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An Examination of Ethical Values of Management Accountants

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Abstract

The success of business firms and other organizations relies on the trustworthiness of reports and other documents prepared by management accountants. This study examines the personal ethical values and ethical value types of management accountants. Data were obtained from a survey of members of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). The survey, composed of the Rokeach Values Survey and demographic questions, was delivered by the IMA Research Lab to membership samples. Importantly, the results indicated that the highest-ranked values were consistent with values included in the IMA’s Statement of Ethical Professional Practice. That management accountants hold high ethical values better enables them to provide reliable and meaningful work to business firms and other organizations. Another important finding is that older management accountants are more concerned with moral values than their younger colleagues. This finding has notable implications for the future of the profession.

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Fig. 1

Adapted from Musser and Orke (1992) and Akers et al. (2004)

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Data availability

The data from this survey is not publicly available.

Notes

  1. Prior research with other busy professionals (medical practitioners) reported single digit response rates of between 6.3% (So et al., 2018) and 8.7% (Aitken et al., 2008). The response rate of 1.79% was relatively low but was predictable for a study targeting busy professionals. Additionally, the low response can perhaps be attributed to study limitations. First, only a single email request was sent to each sample of 5,000 IMA members. Second, no monetary incentive for participation was offered. In addition, the survey was relatively time-consuming and required careful consideration in the rank ordering of value priorities. Liu and Wronski (2018) reported that response rates decreased as the length of surveys increased.

  2. The largest work area in the sample was industry with 83 respondents, among which 46 were male and 37 were female; and 41 were 48 years of age or less, and 42 were older than 48. There were also 13 respondents who worked in public accounting. Among those six were females and seven were males; and nine were older than 48 and four were 48 or younger. Most of the sample comprised professionals that were relatively equally distributed across gender and age. Thus, the authors are confident that the sample and consequently the results did not suffer from biases related to gender or age.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Institute of Management Accountants and its Research Lab for sponsoring this research. Without their support and assistance in selecting the survey samples and in delivering our survey, this research would not have been possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, USA

    Donald L. Ariail & Amine Khayati

  2. Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, USA

    Katherine Taken Smith & Lawrence Murphy Smith

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  1. Donald L. Ariail
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Correspondence to Lawrence Murphy Smith.

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8.

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Ariail, D.L., Smith, K.T., Smith, L.M. et al. An Examination of Ethical Values of Management Accountants. J Bus Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05640-z

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