Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Aristotle’s ethics can be applied to the ethics of professional accountants (PAs), in relation to the approach adopted by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), and to consider the reasons that justify the Aristotelian approach.

The paper outlines IFAC’s approach and identifies several weaknesses. Three themes of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are applied to the work of PAs. Reasons why this perspective is more suitable for PAs are then articulated.

Several aspects of Aristotle’s ethics can be fruitfully applied to the ethics of PAs. These include the relationship between function, goals and the good, an awareness of the human goal to achieve eudaimonia, the development of both excellences of character and of intelligence, and the significance of non-rational aspects of morality, including emotions, will, responsibility and choice.

This perspective provides an alternative conceptualisation of the ethics of PAs. Although it does not provide concrete guidance regarding what the ethical approach to specific situations may be, it presents a useful counterpoint to existing approaches that are largely deontological and utilitarian.

This paper provides accountants in practice with a more comprehensive and adequate perspective on what it means for a PA to be ethical, and raises several issues related to how ethics is included in the education and training of accountants.

Investigating the philosophical basis for professional ethics approaches professional codes of ethics in a way that it is not typically considered. The paper also provides a more comprehensive application of Aristotelian ethics than previous work.

This study aims to investigate the selection and use of introductory financial accounting (IFA) textbooks in the context of achieving the objectives of accounting education to provide both discipline-specific skills and liberal education.

This paper adopts a qualitative research design to collect data through semi-structured interviews with 33 accounting educators across Indonesia. This study uses the institutional theory approach to explain how accounting textbooks are selected and used to meet the objectives of accounting education at universities.

The study provides evidence of the adoption of a systematic procedure for the selection of recommended IFA textbooks. The selection was driven by the technical-regulatory objective of providing technical training. This objective also guides the use of the recommended textbooks. In a sense, accounting educators were more concerned about responding to institutional pressures of preparing accountants for work in the accounting industry rather than providing students with a liberal education that promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

This study focuses on the selection and use of IFA textbooks. Further research should examine the contents of various accounting textbooks and obtain feedback from the people involved in the publication of the textbooks.

The findings of this study have important implications for accounting educators. They can use these findings to improve their selection and use of accounting textbooks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine professional accountant’s views on their satisfaction with Continuing Professional Development (CPD) offered by members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB). While there is a great deal of research on CPD and accountants in developed countries, less developing countries are absent from this literature, and there have been calls for this type of research.

The present study employed a survey of members of the ICAB.

Results show that accountants in Bangladesh are satisfied with the CPD provided by their profession, and when satisfaction is compared with more developed countries, Bangladesh is greater on a number of measures. ICAB members would like to also be provided with opportunities to undertake CPD in more ways than just face to face.

The study has important implications not only for accountants from emerging economies such as Bangladesh, but also for the International Federation of Accountants and other less developed countries (LDCs). The results advance the understanding of professional accounting bodies from an international perspective.

This is the first study of CPD and accounting professionals in LDCs. The information obtained can inform the development and practice of other professional accounting bodies in emerging economies.

In this paper, the authors examine the association between the amount of continuing professional education (CPE) hours per staff and audit quality in terms of discretionary accruals and audit opinion.

Several methodologies are adopted to test the hypotheses, including the ordinary least square (OLS) and logistic regression (Logistic). The authors also employ instrument variables regression with two least square (IVREG with 2SLS) and instrument variables probit model (IVProbit) to address the possible endogeneity and strengthen the validity of the main estimation results.

The main results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between CPE hours per staff and audit quality. As the authors grouped CPE into four areas (finance, auditing and accounting, tax, law and regulations and others) the results are more robust for the sub-sample “accounting and audit” and “others”. Moreover, the findings of this study suggest that CPE hours per staff do not affect audit quality significantly for Big4 audit firms compared to non-Big4 firms.

The sample size of the present study is quite small because the transparency reports of the audit firms in Turkey have been available since 2013 and the authors could not reach some auditor demographics at the individual level and some attributes at the audit firm level. Besides, some alternative audit quality measures, such as audit effort, audit fees are not employed because they are not disclosed.

