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Most business-related studies on ethics focus on consumers in developed western economies but ignore developing economies. Therefore, to fill this void in the literature and address the concerns of prior studies, the purpose of this paper is to examine the ethical perceptions of Chinese consumers as an example of effective and efficient management of company/brand strategies in an economy experiencing rapid socioeconomic growth.

This study examines 328 Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions based on their ethical perceptions toward Apple and P&G through mediating (i.e. consumer–corporate identification (CCI) and brand trust) and moderating (i.e. consumer gender, age, education and residence) effects. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the constructs and overall model.

The ethical perceptions of consumers translate into purchase intentions, both at the corporate and product brand levels. Similarly, a significant direct relationship between CCI and brand trust reveals that corporate-level ethical identification is a trivial matter to customers, although these perceptions do apply to product brands under a corporate umbrella. Furthermore, to identify target groups of Chinese consumers who are receptive to ethical appeals, moderating variables were found to be useful.

The results confirm that the mediating role of CCI is more influential in the context of Chinese consumers’ ethical perceptions, followed by brand trust. In relation to demographics, ethical perceptions affect CCI and brand trust more positively in females and highly educated consumers in China. Similarly, the relationship between consumers’ ethical perception and their trust in brand is revealed more influential in urban residents than they do in rural. This broadens the applications and contexts of this research model. The results provide managerial guidance on enhancing potential ethical perceptions.

Using public universities as research setting, this study explored whether perception of the prevalence of instrumental ethical climate (IEC) differ among employees based on their gender, age, education levels, job tenure and status.

Structured survey questionnaires were used in collecting data, and responses from a final sample of 101 senior level university employees were used in the analysis.

Results of independent t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that although participants had a high overall perception of the presence of IEC in their organisations, statistically significant differences in perception were only found for the gender and education level groups. Furthermore, this research concludes that females are more perceptive of, and sensitive to, the existence of unethical decision-making conditions in their work place, compared to males employees; and that employees with low levels of education are more likely to perceive stronger levels of IECs in their work environment, compared to their more educated counterparts.

Although the sample size is large enough for the kind of inferential analytical method employed in this study, it may not be representative of all the public universities in Nigeria. Furthermore, given that private organisations may encourage different ethical work climates than public establishments, the generalisability of our findings is limited.

To reduce unethical practices in public universities, more women should be encouraged to take up top decision-making positions.

Compared to the general business and public service fields, the current study is one of very few studies that empirically examined individual-level antecedents of ethical climate in African Universities.

Undergraduate accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia is a unique case. The program includes 147 credit hours of which 28 credit hours are religious courses. This study aims to examine the effect of teaching these religious courses on students’ ethical perceptions and decisions.

A survey was conducted for a sample of accounting students at Umm Al-Qura University. The sample was divided into two groups; the first group includes students who did not study religious courses, while the second group includes students who study religious courses. The questionnaire contained three groups of questions that aimed to explore students’ perceptions of ethics in general, students’ perceptions of business ethics and explored their ethical attitudes regarding some accounting decisions that involve ethical dilemmas. Independent two-sample t-test and multiple regression analysis were used to determine whether the responses of the two groups were significantly different.

The findings of the study revealed that teaching religious courses led to an improvement in students’ perception of business ethics and an improvement in students’ ethical decision-making. However, the results of the independent sample t-test showed that this improvement was not significant. The results of the study also revealed that male students tend to make less ethical decisions than female students.

The findings offer an indication for those responsible for managing the accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University to start developing the program so that some of the general religious courses are replaced with specialized courses in accounting ethics that focus directly on ethical dilemmas faced by the accountant when practicing the accounting profession.

This study contributes to the current literature related to examining the effect of teaching ethics courses on the ethical perception of accounting students by focusing on accounting students in Saudi Arabia as a context that has not been examined before.

The purpose of this study is to explain the effect of love of money and Machiavellianism on ethics perceptions of accounting students. The knowledge attained from this study will allow lecturers and academicians to improve the methods used for teaching ethics in accounting by evaluating the impact of two factors.

This research uses survey and quantitative analysis. The data were collected by distributing offline and online questionnaires to students in a university in Indonesia.

The results show that both the love of money and Machiavellianism negatively affect ethical perception. Gender as one of the control variables is found to have a significant association with the love of money, Machiavellianism and ethical perception of accounting students.

The practical implication of the research is the need to inform students on the negative impact of the love of money and Machiavellianism on ethics, as well as the required steps to overcome such negative impact by inserting ethics-related materials in several accounting courses.

Accounting students represent future accountants and highly ethical accountants will protect the profession and society from harmful consequences of unethical accounting and business practices.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there were differences in students' ethical perceptions based on gender, academic major and religiosity.

A self‐administered survey was conducted of 132 students at a university in Barbados, to determine ethical perceptions on five moral constructs: justice, relativism, utilitarianism, deontology and egoism.

The study found that females displayed higher ethical values compared to males, non‐accounting students (majoring in management and economics) were more ethical than accounting students, and students who perceived themselves as being religious were more ethical than non‐religious students. Both female accounting and non‐accounting students, as well as religious and non‐religious females, held higher ethical perceptions than their male counterparts.

The sample was small, thus limiting the generalisability of the results to the wider student population.

The results should be useful for educational institutions to implement more ethical courses into the curriculum.

The paper demonstrates that ethical perceptions are important among undergraduate students, and that there needs to be remedies to improve the low ethical perceptions among accounting students. The paper also contributes to the sparse literature on ethics in the Caribbean.

This study aims to examine how contractual mechanisms, trust and ethical levels impact opportunism in marketing channel relationships between manufacturers and distributors. Because the type of interactions, short-term or transaction-based vs long-term or relation-based, may also affect the level of opportunism, the study includes two scenarios to assess the impact of interaction type.

