Personal Values and Ethical Behavior in Accounting Students
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Personal Values and Ethical Behavior in Accounting Students Grace Mubako1 · Kallol Bagchi2 · Godwin Udo2 · Marjorie Marinovic2 Received: 13 February 2020 / Accepted: 18 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This study develops and tests an integrated model that explains how Schwartz’s higher order personal values of Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement influence the ethical behavior of accountants. The study further explores the influence of ethics training, gender and religiosity on ethical behavior. A survey instrument was administered to 252 accounting students and the findings reveal that some of the higher order personal values (Conservation, Self-Transcendence, Self-Enhancement) are significant in explaining the ethical behavior of accounting students. The findings also reveal that gender and ethical training influence ethical behavior, and that effect of the personal value SelfTranscendence differs depending on participant gender and also religiosity. The implications of the findings are discussed. Keywords Personal values · Ethical behavior · Ethics training · Gender · Religiosity
Introduction Ethical behavior is one of the key requirements of accounting professionals as demonstrated by all accounting professional associations’ codes of conduct. For instance, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) requires members to abide by the ethical guidelines laid out in their professional code of conduct. Appropriate ethical behavior is particularly important considering that the work of accountants plays a critical role in financial markets and they have an enormous responsibility to the investing public, which demands public trust (Fritzsche and Oz 2007; Shafer Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04606-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Grace Mubako [email protected] Kallol Bagchi [email protected] Godwin Udo [email protected] Marjorie Marinovic [email protected] 1
California State University Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA
University of Texas at El Paso, 500 West University Avenue, El Paso, TX 79968, USA
2
et al. 2001). Given the important role of ethical behavior in the accounting profession, it is worthwhile that researchers examine the factors that may influence the ethical behavior of accountants (Karacaer et al. 2009; Abdolmohammadi 2005). Significant research efforts have been aimed at the subject of ethical behavior of people in general, and that of professional accountants in particular (Buchan 2005; Cohen et al. 2001; Alleyne et al. 2013). This stream of research identifies factors that influence ethical behavior including personal values. Some of these studies have shown a relationship between personal values and ethical behavior (Baird and Zelin 2007; Douglas and Schwartz 1999; Christensen et al. 2016; Fritzsche and Oz 2007). Researchers have developed different instrumen
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