The Role of Culture and Accounting Education in Resolving Ethical Business Dilemmas by Chinese and Canadians

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dunn

This paper examines the roles that culture and accounting education play in helping to resolve ethical dilemmas in business. Using a sample of Chinese and Canadian business students, the results show that the Chinese are more willing to sanction a variety of businesses and accounting policy choice decisions that the Canadians consider to be inappropriate and unethical. Furthermore, accounting students are better able to resolve accounting and business dilemmas regardless of their cultural background. Finally, this study finds that the social desirability bias, to present oneself as more ethical than is actually the case, is a cross-cultural phenomenon.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim El-Sayed Ebaid

Purpose Undergraduate accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia is a unique case. The program includes 147 credit hours of which 28 credit hours are religious courses. This study aims to examine the effect of teaching these religious courses on students’ ethical perceptions and decisions. Design/methodology/approach A survey was conducted for a sample of accounting students at Umm Al-Qura University. The sample was divided into two groups; the first group includes students who did not study religious courses, while the second group includes students who study religious courses. The questionnaire contained three groups of questions that aimed to explore students’ perceptions of ethics in general, students’ perceptions of business ethics and explored their ethical attitudes regarding some accounting decisions that involve ethical dilemmas. Independent two-sample t-test and multiple regression analysis were used to determine whether the responses of the two groups were significantly different. Findings The findings of the study revealed that teaching religious courses led to an improvement in students’ perception of business ethics and an improvement in students’ ethical decision-making. However, the results of the independent sample t-test showed that this improvement was not significant. The results of the study also revealed that male students tend to make less ethical decisions than female students. Research limitations/implications The findings offer an indication for those responsible for managing the accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University to start developing the program so that some of the general religious courses are replaced with specialized courses in accounting ethics that focus directly on ethical dilemmas faced by the accountant when practicing the accounting profession. Originality/value This study contributes to the current literature related to examining the effect of teaching ethics courses on the ethical perception of accounting students by focusing on accounting students in Saudi Arabia as a context that has not been examined before.


Author(s):  
Asma Ayari

The purpose of this study is to give a description of ethical business cultures in Bahraini construction companies. Construction companies in the Middle East are facing charges in terms of exploitation of workers and poor working conditions. The construction sector is one of the most dynamic in Bahrain, and its participation in national GDP is increasing. It is also the most important sector in the creation of jobs. Bahrain, as in the Gulf countries, employs a workforce from India and Asia, one of the lowest in the international labor market. This study analyzes the reality of the CSR in the construction sector and proposes some guidelines for the role of Bahraini stakeholders in the implementation of the social responsibility.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rotem Kahalon ◽  
Orly Bareket ◽  
Andrea C. Vial ◽  
Nora Sassenhagen ◽  
Julia C. Becker ◽  
...  

The madonna-whore dichotomy denotes polarized perceptions of women as either good and chaste or as bad and promiscuous. In the present research, we examined the correlates of madonna-whore dichotomy among samples of heterosexual Israeli, U.S., and German women and heterosexual U.S. and German men. Demonstrating cross-cultural generalizability, madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement correlated with endorsement of patriarchy-supporting ideologies across samples. U.S. (but not German) men’s madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement negatively correlated with their sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships, which in turn predicted lower general relationship satisfaction. Among women, madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement did not correlate with sexual or general relationship satisfaction. These findings (a) support the feminist perspective on the madonna-whore dichotomy, which points to the role of the stereotype in policing women and limiting their sexual freedom; and (b) provide evidence that madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement can have personal costs for men. Increasing awareness to the motivations underlying the madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement and its costs can be beneficial at the social and personal levels for women and men, by providing knowledge that may help in developing focused interventions to change existing perceptions and scripts about sexuality, and perhaps foster more satisfying heterosexual relationships.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Thomas

