The Socialization of Undergraduate Accounting Students

Abstract

One purpose of accounting education is to introduce students to the values and ethical standards of the accounting profession (AAA Bedford Committee Report 1986). This study investigates whether undergraduate accounting education is successful at instilling in accounting students a sense of responsibility to financial statement users. In a longitudinal study of accounting and other business students, we find that accounting students oppose earnings management more strongly during their senior year than they did during their sophomore year. We also find that senior accounting students oppose earnings management more strongly than do senior students in other business disciplines. These results are consistent with a socialization process taking place wherein accounting students learn to give priority to financial statement users' needs, while students majoring in other business disciplines come to identify more closely with the goals of corporate managers.

The Effect of Ethical Orientation and Professional Commitment on Earnings Management Behavior

“…Those objectives may be categorized as a personal benefit or a company benefit (or both). By adapting Clikeman and Henning (2000), we make the distinction of whether the benefit is only for the benefit of the company or both. This offers us the opportunity to isolate personal benefit in our study and focus on this incentive to observe how personal benefit might impact ethical orientation and ultimately earnings management behavior.…”

“…Other researchers use surveys and experiments to study the practice of earnings management (e.g., Clikeman and Henning, 2000;Bruns and Merchant, 1990;Elias, 2002;Kaplan, 2001;Merchant and Rockness, 1994).…”

“…The cost of the maintenance will be about the same, but current year income and your compensation will be increased because no expenses will be incurred during December. (We modified the Clikeman and Henning (2000) scenario to manipulate personal benefit. In the narrative above, we included the words in bold (and your compensation).…”

Application and Assessment of an Ethics Presentation for Accounting and Business Classes

“…Incidents of unethical behavior by accounting professionals and business managers necessitate ethics instruction in college coursework (Clikeman and Henning, 2000;Fulman and Cargile, 1987;McNair and Milam, 1993;Smith, 2003;.…”

Student Views of Ethics Position in Business (Comparison Among Students of Accounting, Management, and Economic Development Department)

“…The research concluded that senior students have in average higher DIT (have a better moral) than the junior ones. Clikeman and Henning (2000) conducted a research about socialization of profession ethic code regarding profit management on accountant students in one of American universities. It concluded that accountant students are less agree with profit management in the last years than in the early years.…”