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This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

Moral intensity is the degree of feeling we have about the consequences of moral choices, similar, for example, to those perceived for crimes, from petty larceny to murder. Moral intensity is thought to increase moral sensitivity and judgment. Because the accounting professions require members to respond to accounting fraud with more sensitivity and intensity, we examine this response in 220 professional accountants (mostly Certified Public Accountants) under a controlled experiment using two different cases. We examine the first three parts of the Rest (1986) model including ethical evaluation, judgment, and intention to act. We measure moral intensity in the accountant’s perception of overall harm and societal pressure. As in prior research, we find that the degree of moral intensity may be contextual. We find that the ethical evaluations may become affected by perceived overall harm, and whistleblowing intentions by perceived societal pressure. However, in both cases, the professional’s judgments are most affected by moral intensity. Consistent with prior research, whistleblowing intentions may involve many other mitigating variables, such as audit reporting or non-audit reporting limited by codes of conduct. These findings relate to the increasing attention paid by the SEC to finding accounting fraud.

This manuscript makes three important contributions to the existing literature. First, there are few studies in this area and Jones (1991) identifies that moral intensity is issue contingent; therefore, replication studies using different scenarios are needed. Second, Bailey, Scott, and Thoma (2010) have suggested that accounting ethics research has focused too narrowly on Component II of Rest’s Four-Component Model. None of the previous studies looked at all three steps in Rest’s Model; therefore, our manuscript provides an important contribution over the other previous studies. Third, our sample uses professionals and not students as surrogates for professionals.

Unethical business decisions and accounting fraud have occurred as a result of lapses in ethical sensitivity and judgment. The Association for Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) estimates that a typical organization loses 5% of its total yearly revenues to fraud; globally this translates into losses of over three trillion dollars each year (ACFE, 2016). Regulations such as the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act encourage reporting wrongdoing to mitigate fraud losses. Although there are many studies that explore the characteristics of whistleblowers, there are few studies that have examined the impact of an individual’s level of moral reasoning on whistleblowing intentions for financial statement fraud. This study offers several contributions over prior research by exploring the impact of two measures of moral reasoning (P-score and the N2-score) on decisions to whistleblow to either internal or external reporting outlets. This study finds that an individual’s level of moral reasoning impacts whistleblowing intentions to internal management, but an individual’s level of moral reasoning does not impact decisions to whistleblow externally. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This chapter assesses the impact of values change on the likelihood of reporting concerns for a situation of fraudulent financial reporting after a Giving Voice to Values (GVV) ethics intervention. The GVV curriculum shifts focus away from why actions are unethical to how one may effectively voice their values to resolve ethical conflict. After implementing this program in advanced accounting courses and empirically assessing the impact of the ethics intervention, the authors find that students have a stronger sense of the importance of values prescribed in professional codes of conduct and are more likely to speak up and confront unethical actions by voicing their values. GVV has the potential to increase the number of accounting professionals who are willing to speak up and confront unethical practices. The authors’ study appears to be the first to empirically test how a change in the perception of the importance of values impacts the likelihood to report concerns to members of the management hierarchy, filling an important gap in the literature.

This study explores the whistleblowing judgments and intentions of accounting students utilizing scenarios involving accounting earning’s manipulations and fraud. Individual differences affect how one makes decisions yet are rarely explored in the whistleblowing literature. As such, the authors conducted an exploratory study to determine if one’s cognitive style (the method a person uses to perceive incoming information and how they make decisions) affects whistleblowing judgment and intent. Using multivariate regression, the authors find that cognitive style significantly affects moral sensitivity, whistleblowing judgment, and whistleblowing intent. This chapter makes several important contributions to the existing literature. This is the first study that explores whether cognitive style affects moral sensitivity, whistleblowing judgments, and whistleblowing intentions. Second, it demonstrates that the models which exclude individual differences may be incomplete.

Martin Winterkorn had high aspirations for Volkswagen to become the world's leading automaker when he was promoted to CEO in 2007. Volkswagen lacked the technology needed to meet American emissions standards and fulfill their promise of a “clean” fuel efficient diesel engine. Instead, they chose to deceive the world, violating the law and the foundation the company's code of conduct was grounded in. This case provides an opportunity to explore corporate governance, ethical leadership, and the ethical and professional responsibilities that senior executives have to create and maintain an ethical culture. Examination of the details in the case uncover value conflicts. Examples of values included in IMA's Statement of Ethical Professional Practice are honesty, fairness, objectivity, and responsibility. IMA describes these as “overarching ethical principles.”