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Journal of Business Ethics

Erschienen in:

01.03.2015

Investigation of the Impact of an Ethical Framework and an Integrated Ethics Education on Accounting Students’ Ethical Sensitivity and Judgment

verfasst von: Nonna Martinov-Bennie, Rosina Mladenovic

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 1/2015

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Abstract

This research is motivated by the criticism levelled at the academic community for its failure to incorporate sufficient ethics education into the accounting curriculum (Earley and Kelly, Issues in Accounting Education 19(1):53–71, 2004; Madison and Schmidt 2006). The inclusion of ethics decision-making frameworks (frameworks) by professional bodies in their codes of conduct (IFAC 2012; APESB 2010) or as a standalone tool (AICPA 2012) and the encouragement of their use as a part of ethics education to help students to identify (ethical sensitivity) and think through ethical issues (ethical judgment) in a business context (AACSB 2004) has been subject to very limited research to date. The aim of this study is to provide evidence of the impact of providing a framework on its own and providing a framework as part of a comprehensive integrated ethics education component of a first-year unit of study, on accounting students’ ethical sensitivity and judgment. Results indicate that providing students with a framework only does not increase students’ ethical sensitivity but does support their ethical judgment. In contrast, the integrated ethics component does increase student’s ethical sensitivity, however, an unexpected finding of this study is that increases in students’ ethical judgement are greater if they have not been previously exposed to the framework. Taken together, our findings suggest that it is the framework that has a significant impact on students’ ethical judgment, while an integrated ethics education can expose students to a range of ethical issues and thereby improve their ethical sensitivity, a critical component which initiates the ethical decision-making process.

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The terms moral and ethical are considered to be equivalent in this study, and the term ‘ethical’ is used throughout for consistency.

The Ethical Conflict Resolution Process (ECRP) framework (see Appendix 1) used in this study aligns with the first 2 components of Rest’s (1986) model. Ethical sensitivity (steps 1–3 of the ECRP) and ethical judgement (step 5).

The Definition issues test (DIT), which was developed by James Rest, provides a quantitative assessment of moral development based on subjects’ responses to five moral dilemmas. The DIT is in effect an operationalisation of Kohlberg’s (1973) model of moral development as a series of hierarchical cognitive stages.

The undergraduate business/accounting degree in Australia consists of six semesters (24 units). The first-year accounting unit (1 of 4 units undertaken during the semester) consisted of 1 lecture of 1.5 hours per week and 1 seminar/tutorial hour per week. The accounting unit runs for one semester of 13 weeks. The ethics component is integrated as follows:

In the first 3 weeks of the unit the students are introduced to the ECRP framework, a variety of ethical perspectives and work through practical cases in tutorial classes with their peers and with the support of their instructors. Outside class, the students work on their newspaper task assignment by searching for business–related ethical issues reported in the media. They then work in teams on their ethics case to prepare their team report, team presentation. Students also complete an individual reflection report at the end of the unit. In class, students experience between 5 and 6 team presentations on different business-related ethical issues. There is only one presentation per week for each team until all teams have presented and each team must present on a different case in their class.

The case was reviewed by a number of accounting practitioners as well as a technical expert responsible for the ethical component of Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia CA Program. The case was also reviewed by the lecturer in charge of the subject who was not one of the researchers.

Of the 15 tutorial classes, the ‘no framework’ case was administered to students in eight tutorials. The ‘with framework’ case was administered to students in seven tutorials. Tutorial class sizes varied from 14 to 18 students per class on any given day. Sample sizes are provided in Table 1.

TOTAL 10 MARKS were allocated as follows:

Environmental: identify ethical issue (1 mark), recommendation (2 marks), justification (2 marks) SUB TOTAL 5;

Human rights: identify ethical issue (1 mark), recommendation (2 marks), justification (2 marks) SUB TOTAL 5.

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Titel: Investigation of the Impact of an Ethical Framework and an Integrated Ethics Education on Accounting Students’ Ethical Sensitivity and Judgment
verfasst von: Nonna Martinov-Bennie
Rosina Mladenovic
Publikationsdatum: 01.03.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 1/2015
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-2007-5

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