Accountants’ ethical perceptions from several perspectives: evidence from Slovenia

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to explore the ethical perceptions of accountants in selected Slovene organisations towards ethicallysensitive scenarios. The article explores ethical perceptions among 'internal accountants' and those working in companies operating as providers of external accounting services. Since external accounting services companies are not specifically regulated by the profession, we hypothesise that accountants working in external accounting service companies are more lenient to ethically-sensitive scenarios. Moreover, we analyse if ethical perceptions differ between accountants having a professional certificate and those that do not. We believe those that have a certificate are harsher towards ethically-sensitive scenarios. For the purpose of our analysis a questionnaire was distributed to accounting professionals. Our analysis is made on a large sample of 451 accountants. Results of ordered probit regression support the first two hypotheses, despite the fact that not all of the vignettes resulted as statistically significant. Our study contributes to the literature in that the ethics of accountants from countries with non-regulated markets of accounting services have not yet been investigated in the literature.

Gauging the ethical sensitivity of accounting students: the effect of money attitudes

“…In response to this call, several studies (Abdelhak, 2019;Adekoya et al, 2020;Mohd Ghazali, 2021;Mustapha and Nadaraja, 2014;Nadaraja and Mustapha, 2017;Odar et al, 2017;West and Buckby, 2020) have in the past examined issues concerning ethical judgement and conduct of accounting professionals. In part, most of these studies have been motivated by the fact that several of the accounting scandals have occurred due to non-observance of ethical standards on the part of accountants.…”

“…Studies relating gender to ethical decision making are diverse with a good number finding women to be more ethical than men (Alleyne et al, 2010;Cagle and Baucus, 2006;Permatasari and Anis Surayya, 2018), whilst others found no significant gender differences in their perception of ethical issues Nga and Lum, 2013;Odar et al, 2017). Philmore and Persaud (2012) found females displaying higher ethical values compared to males.…”

“…Research in relation to age and ethics has similarly yielded varied conclusions with some studies showing a significant relationship between age and ethical behaviour; and others showing no significant relationship (Odar et al, 2017). In a study by Carb o et al (2019), they found that their sample students' ages do not significantly influence the understanding of most business ethics and education issues.…”

Impact of Selected Personality Traits on Accountants’ Attitudes Toward Accounts Manipulation: Evidence From Slovenia

“…Because many companies in our sample were not production companies, manipulation of the amount of warranty reserves was replaced with manipulation of the amount of bad debt reserves. Scenarios with accounts being manipulated in order to facilitate bank loan approval or to meet bank loan covenants can frequently be found in accounting ethics research (e.g., Odar et al, 2017;O'Leary, 2012), and researchers frequently list bank loans approval and bank loans covenants as one of the most common reasons/incentives for accounts manipulation.…”

Propensity to use global solutions of creative and aggressive accounting - in the light of accountants’ opinions

“…The sense of inner control (self-control) has a substantial impact in this respect, which significantly affects not only unethical behavior but also the intention to reveal irregularities (Wahyuni, et al, 2021). Another factor that significantly shapes ethical attitudes in professional activity is conducting educational activities as part of study programs (Odar et al, 2017;Okougbo et al, 2021). For the proper performance of accounting activities, the code of professional ethics presents several values that are considered moral values necessary to act in an ethical manner.…”