Moral Intensity Revisited: Measuring the Benefit of Accounting Ethics Interventions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether accounting students' perception of moral intensity could be enhanced through a limited ethics intervention in an Advanced Accounting course. Ethical decisions are heavily influenced by the intensity of the moral problem: the more egregious the act, the more the people view it as unethical. This controlled experiment measures the change in perceptions of moral intensity with the pre-and post-test instruments using five accounting specific vignettes containing moral dilemmas which are progressively more intense. While other studies have shown that perceived moral intensity directly influences a persons' moral decision-making process, as far as we are aware, this is the first study that assesses and tests whether the coverage of specific ethics content integrated into an accounting class can positively influence the students' perception of moral intensity, moral sensitivity/awareness, moral judgment, and moral intentions. Positively influencing students' moral sensitivity/awareness, moral judgment, and moral intentions is a critical first step to ensuring that our courses and curricula provide the learning environment in which students can develop knowledge and competencies required to become the ethical leaders of tomorrow.

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

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The Effects of Socio-Cultural Context on Breach of Accounting ethics: A Grounded Theory Study

“…Tax policy having high tax rates, no advantage for taxpayers, undocumented economy, distrust of tax authorities on tax returns of (un)fair firms, unproductive employees of regulatory system result in black money and tax evasion that is detrimental for exchequer. Russia is on the top of the list in evading taxes (Shawver & Miller, 2017). It is high time for accounting researchers to pressurize policy makers for designing of effective and efficient policies (Palea, 2016).…”

Ethics curriculum in Indigenous Pacific: a Solomon Islands study

“…While questions about the ethics curriculum continue to be posed in engineering (Shuman, Besterfield-Sacre, & McGourty, 2005), computer science (Gotterbarn, 2017), accounting (Shawver & Miller, 2017), law (Prentice, 2015) and beyond, there seems to be agreement that ethics can and should be taught (Kohlberg, 1984;Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, & Meyer, 2014). The literature suggests that teachers must be experts (Siegler, 1978), trained professionals (Calman & Downie, 1987) and able to work in multidisciplinary groups (Culver et al, 1985).…”