suggestions for future inquiry, which could advance current understanding of consumer ethics.     

You Support Diversity,But Are You Ethical? Examining the Interactive Effects of Diversity and Ethical Climate Perceptions on Turnover Intentions

Efforts to identify antecedents of employee turnover are likely to offer value to organizations through money saved on recruitment and new-hire training. The authors utilized the stakeholder perspective to corporate social responsibility to examine the effects of a perceived climate for ethics on the relationship between diversity climate and voluntary turnover intentions. Specifically, they examined how ethics climate (employees’ perceptions that their organization values and enforces ethically correct behavior) affected the diversity climate–turnover intentions relationship. Results indicated that ethics climate moderated the diversity climate–turnover intentions relationship. Turnover intentions were lowest among workers perceiving both a pro-diversity and highly ethical climate. These results reinforce the need to communicate both diversity values and ethical standards to employees.     

You Support Diversity,But Are You Ethical? Examining the Interactive Effects of Diversity and Ethical Climate Perceptions on Turnover Intentions

Efforts to identify antecedents of employee turnover are likely to offer value to organizations through money saved on recruitment and new-hire training. The authors utilized the stakeholder perspective to corporate social responsibility to examine the effects of a perceived climate for ethics on the relationship between diversity climate and voluntary turnover intentions. Specifically, they examined how ethics climate (employees’ perceptions that their organization values and enforces ethically correct behavior) affected the diversity climate–turnover intentions relationship. Results indicated that ethics climate moderated the diversity climate–turnover intentions relationship. Turnover intentions were lowest among workers perceiving both a pro-diversity and highly ethical climate. These results reinforce the need to communicate both diversity values and ethical standards to employees.     

Ethical Stewardship – Implications for Leadership and Trust

Great leaders are ethical stewards who generate high levels of commitment from followers. In this paper, we propose that perceptions about the trustworthiness of leader behaviors enable those leaders to be perceived as ethical stewards. We define ethical stewardship as the honoring of duties owed to employees, stakeholders, and society in the pursuit of long-term wealth creation. Our model of relationship between leadership behaviors, perceptions of trustworthiness, and the nature of ethical stewardship reinforces the importance of ethical governance in dealing with employees and in creating organizational systems that are congruent with espoused organizational values. Cam Caldwell is Assistant Professor of Management in the School of Business at Weber State University. His research is primarily in the areas of organizational governance, ethical leadership and trust. He received his Ph.D from Washington State University where he was Thomas S. Foley Graduate Fellow. He has worked as a City manager, Human Resource Director, and Management Consultants for 30 years. Linda A. Hayes is Assistant Professor and Director of Program Assessment in the School of Business Administration of the University of Houston – Victoria. She received a B.S.M.E. from Clarkson University, an M.B.A from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D from University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Hayes has 15 years of industry experience. Her research interests include decision-making, stakeholder behavior, business strategy. Dr. Hayes was a 1996 NASA Faculty Fellow. Recently, she has published in the Journal of Management Development, Journal of International Marketing, Business Horizons and International Journal of Mobile Communications. Ranjan Karri is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He received his Ph.D from Washington State University. His research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, ethics and strategy. Patricia Martinez is a cum laude graduate of the University of Houston – Victoria School of Business and works for the Learning Education Achieve Dreams program at that University to help young people in the Victoria, Texas Community set and achieve personal and educational goals.     

The Strength of an Accounting Firm’s Ethical Environment and the Quality of Auditors’ Judgments

This study examines the impact of the strength of an accounting firm’s ethical environment (presence and reinforcement vis-à-vis the presence of a code of conduct) on the quality of auditor judgment, across different levels of audit expertise. Using a 2 × 2 full factorial ‹between subjects’ experimental design, with audit managers and audit seniors, the impact of different levels of strength of the ethical environment on auditor judgments was assessed with a realistic audit scenario, requiring participants to make judgments in respect of an inventory writedown. Based on prior research, and as hypothesized, participants possessing greater auditing experience made higher quality technical judgments. While there were no significant differences between the quality of audit judgments made by participants in the stronger ethical environment, over-all results indicate that managers are more sensitive to differences in the strength of the ethical environment than seniors. This is consistent with the hypothesis, and with prior research which suggests that the impact of the code will only be significant if it has been bilaterally internalized by individuals. This has important implications for accounting firms and regulators, given that the International Standard on Quality Control 1, requires the communication and reinforcement of ethical principles as part of firms' quality control processes. It suggests that firms will need to carefully consider the means by which they communicate and reinforce ethical principles, as it is possible to differentially impact auditors of different rank.     

Discussion of “Recognizing Ethical Issues: An Examination of Practicing Industry Accountants and Accounting Students”

Although the political and consumer consciousness has turned increasingly green, many firms continue to resist the adoption of environment-friendly technological innovations—even in the face of higher costs, negative health effects, and stricter government oversight. This article examines how business owners weigh the trade-offs associated with environment-friendly innovations by examining the role of prosocial motivation in their decision-making process. We use primary data to overcome a common restriction in studying environmental innovations—the scarcity of relevant data—to analyze how business owners’ expectations, perceptions, and motivations affect innovation in organizational processes and, consequently, the level of environmental friendliness of their products or services. We found that prosocial motivation had a significant negative impact on innovation adoption and that it is expressed differently under high and low levels of customer compatibility—possibly because business owners have a larger number of competing social objectives and priorities. Our results further showed that the innovation’s ability to satisfy downstream customer demands has the greatest impact on environment-friendly innovation adoption decisions by business owners. This study enhances our understanding of how business owners make innovation decisions based on competing business, environmental and social objectives and provides a foundation for future research in this area.     

