Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting: Volume 16

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the impact student enrollment manipulations have on the allocation of state resources among higher education institutions, and is motivated by a concern that gamesmanship in accounting for student enrollments leads to a lack of accurate and transparent reporting and ultimately inequities in intrastate funding of higher education institutions. To explore this issue, we use a case study methodology to analyze a State Auditor's Office investigation of a whistle-blower's complaint that a university employee wrongfully inflated the university's student count to increase state funding for the institution. We find that while the method the employee used to inflate student enrollments was ultimately condemned, another method of enrollment manipulation with much greater funding implications was not. Further research is needed to determine the scope of funding implications for similar types of enrollment manipulations across state-funded academic institutions.

Using a sample of 304 Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), this paper investigates gender differences in moral development and personal value preferences of CPAs. We used the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to measure moral development, the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) (Rokeach, 1973) to determine value preferences, and the Musser and Orke (1992) typology to determine value type preferences. The typology analysis indicates that all CPAs in our sample prefer personal values to social values. From an overall ethical predisposition standpoint, males and females are more alike than different; yet, there were a few notable differences. Specifically, males prefer competence values and females have higher preference for moral values. For example, while male CPAs exhibit higher priorities for the competence values of imaginative and logical, female CPAs exhibit higher priority for the moral value of loving. We also find a gender effect for moral development, where female CPAs significantly outscore their male counterparts.

Empirical research demonstrates that bribery has a detrimental impact on investment, economic growth, trade, and democratic governments. In response to rising bribery activity and the additional burdens placed on corporate officials by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 has reached an all-time high. Although many managers, financial officers, entrepreneurs, and auditors are aware of the FCPA's objectives and mandates, many do not do an adequate job of protecting their firms, employees, and/or clients from fines and prison sentences. The purposes of this paper are to (1) analyze and describe bribery and FCPA case filings, sanctions, payments (bribes), and value of business to be obtained; (2) describe and analyze the important provisions of the FCPA; (3) discuss vicarious liability or the liability of U.S. firms and others for the acts of third parties; and (4) make recommendations to help firms improve their compliance with the FCPA.

The accounting, medical, and legal professions share characteristics common to peer-reviewed professions. These professions also share challenges to professionalism. All three have been criticized for declining professionalism and for choosing commercial success over serving the public interest. Although the medical and legal professions have taken steps to promote a higher level of professional conduct by their members, the accounting profession has not launched initiatives to promote professionalism.

We discuss the initiatives instigated by the legal and medical professions using the five elements of professionalism framework (Hamilton, 2008a). Specifically, the framework highlights the importance of growth in personal conscience, demands compliance with the ethics of duty, inspires realization of aspirational goals, requires accountability of peer professionals, and emphasizes devotion to serving the public good. We recommend that members of the accounting profession use the five elements of professionalism framework to define, demonstrate, and assess professionalism. We conclude that promoting professionalism is a means for restoring professional identity for individual accountants as well as a means for fulfilling the accounting profession's contract with society.

This research follows Emerson and Conroy (2004) by examining student attitudes regarding a number of ethical vignettes, and extends their research to incorporate an investigation of the effects of different ethical prompts (including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code of Professional Conduct) on responses. We explore relationships within the responses and identify significant patterns in attitudes by gender, major, and experimental treatment. While female subjects consistently view unethical behavior less favorably, our results suggest that status as an accounting major also may lead to less acceptance of the unethical behavior portrayed in the vignettes. For example, male and female accounting students were less accepting of padding expense accounts and insider stock trading, indicating that ethical training in accounting classes may be delivering some desirable results.

CEO duality occurs when the same individual holds both the CEO and board Chair positions. In some countries (such as Britain) CEO duality is considered to impair good corporate governance. In the United States, however, CEO duality is still a common practice. The Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) included many corporate governance reforms, but the Act did not address the issue of CEO duality. However, we suggest that the corporate governance environment surrounding the passage of SOX may have influenced corporate board decisions regarding CEO duality when appointing new CEOs. In this study, we seek to determine whether CEO duality changed in the post-Sox environment by investigating the likelihood of CEO duality when CEO changes took place before and after SOX. Using a sample of 182 CEO succession events before and after the passage of SOX, we find that the likelihood of combining the CEO and Chair positions for newly appointed CEOs significantly decreased in the post-SOX period relative to the pre-SOX period. Our results suggest the SOX environment fostered a greater focus on governance issues even beyond the specific provisions of SOX.

Professional skepticism has been an essential part of every audit. Recently, Hurtt (2010) introduced the concept of trait skepticism (an enduring aspect of an individual's psychology). The current study examines trait professional skepticism using a sample of accounting students and investigates its potential relationship with ethical perception of earnings management actions. Results indicate that more skeptical students viewed earnings management actions as more unethical compared to less skeptical students. More specifically, higher skeptics viewed earnings management actions that benefited the manager and accounting manipulations as more unethical than actions that benefited the firm and were considered normal operating decisions. These results offer guidance to accounting instructors as they emphasize ethical issues in the classroom and are important to Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firms as they train their auditors in professional skepticism.

This study surveyed 309 business students (180 men and 129 women) enrolled in introductory accounting and business law classes on various aspects of honesty in academics. The study was motivated by the need to examine the underlying issues associated with students’ perceptions of cheating and whistle-blowing. An increased understanding of these perceptions would be insightful to professors as well as administrators. The study examines students’ reasons on whether they should whistle-blow and whether their reasons associate with their intentions to whistle-blow if they observe cheating. When examining a student's intent to whistle-blow, we considered the student's prior cheating behavior, gender, social desirability response bias, intentions to cheat in the future, reasons not to whistle-blow, and prior whistle-blowing. Our data extends prior research by considering the reasons students choose not to whistle-blow. Our research indicates that the number of reasons not to whistle-blow and having observed other students cheating reduced the likelihood of a student whistle-blowing, after controlling for social desirability response bias. The research indicates that to prevent unethical behavior in the future, institutions need to enforce consequences for those who cheat because unethical behavior at the academic level associates with unethical behavior in the corporate setting.