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This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This paper explores the contribution of the AAA Symposium on Ethics Research in Accounting to fostering accounting ethics research. For a 17-year period, the contributors, their schools of affiliation, and their research topics were analyzed to determine the extent of and trends in accounting ethics research. The research rankings of the contributing authors were examined in business ethics journals, top-40 accounting journals, and accounting education journals. Institutional rankings identify supportive places to do accounting ethics research. The impact of significant accounting scandals such as Enron and Madoff was examined and a financial scandal “bump” in paper presentations was found. Authors affiliated with Texas schools had papers following the state requirement of an ethics accounting course. A large amount of ethics education-related research was also presented at the Ethics Symposia. Overall the study results indicate that the Symposium with its AAA affiliation is a high-quality venue for paper presentation.

Reviews the literature on trade union membership in OECD countries. After considering the ways in which trade union membership is measured, trends in both membership and density since 1970 are examined. When cross‐sectional determinants are considered, density is found to be unrelated to size of employment in the manufacturing sector and the share of female employment, but it is related to the level of collective bargaining and the size of the public sector. An examination of individual and job‐related characteristics finds membership is higher among males, those with family responsibilities, those with lower occupational status and those with low educational achievements and that job dissatisfaction and left‐wing views are also important. Time‐series studies find that while union growth and decline are linked to the business cycle, with wages, prices and unemployment affecting membership, economic factors are not the sole explanation. Concludes by surveying the causes of union decline since 1980, together with recent error‐correction and cointegration approaches to modelling trade union membership.

This chapter reports the results of a study of student performance in upper-level accounting courses, especially intermediate accounting I and cost accounting. Of particular interest is the performance of students who transferred the introductory accounting courses from a two-year institution versus native four-year students. We found that after controlling for a number of aptitudinal and demographic variables, transfer students performed at a significantly lower level than native students. On average, the difference was about 0.8 of a grade point. This study also provides evidence of grade inflation at two-year institutions relative to our four-year institution; documents a mean lag time of more than two years for community college students between taking principles of accounting courses and the upper-level courses; and shows that although the transfer shock lessens as the students continue in the major, it does not disappear. We also discuss the implications of our findings.

Purpose – This chapter problematizes the concept of the “American Dream” – important for Messner and Rosenfeld’s Intuitional Anomie Theory (IAT).

Design/methodology/approach – The author uses work from political science, specifically Adcock and Collier in conversation with Gerring to consider if the American Dream concept is “good.” The author continues by contending that the work on the state, its power and reach, can assist with the reconceptualization of IAT and the American Dream concept theoretically and methodologically.

Findings – The author finds that the American Dream concept, while not completely inadequate, significantly departs from Adams’ original definition in The Epic of America while also being associated with mixed findings as it relates to race and the likelihood of violence. The author concludes that through critical work (e.g., Moten’s “The Case for Blackness” and Ahmed’s “Phenomenology of Whiteness”) that in order to better develop this basis of desire in the American Dream concept there is a need to integrate a growing body of work that critically engages with the legacy of racial violence and racialized social conditioning. The author concludes that by studying the ontology/phenomenon of race, understandings of cultural desire may be understood in order to inform IAT.

Originality/value – This chapter provides a framework for evaluating concepts with interdisciplinary conversations with political science. The author’s findings also add to a body of work that, through cross-disciplinary conversations, work to tease out the socio-ecological and historical conditions that influence the interaction of structure and culture that lead to anomie and ultimately deviance.

Some of the best information for preventing accounting violations is received from employees who have observed the unethical behavior (Henning, 2016). However, receiving information about accounting violations or other unethical behavior in organizations requires employees to voluntarily report the behavior. Employees may be particularly hesitant to report unethical behavior when the behavior benefits them. Employees may also justify their own unethical behavior as morally appropriate when their moral identity allows the behavior. The authors draw on psychology and ethics literature to examine the relationships among moral identity, moral disengagement, and unethical behavior. In the exploration of behavior, the authors examine both commissions and omissions. While unethical commissions are violations directly committed by an individual without cooperation from others, unethical omissions are violations resulting from an individual failing to take steps necessary to correct another's unethical behavior.

The authors conduct a survey about cheating with a sample of college students. Using structural equation modeling, the authors find that intentions to engage in unethical commissions are positively associated with moral disengagement, while unethical omissions do not appear to create the moral disengagement that can arise from cognitive dissonance. The authors also find a feedback loop from moral disengagement to future intentions, which suggests moral disengagement created from one unethical act increases intentions for future unethical behavior. Finally, the authors find a simple intervention that can help to increase the moral intensity of observed unethical behavior.

Female students comprise a significant number of the accounting student population at four-year institutions. Likewise, a significant number of students have chosen to enroll and earn associate degrees at a community college, and subsequently transfer to a four-year college or university. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than half of the students enrolled in two-year institutions were female. Moreover, 57% of college students in the United States are females. This study provides empirical evidence on the interaction between gender and transfer versus native accounting students in their academic performance during and after shock periods. According to the literature, the shock period includes two semesters after a two-year college student transfers to a four-year college. The results of this study indicate that female and male transfer students do not perform equally in their accounting courses compared to their native counterparts, that is, male transfer students in accounting performed worse than female transfer students and native students (male and female) both during and after the “shock” period. These findings may have practical implications for administrators and accounting departments since male transfer students appear to need more assistance to absorb transfer shock when they join four-year colleges and possibly even after their first year at the four-year institution.

Why, despite clear economic incentives, did eighteenth-century slave traders fail to defend their business interests against the abolition campaign? We focus on the outport of Bristol as a case in point. Our main argument is that slave traders lacked an organizational basis to translate their economic interests into political influence. Supporting evidence from merchant networks over the 1698–1807 period shows that the Society of Merchant Venturers offered such an organizational site for collective political action. Members of this chartered company controlled much of Bristol’s seaborne commerce and held chief elective offices in the municipal government. However, the Society evolved into an organization that represented the interests of a closed elite. High barriers to entry prevented the slave traders from using the Society as a vehicle for political mobilization. Social cohesion among slave traders outside the chartered company hinged on centrally positioned brokers. Yet the broker positions were held by the few merchants who became members of the Society, and who eventually ceased their engagement in slave trading. The result was a fragmented network that undermined the slave traders’ concerted efforts to mobilize against the political pressure of the abolitionist movement.