An Exploration of the State of Ethics in UK Accounting Education

Accounting Ethics Education Research

“…Their findings were similar to 3.18 hours reported by McNair and Milam (1993) and 4 hours reported by Fisher et al (2007). While the level of ethics coverage through both required and elective offerings has increased during the period 2003 to 2016, it remained quite low overall (Miller and Shawver, 2018). This research is premised on improving ethics coverage in accounting education by calling for an increase of ethics education in the accounting curriculum which appears inadequately addressed (Cohen & Pant, 1989;Haas, 2005;Marzuki et al, 2017;Miller & Becker, 2011;Cohen & Pant, 1989;Loeb & Rockness, 1992).…”

“…Early research on accounting ethics education relied on interpretive analysis while research in the latter period relied on complex or sophisticated models of analysis such as (regressions, experiment, ground theory, meta-analysis). Early research tends to question the value and extent of ethics education (Hiltebeitel & Jones, 1991;Levy & Mitschow, 2008;Loeb, 1988;Ponemon, 1993;Smith et al, 2005) while later research tends to focus on the ethics of the individual and ethical decision making (Costa et al, 2016;Faello, 2017;Fiolleau & Kaplan, 2017;Ghazali, 2015;Ramirez, 2017;Waldron & Fisher, 2017), and perspectives on ethics education from the practicing profession (Caglio & Cameran, 2017;Loeb, 2012;Rockness & Rockness, 2010;Wilson et al, 2016) and from educators and instructors (Jones & Spraakman, 2011;Liu et al, 2012;Miller & Shawver, 2018). Similarly, teaching pedagogies changed over time to include case studies, role-plays, games, video presentations and novels, influenced in part by the introduction of learning technology platforms such as a web base multimedia-orientated teaching module (McManus et al, 2012).…”

“…One stream of research attributes accounting frauds to the failure of educators to implement adequate ethics training in accounting education programs (Brown-Liburd & Porco, 2011;Ferguson et al, 2011;Miller & Shawver, 2018). Some authors suggest that the education system should bear some of the responsibility for the apparent low moral standards of the accounting profession highlighting the need to re-examine the level and type of ethics education (McPhail, 1999;Shawver, 2009).…”

The U.S. versus international ethics codes for accountants: A computerized content analysis

“…Cheung and Agrawal (2018) question the level of ethics emphasis in accounting curriculum and in the recruitment of professional accountants. Insufficient ethics training and ineffective ethics education in accounting are blamed for the prevalence of ethical violations and frauds in the accounting profession (Pergola & Walters, 2017;Miller & Shawver, 2018). Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related professional training, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions (Reinstein et al, 2019).…”

Board of Directors and Firm performance: the moderating effect of women directors

“…Annual Global Ethics Day came to its 6 th anniversary in October 2019 (Carnegie Council, 2019). Over the past few decades, ethic education and studies has been preaching across the globe (Andersen & Klamm, 2018;Miller & Shawver, 2018;West & Buckby, 2018). Therefore, theoretically corporate scandals such as bribe, corruption fraud, and earning management should be minimized.…”