Survey data from 145 distributors were collected with 69 being transaction-based and 75 being relation-based interactions.

The sole use for transaction-based and relation-based interactions is not a significant deterrent for opportunistic behavior by a distributor. Ethical level is negatively related to opportunism in transaction-based interactions, perhaps because of calculative commitment. Trust positively moderates the relationship between contractual enforcement and opportunism in transaction-based interactions. Under relation-based interactions, the opposite occurs as trust reduces contractual enforcement efforts, and thus, opportunism is reduced as well. Ethical level negatively moderates the relationship between contractual enforcement and opportunism in transactional and relational based interactions.

Researchers have called for a more holistic approach to better understand phenomena. This study addressed that call by being the first to include contracts, trust, ethical level and opportunism within the context of the transaction and relation-based interactions between a manufacturer and a distributor. Contractual enforcement is not a significant deterrent of opportunism for transactional or relational interactions. Trust is negatively related to opportunism only in transaction-based interactions; perhaps, the threshold for acting opportunistically may be lower because of the short-term nature of the interaction. The ethical level is negatively related to opportunism in transaction and relational interactions.

The purpose of this study is to determine if members of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) use the IMA Code of Ethics in recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas. We accomplish this objective by examining the relationship between the IMA members’ rating of IMA code elements as “possible guiding principles” and IMA members’ ethical perception and judgment. This study also determines the relationships between IMA members’ personal ethical philosophy, corporate ethical values, age, and certification, and IMA members’ ethical perception and judgment. Thus the study uses an atomistic‐deontological approach to ethics as classified by Baker. The results indicate that a statistically significant relationship exists between IMA members’ rating of IMA code elements and IMA members’ ethical perception and judgment. Further, the study found only weak associations among IMA members’ ethical perception and judgment, and personal ethical philosophy, corporate ethical values, age and certification.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of the tax agent as a preparer of tax returns and provider of professional tax advice under a system based on self‐assessment principles. It recognises the competing pressures under which tax agents attempt to discharge their professional responsibilities, and examines the implications for potentially unethical behaviour.

The paper uses a mail survey of tax professionals in Western Australia. Respondents are presented with realistic tax return scenarios, in which the demands of the client are varied according to the risk of audit, the severity of tax law and the materiality of dollar amounts involved.

The findings suggest that the severity of tax law violation is an important factor in ethical decision‐making, but that audit risk and the amounts involved are not.

The lack of support for audit risk as an influential variable is an important outcome, because policy makers have traditionally proceeded on the basis that increases in audit probabilities will reduce the likelihood of taxpayers adopting aggressive tax reporting positions. However, since the findings are based on an Australian sample, care must be taken in generalizing these findings elsewhere.

The implications are important in that alternative enforcement and compliance strategies must be considered by tax administrators.

The paper extends empirical research into taxpayer attitudes to those of the preparers of tax returns. The findings will be of relevance both to tax agents and to tax administrators.

To investigate how accounting majors have reacted to recent accounting scandals and to evaluate the extent to which they are familiar with the scandals, the effects of the scandals on their opinions of accountants and corporate managers, and the consequent influences on the student's educational and career plans.

In total 105 accounting majors at two institutions were surveyed. Forsyth's ethics position questionnaire was used to evaluate the student's ethical orientation. The survey instrument also measures student demographic data, the student's knowledge of the profession and the scandals, and how the scandals affected the student's opinions and plans. The data are analyzed using linear regression.

Accounting students are generally knowledgeable about the scandals but seem to know considerably less about the accounting profession. Accounting students lowered their opinions of corporate managers more than that of accountants. Accounting students also express an increased interest in majoring in accounting and seeking a position in the profession, but express less interest in working for a Big 4 firm. Students scoring higher on the idealism scale tended to lower their opinions of accountants more than that of corporate managers.

The results represent a case study only. It is believed that the conclusions may apply to other student populations.

The results can guide educators to prepare interventions that help students to avoid ethical crises.

The paper introduces ethical orientation in explaining how students react to ethical crises. The results enable accounting educators to understand what students feel and how and why they react to such events.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of subjective ambivalence on ethical consumption behaviors and the role of ethical claims in reducing feelings of ambivalence toward buying ethical products.

The authors conducted two studies. In study 1, the authors carried out an online survey with a sample of 230 French consumers. The authors applied structural equation modeling with Amos to test the relationships among skepticism, ambivalence and ethical consumption behaviors. Study 2 is an experimental design in which the authors manipulated ethical claims (low – few ethical arguments vs. high – many ethical arguments) in advertising (176 French panelists). The authors tested the relationships among consumer ethical sensitivity, perceived brand ethicality, skepticism, ambivalence and intention to purchase an ethical product, depending on ethical claims in advertising.

Study 1 shows that skepticism toward advertising of ethical products amplifies feelings of ambivalence and that ambivalence reduces consumers’ willingness to adopt ethical consumption behaviors. Study 2 shows that strong claims in advertising of ethical products reduce skepticism toward advertising of ethical products and feelings of ambivalence toward buying an ethical product through perceived brand ethicality, with consumers’ ethical sensitivity positively moderating these relationships.

The two studies explore only one form of ambivalence (i.e. subjective), and the experimental study focuses on a single category of products.

The findings highlight the difficulties in promoting ethical products. Consumers need to know if a product is “really” ethical, as they may feel ambivalent toward that product. This paper shows that strong ethical claims in advertising ethical products significantly help to overcome this barrier.

Based on attribution theory and persuasion models, this research reveals how ethical claims in advertising affect feelings of ambivalence, which negatively influence consumers’ willingness to adopt ethical consumption. In addition, it follows a holistic approach to ethical consumption behaviors to explore consumers’ ambivalence.