Morality vs. ideology: Implications for accounting ethics research

Abstract

The explosion of accounting ethics research in the past decade has been fuelled by the availability of the Defining Issues Test (DIT: Rest 1979–1993). Despite existing criticisms regarding the DIT (Emler et al., 1983) and research indicating that the measure is a biased reflection of accountants' moral reasoning (Sweeney & Fisher, 1998,(Sweeney & Fisher,1999), the validity of the instrument is rarely questioned. This paper discusses the evolution of the political attitude-moral reasoning debate. A between-subjects experiment provides further support for the existence of political bias, implying that ethics researchers may have confounded political ideology with moral reasoning when interpreting results.

Citation

Fisher, D.G. and Sweeney, J.T. (2002), "Morality vs. ideology: Implications for accounting ethics research", Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research (Advances in Accounting Behavioural Research, Vol. 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 141-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-7979(02)05040-8