ABSTRACT The current study investigates how a university accounting education affects the rationales used by accounting and first-year business students in making ethical decisions, the level of deliberative reasoning they employ, and their ethical decisions. Senior accounting students (with approximately four accounting courses to complete) were found to exhibit higher deliberative reasoning, make more frequent use of post-conventional modes of deliberative reasoning, and make more ethical decisions than first-year accounting students. These results suggest that a university accounting education has a positive effect on deliberative reasoning, on the use of post-conventional modes of deliberative reasoning, and on ethical decisions. There was no difference between the level of deliberative reasoning and ethical decisions of first-year accounting and first-year business students, but there were differences in their modes of deliberative reasoning. These results suggest that first-year accounting and first-year business students may make ethical decisions differently, implying the need for a different emphasis when teaching ethics to these two groups of students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (03) ◽  
Author(s):  
TANDUNG HUYNH ◽  
HUYHANH HUYNH ◽  
LE THI HAI BINH

Management accounting is a compulsory subject in the curriculum of accounting at the Vietnamese universities. This subject provides management accounting knowledge and future accounting practising skills to students. In the trend of international integration in economics and education, the role of management accounting is more and more important, it requires accounting graduates to gain professional knowledge about accounting management to meet the needs of domestic and foreign organizations. It poses a challenge for Vietnamese universities in the renewal of contents and teaching methods of management accounting subject, especially when most of the stakeholders suggest increase this subject’s credits and contents. This paper researches the reality of management accounting teaching at the Vietnamese universities and suggests the solutions to innovate this subject’s contents and teaching methods. It helps to improve the education quality for accounting students in the trend of international integration.


Author(s):  
Hyo-Dong Lee

Confucians in East Asia have always dreamed of holding human communities together and constructing well-functioning polities in and through the binding and harmonizing power of rituals. Underlying their trust in the power of rituals is the notion that rituals constitute symbolic articulation and enchancement of our affective responses to the conditions of embodied relationality and historicity in which we always already find ourselves. This Confucian theory of rituals resonates with Whitehead’s theory of symbolism, insofar as the latter advances a primordially relational ontology of the subject by highlighting the hitherto neglected epistemological notion of perception in the mode of causal efficacy. As such, the Confucian theory of rituals offers a fresh cross-cultural perspective to understand Whitehead’s implied critique of the modern liberal social theories that are based on a view of human beings as atomized individuals who rationally consent to enter society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Xia Zhang ◽  
Botao Chen

We administer a survey to evaluate accounting and other business students’ perceptions and usage of the social networking site LinkedIn. The participants are students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), who are underrepresented groups. Our research examines how LinkedIn shapes their social identity and establishes their self-presentation in a world of social networking. It also examines how students’ perceptions of LinkedIn benefit their future career development as well as interactive learning. The results of the survey reveal that LinkedIn is an invaluable social media tool for college students to present their social identity, network with professionals as a helpful source of career and job information. However, compared with business students, accounting students put less trust in the information obtained via professional communities on LinkedIn. Accounting students agree that LinkedIn is more distracting than helpful to students for academic work. Our study has strong implications for accounting students and other business students, as well as educators in HBCU settings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-412
Author(s):  
Enrico Bracci ◽  
Mouhcine Tallaki ◽  
Monia Castellini

Purpose In accounting education studies, there is increasing interest in using teaching visual tools and contents. However, research about the pedagogical benefits of visual in education is still limited. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by providing evidence on the extent to which the visual represents a relevant learning preference of accounting students. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopted the visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic questionnaire as a tested means to study the learning preferences of accounting students. The empirical study is based on a survey conducted with undergraduate and postgraduate accounting students. Findings The results show that visualization appears to be the less-relevant learning preference of students. This result is not in line with the emergent discussion in accounting education literature, which examines how visual tools can improve the presentation of accounting information. This opens the debate about the potential use of visual tools in teaching accounting. Besides, gender and origin of students (national vs international) appeared as relevant factors in explaining a greater visual learning preference. Originality/value This paper attempts to contribute to the accounting literature by providing evidence on the extent to which the visual represents the relevant learning preferences of accounting students. In addition, given that most of the literature on students’ learning preferences are based on Anglo-Saxon contexts, the authors provide evidence from a Latin country.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Clikeman ◽  
Steven L. Henning

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.


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