Does Ethical Behavior of Management Influence Financial Reporting Quality?

This paper aims to examine the relationship between managerial ethics level and financial reporting quality mainly focusing on accounting conservatism. Recently, there has been evidence to support the argument that managerial ethics level can affect reporting quality in the business world. Hence, this paper seeks to compare both fraud and non-fraud firms in terms of their ethical practice in the business. Furthermore, this study provides a more realistic perspective by making a comparison with previous studies. To test the hypotheses, we chose 243 fraud firms and compared them with the same number of non-fraud firms listed in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ from 2005 to 2012. The analysis using two groups across the time horizon reveals that the measured values of accounting conservatism do not show any meaningful difference between fraud and non-fraud firms. Additionally, fraud firms have greater absolute discretionary accruals than their counterparts. This result suggests that fraud firms are more likely to manipulate their earnings than the non-fraud firms. Also, accruals quality of fraud firms is lower than that of non-fraud firms. The significance of the paper lies in the fact that we used different criteria to judge a company’s comparative ethics level.

Daoist Ci 慈, Feminist Ethics of Care, and the Dilemma of Nature

In recent discussion on comparative ethics, extensive scholarship has been devoted to a comparative study of Confucian ren 仁(often translated as humaneness or benevolence) and feminist ethics of care, while such cross-cultural study on the Daoist concept of ci 慈 (customarily translated as compassion) and its intersection with care ethics has been lacking. This paper explores the reasons and concludes that Daoists do care. However, their conception of care goes beyond the Confucian ren and pure care ethics or even counter-opposes them so as to bring forward the true meaning of care. Daoist care is a powerful tool in our approach to ecology.

The Comparative Study of Ethics and the Project of the Justpeace

This chapter focuses on the role of the comparative study of ethics in peacebuilding. The argument proceeds as follows. First, comparative ethics is presented primarily as a hermeneutical discipline, in which the goal is to answer the question “what is going on?” in a particular context. Second, the chapter analyzes changes in Muslim discourse about war. These point to a deep political crisis. Third, the chapter turns to an analysis of the virtues necessary for those who undertake to build peace in such a context. The example of Dag Hammerskjold serves to make the point that, among other virtues, peacebulding requires the wisdom to identify “provisional solutions”, which at times will include a judicious use of military force. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that the vocabularies of jihad, just war, and other frameworks may yet play a constructive role in the building of peace.