The good and the fair in accounting education: moral clues and moral mwareness in teaching professional ethics

Abstract

The legacy of the already not so recent accounting scandals and the world financial crisis has been a heated debate as to how to promote ethics training. Business schools all over the world have been reviewing their curricula and engaging in this debate in order to discover what has been lacking in their training programs. Thus, both higher education institutions and professional bodies have been considering how to include ethics in the training of future professionals so as to influence their professional behavior. In order to provide inputs for this debate the aim of the present study is to: a) identify the impact of moral language (moral clues) on the breadth and level of moral awareness of business students in two Brazilian public universities and; b) verify whether the number of years engaged in professional activities affects students’ moral awareness. A survey was undertaken of 133 undergraduate students in two public universities from diferente courses: Accounting and Actuarial Sciences, Administration and International Relations, some of who were exchange students. The present study replicates the study developed by Lowry (2003) in a British University, which identified that Year 2 students possessed higher overall moral awareness scores than the final year group and that different scenarios containing different moral language and “cues” did impact on levels of moral awareness.

The respondents’ answers were analyzed according to three categories: (1) scoring of consequences (including only non-moral consequences, such as, for example, loss of market share and financial losses); (2) scoring of moral consequences, such as leaking company secrets, lying to obtain rewards, stealing ideas, etc; and (3) scoring of framed questions, Where the affirmations that repeat the framing included in the text (see Figure 1) were scored. A fourth “overall score” was calculated by combining (summing) the moral consequences and framed question scores. In order to identify the level of moral awareness shown by the students analyzed, the responses collected were analyzed as dichotomic variables, codified as: low=0, if there was no indication of consequence, moral consequence, question framing, and high=1, if there was an indication of consequence, moral consequence or question framing. The research used multiple linear regressions to verify whether the consequences (other than the moral ones), type of scenario, professional activities and semester variables contributed to explaining students’ level of awareness (overall score). As the variables “semester” and “professional activities” were significantly correlated (more than 40%) two models were estimated: i) including the professional activities variable; and ii) considering the semestre variable. In general the descriptive analysis of the data showed that the individuals who were taking or had already taken the General and Professional Ethics course had a reasonable level of moral awareness. Among the respondents, 63% indicated some kind of consequence in the scenarios presented and approximately 61% indicated some type of moral consequence in each of the cenarios presented. The results obtained for the regressions suggest that individuals’ levels of moral awareness does not differ when “moral clues” are used and that students who have been in the labor market longer do not show a significant increase in their ability to identify ethical conflicts. On the contrary there is a negative association between professional activities and respondents’ moral awareness, which ratifies the result obtained by Lowry (2003) in the original study. The content analysis of students’ responses shows that the main ethical conflicts identified by most students are: a) the risk that an anti-ethical stance may promote (in the future) the dissemination of a firm’s confidential information to a competitor; b) the possible costs associated with the “leaking” of information that a firm hired an employee from a competitor to obtain confidential information. Very few studies about teaching Ethics in educational institutions and its possible impacts have been performed in the business education in Brazil and it should be the subject of greater debate. Despite its limitations, the present study examines some dimensions of moral awareness, which, consciously or unconsciously, influence the professional behavior, whether they are economists, actuaries, accountants or administrators. Ignoring this reference is to let oneself be guided by circumstances and encourage the perpetuation of practices that are not always compatible with organizational interests and especially with the interests of society at large. The dimensions of ethical behavior need to be understood and their investigation constitutes a suggestion for future research in order to achieve a better understanding of the breadth and development of moral behavior and even of ethical attitudes. Longitudinal studies are strongly indicated as they make it possible to analyze the moral development of future professional during the course. Another interesting research possibility would be to use an experimental approach.