This study contributes to the audit literature using Turkish audit firms. The authors believe that the setting of Turkey may yield interesting results because of the data it provides.

This paper aims to provide an objective and comprehensive evaluation of the understanding of the professional code of ethics of Indian Professional Management Accountants in Business (PMAIBs). It further delves into their individual, job and organizational characteristics as determinants of their understanding of the code.

This study relies on data from 247 responses to a survey-based questionnaire. Overall scores and sub-scores of the level of understanding of the code were calculated based on questions grounded in IESBA Code and ethical dilemmas. The drivers of these scores were then examined using one-way ANOVA, OLS, Probit and ordered probit regressions.

This study found considerable heterogeneity in Indian PMAIBs' understanding of their professional code of ethics and substantial scope for improvements. PMAIBs were stronger in Application, Resolution and Threats but weaker in Theory and Principles. Further, PMAIBs who had ranked themselves higher on code-familiarity, had higher moral maturity, hailed from western India and worked for foreign-listed, foreign-owned firms were found to have a higher level of understanding of the code. Highly educated elderly professionals and professionals with more responsibility areas exhibited a lower level of understanding of the code.

Insights from the study can help professional bodies, employers and academics identify and segment PMAIBs based on their ethics-training needs and customize interventions, which can benefit businesses and society through reduced corporate ethical failures. Considering the risk implications of Indian PMAIBs' inadequacies in understanding their code of ethics, the Indian professional accounting organization (ICAI-CMA) should mandate ethics in continuing professional development and expedite its long pending convergence with the IESBA code, a global benchmark for professional accountants.

This paper assesses the understanding of the professional code of ethics of PMAIBs, which is crucial yet amiss in the accounting ethics literature. While ethical decision-making is extensively researched, how well the professionals understand their code is yet unexplored. Research on PMAIBs, despite their unique ethical vulnerabilities and increasingly vital role in organizations, is still dormant. This study aims to fill these gaps by examining PMAIBs from India, an emerging economy under-represented in accounting ethics literature. India offers an important and rich setting for the study due to its large size, fast growth, deep integration with the global economy, high perceived corruption levels and poor ethical behavior of its firms.

The business environment is changing and education at university business schools does not appear to keep pace. This paper aims to identify principles to guide educators in preparing accounting students for automation and artificial intelligence and sets an agenda for future research.

The seven principles are derived from an extensive literature review and the analysis of qualitative data from focus groups, thought leader discussions, interviews and workshops.

The derived seven Cs model includes: critical, conceptual thinking and the spirit of enquiry; complicate, grapple and fail; create, innovate and experience; concise communication; collaboration; consciousness, respectfulness and ethical fibre; and curiosity, lifelong learning and specialized generalists. An inclusive list of future research topics related to the seven Cs model is provided to aid researchers’ agendas.

Although every attempt was made to base this study purely on expert opinions, as reflected in journal articles, conference papers, interviews and focus groups, it is impossible to prevent author biases from slipping into the interpretation and reflection involved in creating the model. Readers will also find some overlap in terms of the accounting business competencies development model’s seven Cs, due to the inter-related nature of the concepts and because the various definitions of concepts have some habits of the mind and social competencies in common.

The seven principles will help business schools and higher education policymakers guide future education developments with a focus on new competencies and reframed skills, as opposed to new knowledge. The model ensures that scholars and graduates have insight into the essential knowledge, attributes and skills that apply to the diverse nature of accounting vocations and can adapt to unanticipated changes.

This new model can be used by business schools to ensure that graduates can fully contribute to a society impacted by automation and artificial intelligence by entering the workplace with the requisite skills. It also responds to critics’ fears about the role of business schools in preparing graduates for the future of work.

The paper contributes in two ways. First, rather than focussing on particular issues or the shortcomings of current education, it identifies broad-based principles from a literature review, interviews, focus groups and workshops. Second, it sets an agenda for future research.