The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

Abstract

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest's model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention-thus providing support for Rest's model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest's model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world.

Chinese insurance agents in “bad barrels”: a multilevel analysis of the relationship between ethical leadership, ethical climate and business ethical sensitivity

“…As Rest (1986) argued that all four stages were conceptually different and that success in one stage did not mean success in other stages, Johari et al (2011) identified significant positive relationships between the first three processes of ethical decision-making among auditors. Musbah et al (2016) reported a significant relationship between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention, and the same results were found in Haines et al’s (2008) research. Similarly, Jagger (2011) found that levels of ethical sensitivity had a significant impact on the development of moral judgment.…”

Effects of Auditors' Ethical Orientation and Self‐Interest Independence Threat on the Mediating Role of Moral Intensity and Ethical Decision‐Making Process

“…Theoretically, an individual's ethical orientation provides a guideline in shaping the individual beliefs, attitudes, and values used in dealing with ethical dilemmas (Hunt & Vitell, ; Musbah, Cowton & Tyfa, ). Empirical studies on ethical orientation explain a variety of decisions that individuals make in organizations (e.g., Henle, Giacalone & Jurkiwicz, ; Marques & Azevedo‐Pereira, ; Ismail, ).…”

Intensidade moral e tomada de decisão: Estudo aplicado a estudantes do ensino superior em Gestão

“…Estes últimos resultados não são consistentes com os de outros autores (vide Musbah et al, 2016;Yang & Wu, 2009), que associam significativa e positivamente a tempestividade com as etapas da tomada de decisão ética de Rest (1986). Por outro lado, os resultados obtidos não replicam os de Barnett e Valentine (2004), que defendem pouca ou nenhuma associação da tempestividade com o processo de tomada de decisão ética.…”

“…Estes resultados contrariam os resultados de estudos anteriores (Chan et al, 2011;Forsyth, 1980Forsyth, , 1992Musbah et al, 2016). De notar que Musbah et al (2016) salientam que o idealismo foi considerado como a variável individual com mais influência na predição das três etapas do modelo de tomada de decisão ética de Rest (1986) nos contabilistas. Em sentido oposto, são os resultados obtidos por Jesus, Sarmento e Duarte (2017), que, recorrendo a uma metodologia distinta, concluem que os contabilistas têm uma visão utilitarista da ética.…”