1、Ethical Attitudes of Accountants: Recent Evidence from a Practitioners Survey,孫 奧 施 焯 博,Abstract Introduction Present research Results Discussion and implications,Abstract,Ethical breaches including Enron(安然公司） and WorldCom（ 世界通信公司） Heart of the debate whether ethical attitudes of accountants are to

2、 blame Choose the sample in order to compare sample responses to 25 ethically charged vignettes to test whether they differ Conclude that ethical attitudes of accounting practitioners do not differ significantly by special area.,Introduction,Exposed scandals caused attention People care about whethe

3、r accounting practices or the standards themselves were to blame. Prior researches in moral reasoning ability indicated that accountants and accounting students generally exhibit lower moral reasoning ability than others.,Introduction,Both DIT & MES are to compare practitioners and students in their

4、 respective fields of moral status,Introduction,The third alternative is to compare the ethical attitudes of staff and students from different area and majors, but they engage in accounting. It cares more about ethically sensitive vignette.,Introduction,The third alternative,Advantages 1、analyze ver

5、y specific business contexts, particularly in this case, the use of accounting tricks. 2、address specific areas of interest and overall attitudes on a broad range of issues,Limitations 1、not able to provide one composite (individual) measure of moral development 2、a reliable aggregated measure of et

6、hical orientation,Introduction,The present study,Sample Empirical model Description of data Results,The present study,Sample 1、Accounting practitioners and students at two Southern United States universities (one private and one public) 2、A mailing list from the AICPA for a nationally representative

7、, random sample of 5000 of its members,The present study,Empirical model Y=BXi+Vi,Dependent variable takes on an ordered probit for the ordinal and discrete nature of our data. Independent variable used to explain the variation in the ordered response variable are the demographic variables elicited

8、at the end of the questionnaire. This type of estimation procedure provides consistent and efficient estimates of the relationship between the vignette acceptability responses and the individual characteristics of the respondent,The present study,Description of data,Results,Results,There is no signi

9、cant, systematic difference between the ethical attitudes of practitioners and students. Vignettes (L): A comptroller selected a legal method of financial reporting which concealed some embarrassing financial facts that would otherwise have become public knowledge. The result of vignettes (L)s impli

10、es that practitioners and the general population are similar in their perception of the acceptability of using such accounting tricks and that some of the accusations about the highly publicized misdeeds of the accounting profession may be unfounded.,Results,A higher percentage of accountants and ac

11、counting students based their moral reasoning on Kohlbergs stage 4 rule and order oriented logic. They are more accepting of vignettes that depict legal but ethically questionable activities that increase rm prots.,Results,As a result, we conclude that gender is associated with signicantly different

12、 ethical attitudes at least for 21 of the 25 vignettes. We conclude that age and gender are consistent, robust predictors of ethical attitudes. Respondents who prayed weekly (or more frequently) reported lower levels of acceptability for the behavior in 12 of the 25 vignettes. As a result, we nd no

13、systematic effect of race on ethical attitudes,Discussion and implications,We are unable to conclude that there is any significant systematic difference between the two groups Accounting practitioners may be guided by a legalistic or rule and order framework,Discussion and implications,Ethical attit

14、udes of practitioners in these sub-disciplines are no different from their counterparts in the other classifications. Individual characteristics explain much of the variation in ethical attitudes,Discussion and implications,Research limitations: First, the generalizability of these results is limite

15、d. Second, the usual caveats that ethical attitudes (as with moral reasoning ability) do not necessarily imply behavior (Weber and Gillespie, 1998) apply here.,Discussion and implications,Third, we have not been able to account for possible social desirability or halo effects (see Cohen et al., 1996) in responses. Fourth, future work should attempt to include more robust controls, such as political orientation.,Discussion and implications,Suggestion Longitudi