Abstract
Ethical sensitivity triggers the entire ethical decision-making process (i.e., recognition of ethical content in work situations). In this article, five factors are examined that affect tax practitioners' professional ethical sensitivity. The five factors that were examined include role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction, professional commitment, and ethical orientation. Ethical content in work situations is examined in relation to professional ethics as enumerated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountant's (AICPA) Statements on Responsibilities in Tax Practice (SRTP). Utilizing Hunt and Vitell's (1986, 1993) General Theory of Ethics, a model of ethical sensitivity was constructed and empirically tested. Role conflict negatively and job satisfaction positively influenced tax practitioners' ethical sensitivity. Also, the covariates of the tax practitioner's professional risk level and type of employer were found to be significant. The significant factors are job specific. The tax firm may have the best opportunity to positively change a tax practitioner's ethical recognition abilities. Professional accounting organizations may need to evaluate if resources should be used to formulate, maintain, and publicize codes of conduct because of the lack of significance of professional commitment.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, J. S.: 1965, ‘Inequity in Social Exchange’, in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Psychology(Academic Press, New York), pp. 267–299.
Akaah, I. P. and D. Lund: 1994, ‘The Influence of Personal and Organizational Values on Marketing Professionals' Ethical Behavior’, Journal of Business Ethics 13, 417–430.
Allen, J. and D. Davis: 1993, ‘Assessing Some Determinant Effects of Ethical Consulting Behavior: The Case of Personal and Professional Values’, Journal of Business Ethics 12, 449–458.
Aranya, N. and K. R. Ferris: 1984, ‘A Reexamination of Accountants' Organizational-Professional Conflict’, The Accounting Review 59, 1–15.
Aranya, N., R. Lachman and J. Amernic: 1982, ‘A Path Analysis of Accountants' Job Satisfaction and Migration Tendencies’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 7, 201–215.
Aranya, N., J. Pollock and J. Amernic: 1981, ‘An Examination of Professional Commitment in Public Accounting’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 6, 271–280.
Armstrong, J. S. and T. S. Overton: 1977, ‘Estimating Nonresponse Bias in Mail Surveys’, Journal of Marketing Research 14, 396–402.
Arnold, H. J., D. C. Feldman and M. Purbhoo: 1985, ‘The Role of Social-Desirability Response Bias in Turnover Research’, Academy of Management Journal 28, 955–966.
Bateman, T. S. and D. W. Organ: 1983, ‘Job Satisfaction and the Good Soldier: The Relationship Between Affect and Employee Citizenship’, Academy of Management Journal 26, 587–595.
Bebeau, Muriel J., James R. Rest and Catherine M. Yamoor: 1985, ‘Measuring Dental Students' Ethical Sensitivity’, Journal of Dental Education 49(March), 225–235.
Bok, D. C.: 1976, ‘Can Ethics be Taught?’, Change 22, 26–30.
CCH Tax Advisory Board: April 1994, ‘The Changing Practice of Tax Law for Lawyers and Accountants: A Roundtable Discussion’, Taxes 56, 190–212.
Cellucci, A. J. and D. L. DeVries: 1978, Measuring Managerial Satisfaction: A Manual for the MJSQ Technical Report II(Center of Creative Leadership).
Cook, T. D. and D. T. Campbell: 1979, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Studies(Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA).
Cox, T.: 1978, Stress(Macmillian, London, England).
Crowne, D. P. and D. Marlowe: 1960, ‘A New Scale of Social Desirability Independent of Psychopathology’, Journal of Consulting Psychology 24, 349–354.
DeConinck, J. B. and W. F. Lewis: 1997, ‘The Influence of Deontological and Teleological Considerations and Ethical Climate on Sales Managers' Intentions To Reward or Punish Sales Force Behavior’, Journal of Business Ethics 16, 497–506.
Dubinsky, A. J. and B. Loken: 1989, ‘Analyzing Ethical Decision Making in Marketing’, Journal of Business Research 19, 83–107.
Ferrell, O. C. and L. G. Gresham: 1985, ‘A Contingency Framework for Understanding Ethical Decision Making in Marketing’, Journal of Marketing 49, 87–96.
Figler, H. R.: 1980, ‘Managing Stress’, Management Accounting 60, 22–28.