An Exploratory Study of Chinese Accounting Students’ and Auditors’ Audit-specific Ethical Reasoning

This study uses three audit-specific ethical dilemmas to assess the level of ethical reasoning between Chinese accounting students (as proxies for new entrants to the auditing profession) and experienced auditors. A sample of U.S. accounting students is used as a base for comparison. Consistent with expectations based on particularly salient aspects of Chinese national culture, we find the Chinese students’ levels of ethical reasoning to be significantly lower than those of their U.S. counterparts in the two cases that invoked these cultural attributes. In contrast, the Chinese students’ level of ethical reasoning is slightly higher than that of the U.S. students in the third, control case. We further find that the Chinese auditors’ levels of ethical reasoning are even lower than those of the Chinese students in two cases, while not being significantly different in the third. Together, these findings suggest that cross-national differences in auditors’ ethical reasoning depend on the nature of the ethical dilemma and caution against wholesale inferences about ethical reasoning levels in China.     

The Conflict of Ethos and Ethics: A Sociological Theory of Business People’s Ethical Values

This article develops a sociological theory of ambivalence to explain several puzzling and contradictory ethical attitudes of business people: (1) a simultaneous disposition to comparatively more self-interested and more charitable behavior than many other occupational groups and (2) a moderate level of receptiveness to inculcation of moral principles through social channels such as higher education. We test the theory by comparing the way that business students rate the ethical acceptability of various ethically challenging scenarios with the way that criminal justice students rate these same scenarios. We also explore the malleability of ethical views by measuring differences between the responses of sophomores and seniors. The data generally support hypotheses based on a theory of ambivalence. At the same time, however, we also report on findings that suggest alternative explanations to ambivalence.     

Effects of Education and Intervention on Business Students’ Ethical Cognition: A Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Study

In this study, we present evidence on the changes inethical cognition of business students over afour-year period. We use the Principled Score(P-score) of the Defining Issues Test to measure thischange. Specifically, we first compare the P-scores ofstudents at the entry to, halfway through, and shortlyafter graduation from a business school to analyze theeffect size of education on ethical cognition.Secondly, for a sample of students in an electivebusiness ethics course, we compare P-scores at thebeginning, and at the end of the semester to analyzethe effect size of specific intervention course onethical cognition.Prior studies in liberal arts fields have reportedhigh effect sizes from four-year college education onethical cognition, while a few studies have reportedonly moderate gains for business students. Consistentwith the liberal arts studies, our results indicatestatistically significant gains, and high effect sizesfor business students as well. Similarly, priorstudies have reported moderate gains in the P-scorefrom intervention courses in various fields. Ourresults indicate only low to moderate effect sizes forbusiness students. Importantly, while the gain waslow, and statistically insignificant for femalestudents, it was moderate, and highly significant formale students. Implications for education and researchare discussed.     

Ethical aspects of “Japanese leadership style”

This article describes three characteristics of the Japanese Leadership Style (JLS): self-realization, appreciation of diverse abilities, and trust in others, which have both positive and negative ethical implications. In addition to illustrating how JLS allows Japanese corporations to avoid some of the ethical problems plaguing U.S. corporations, the authors will explain how these characteristics engender the loyalty and initiative of Japanese employees which promote incremental innovation and competitive advantages. Implicit in this discussion is the premise that both the American and Japanese business communities, by analyzing their own ethical issues and leadership styles, can learn from each other.Iwao Taka is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Legal Studies at The Wharton School. He is an Assistant Professor in the International School of Economics and Business Administration, Reitaku University in Japan. His publications include Business Ethics: A Japanese View, Intuitive Decision-Making and Creative Destruction, and Japanese Entrepreneurship after World War II.Wanda D. Foglia, Esquire, is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Legal Studies at The Wharton School where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Criminology. A former Assistant District Attorney, her research focuses on approaches for promoting the individual's commitment to ethical and law-abiding behavior. She has recently coordinated a Project to Integrate Ethics Into the Wharton Undergraduate Curriculum.     

"Ethics and Geography –Impact of Geographical Cultural Differences on Students Ethical Decisions"

Conceptually, entrepreneurship is seen as the engine that drives a robust economy, promotes a favorable quality of life, and assures the availability of the attributes needed for meaningful living. However, like many popular concepts in this world, its limitations are normally not well acknowledged. A grouping of entrepreneurial ventures which has recently come into existence deals with the personal fiscal issues associated with the end-of-life phase of the human cycle. While generally praised as humanitarian services for society, that are assuredly within legal bounds, these activities have potentially significant negative implications. When examined from an ethical perspective, some questionable practices became apparent. Three such undertakings in particular have to do with the terminally ill and are examined in this paper. The first, viatical transactions, is defined as the transfer of a life insurance policy's ownership to someone who does not have an insurable interest in the life of the insured individual. The second, creative tax shelters for wealthy people involved in estate planning, involves hiring unrelated parties, particularly those who are young and in failing health, to do the dying for the principal. The third, mind games, involves curtailing the use of medical resources for the dying. The justification for this is rationing scarce medical resources.