This study examines how the accounting profession disciplines its members for professional misconduct in periods of increased public scrutiny. We conjecture and find that increased public scrutiny of the Canadian accounting profession, marked by the establishment of the Canadian Public Accountability Board in 2003, is positively associated with the severity of punitive sanctions administered by the profession’s disciplinary committees. We find that disciplinary committees are more likely to also demand rehabilitation outcomes and greater future monitoring for offenders. Finally, reporting of (...) discipline outcomes has increased in outlets internal to the accounting profession, but not in publications targeted outside to the public. This latter finding is consistent with the private interest theoretical model of professional ethics developed by Parker as evidence of a latent motivation of the profession to protect its professional private interests. Exploratory analyses indicate that punishment, rehabilitation, and reporting in external publications significantly influence whether offenders return to good standing. (shrink)

An organization's management control system can play an important role in influencing ethical behavior among employees. In this paper a theoretical framework of control is developed by linking various ethics related control mechanisms reported in the literature to the primary components of a management control system. In addition, the findings of a survey of the Financial Post's Top 1 000 Canadian industrial and service companies are reported. The survey investigated organizations' use of ethical codes of conduct, whistleblowing systems, ethics committees, (...) judiciary boards, employee training in ethics, and ethics focused corporate governance and reward systems. The findings indicate that ethics related control mechanisms, particularly codes of conduct, are being used by a good number of organizations. However, closer analysis of the data suggests that many companies may only be paying lip service to the importance of promoting ethical behavior. (shrink)

This article examines selected behavioral aspects of ethical decision making within a business context. Three categories of antecedents to ethical decision behaviors (individual differences, interpersonal variables, and organizational variables) are examined and propositions are offered. Moral development theory and expectancy theory are then explored as possible bases for a theory of ethical decision making. Finally, means of improving ethical decision making in firms are explored.

This paper investigates the regulation of ethical behavior of professionals. Ethical perceptions of South African professionals operating in the business community (specifically accountants, lawyers and engineers) concerning their need for and awareness of professional codes, and the frequency and acceptability of peer contravention of such codes were sought. The existence of conflict between corporate codes and professional codes was also investigated. Results, based on 217 replies, indicated that the professionals believe that codes are necessary and are relatively aware of the (...) contents of such codes. Despite these ethical tendencies, respondents (particularly lawyers) believe that their peers contravene their professional codes relatively often. No significant differences in ethical tendencies between professionals consulting to and those working in business were found. Many respondents were regulated by more than one code of ethics, but few experienced conflict between such codes. In the events of conflict occurring professionals chose to adhere to their professional code above others. (shrink)

Management accounting and control seeks to provide information that substantiates decision-making at all firm levels and thus may also foster ethical decision-making. Against this background, this article presents a systematic literature review of research on management accounting and control and business ethics that has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics. Through this review, we intend to bring to the forefront a research topic that has been widely neglected in broader literature reviews on accounting ethics research and that has (...) been covered by a small number of articles published by traditional leading accounting journals only. Our systematic literature review is guided by a theoretical framework that integrates the decision-facilitating and decision-influencing roles of management accounting and control information and the stages of the ethical decision-making process. Through this theoretical lens, we analyze 64 management accounting and control articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics over more than three decades. Synthesizing and structuring this research, we discuss prior accomplishments and elaborate on avenues for future research. (shrink)

The majority of North American corporations awakened to the need for their own ethical guidelines during the late 1970s and early 1980s, even though modern corporations are subject to a surprising multiplicity of external codes of ethics or conduct. This paper provides an understanding of both internal and external codes through a discussion of the factors behind the development of the codes, an analysis of internal codes and an identification of problems with them.