Finn, D. W., L. B. Chonko and S. D. Hunt: 1988, ‘Ethical Problems in Public Accounting: The View from the Top’, Journal of Business Ethics 7, 605–615.
Fisher, A. B.: 1994, ‘Finding the Right Tax Advisor’, Fortune 129, 77–80.
Fisher, A. B.: 1995, ‘How to Handle Your Accountant’, Fortune 126, 117–118.
Forsyth, D. R.: 1980, ‘A Taxonomy of Ethical Ideologies’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39, 175–184.
Forsyth, D. R.: 1981, ‘Moral Judgment: The Influence of Ethical Ideology’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, 218–223.
Forsyth, D. R.: 1985, ‘Individual Differences Information Integration During Moral Judgment’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, 264–272.
Forsyth, D. R., J. Nye and K. Kelly: 1988, ‘Idealism, Relativism, and the Ethic of Caring’, Journal of Psychology 122, 243–248.
Forsyth, D. R., and W. R. Pope: 1984, ‘Ethical Ideology and Judgments of Social Psychological Research: Multidimensional Analysis’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46, 1365–1375.
Harrell, A., E. Chewning and M. Taylor: 1986, ‘Organizational-Professional Conflict and the Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions of Internal Auditors’, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 5, 109–121.
Hair, J. F., Jr., R. E. Anderson, R. L. Tatham and W. C. Black: 1992, Multivariate Data Analysis with Readings(Macmillian Publishing Company, New York).
Holsti, O. R.: 1978, ‘Limitations of Cognitive Abilities in the Face of Crisis’, in C. F. Smart and W. T. Standbury (eds.), Studies on Crisis Management(Butterworth, Toronto, Canada).
Hunt, S. D. and S. Vitell: 1986, ‘A General Theory of Marketing Ethics’, Journal of Macromarketing 6, 5–16.
Hunt, S. D. and S. J. Vitell: 1993, ‘The General Theory of Marketing Ethics: A Retrospective and Revision’, in N. Craig Smith and John A. Quelch (eds.), Ethics in Marketing(Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, Illinois), pp. 775–784.
Hunt, S. D. and A. Z. Vasquez-Parraga: 1993, ‘Organizational Consequences, Marketing Ethics, and Salesforce Supervision’, Journal of Marketing Research 30, 78–90.
Internal Revenue Service: Winter 1993–1994, ‘Selected Statistical Series’, Statistics of Income Bulletin, 100.
Jones, T. M.: 1991, ‘Ethical Decision Making by Individuals in Organizations: An Issue-Contingent Model’, Academy of Management Journal 16, 366–395.
Kahn, R. L., D. M. Wolfe, R. P. Quinn, J. D. Snoek and R. A. Rosenthal: 1964, Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity(Wiley, New York).
Katz, D. and R. L. Kahn: 1966, The Social Psychology of Organizations( John Wiley & Sons, New York).
Lachman, R. and N. Aranya: 1986, ‘Job Attitudes and Turnover Intentions Among Professionals in Different Work Settings’, Organization Studies 7, 279–293.
Libby, R.: 1983, ‘Comments on Weick’, The Accounting Review 58, 370–374.
Lindsay, R. M.: 1993, ‘Incorporating Statistical Power into the Test of Significance Procedure: A Methodological and Empirical Inquiry’, Behavioral Research in Accounting 5, 211–236.
Mayo, M. A. and L. J. Marks: 1990, ‘An Empirical Investigation of a General Theory of Marketing Ethics’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 18(Spring), 163–171.
McGee, G. W., C. E. Ferguson, Jr. and A. Seers: 1989, ‘Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity: Do the Scales Measure the Two Constructs’, Journal of Applied Psychology 74, 815–818.
McGregor, C., L. Killough and R. Brown: 1989, ‘An Investigation of Organizational-Professional Conflict in Management Accounting’, Journal of Management Accounting Research 1, 104–118.
Meixner, W. and D. Bline: 1989, ‘Professional and Job-Related Attitudes and the Behaviors They Influence Among Governmental Accountants’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 2, 8–20.
Moorman, R. H.: 1993, ‘The Influence of Cognitive and Affective Based Job Satisfaction Measures on the Relationship Between Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior’, Human Relations 46, 759–776.
Mowday, R. T., L. W. Porter and R. M. Steers: 1982, Employee-Organization Linkages(Academic Press, New York).
Neter, J., W. Wasserman and M. H. Kutner: 1989, Applied Linear Regression Models(Irwin, Boston, Massachusetts).
Nunnally, J. C.: 1978, Psychometric Theory(McGraw-Hill, New York).
Organ, D. W.: 1977, ‘A Reappraisal and Reinterpretation of the Satisfaction-Causes-Performance Hypothesis’, Academy of Management Review 2, 46–53.
Organ, D. W.: 1988, Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome(JAI Press, Greenwich, Connecticut).
Organ, D. W.: 1990, ‘The Motivational Basis of Organizational Citizenship Behavior’, Research in Organizational Behavior(JAI Press, Greenwich, Connecticut).
Organ, D. W. and M. Konovsky: 1989, ‘Cognitive Versus Affective Determinants of Organizational Citizenship Behavior’, Journal of Applied Psychology 74, 157–164.
Randall, D. M. and A. M. Gibson: 1990, ‘Methodology in Business Ethics Research: A Review and Critical Assessment’, Journal of Business Ethics 9, 457–471.
Rest, J. R.: 1986, Moral Development: Advances in Research and Theory(Prager, New York).
Rim, Y.: 1982, ‘Self-Monitoring, Ethical Position, Personality, Values, and Cognitive Performance’, Personality and Individual Differences 3, 219–230.
Rizzo, J. R., R. J. House and S. I. Lirtzman: 1970, ‘Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Complex Organizations’, Administrative Science Quarterly 15, 150–163.
Rogers, D. L. and J. Molnar: 1976, ‘Organizational Antecedents of Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Top-Level Administrators’, Administrative Science Quarterly 21, 598–610.
Schnake, M.: 1991, ‘Organizational Citizenship: A Review, Proposed Model, and Research Agenda’, Human Relations 44, 735–759.
Shaub, M. K., D. W. Finn and P. Munter: 1993, ‘The Effects of Auditors' Ethical Orientation on Commitment and Ethical Sensitivity’, Behavioral Research in Accounting 5, 145–169.
Smith, C. A., D. W. Organ and J. P. Near: 1983, ‘Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Its Nature and Antecedents’, Journal of Applied Psychology 68, 653–663.
Sparks, John R. and Shelby D. Hunt: 1998, ‘Marketing Researcher Ethical Sensitivity: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Exploratory Investigation’, Journal of Marketing 62(April), 92–109.
Stead, W. E., D. L. Worrell and J. G. Stead: 1990, ‘An Integrative Model for Understanding and Managing Ethical Behavior in Business Organizations’, Journal of Business Ethics 9, 233–242.
Trevino, L. K.: 1986, ‘Ethical Decision Making in Organizations: A Person-Situation Interactionist Model’, Academy of Management Review 11, 601–617.
Van Sell, M., A. P. Brief and R. S. Schuler: 1981, ‘Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity: Integration of the Literature and Directions for Future Research’, Human Relations34, 43–71.
Vitell, S. J. and S. D. Hunt: 1990, ‘The General Theory of Marketing Ethics: A Partial Test of the Model’, Research in Marketing 10, 237–265.
Vitell, S. J., J. R. Lumpkin and M. Y. Rawwas: 1991, ‘Consumer Ethics: An Investigation of the Ethical Beliefs of Elderly Consumers’, Journal of Business Ethics 10, 365–376.
Volker, J. M.: 1984, ‘Counseling Experience, Moral Judgment, Awareness of Consequences and Moral Sensitivity in Counseling Practice’, unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota.
Weick, K. E.: 1983, ‘Stress in Accounting Systems’, The Accounting Review 57, 350–369.
Williams, L. J. and S. E. Anderson: 1991, ‘Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment as Predictors of Organizational Citizenship and In-Role Behaviors’, Journal of Management 17, 601–617.
Woehr, D. J. and C. E. Lance: 1991, ‘Paper People Versus Direct Observation: An Empirical Examination of Laboratory Methodologies’, Journal of Organizational Behavior 12, 387–397.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yetmar, S.A., Eastman, K.K. Tax Practitioners' Ethical Sensitivity: A Model and Empirical Examination. Journal of Business Ethics 26, 271–288 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006294517573
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006294517573