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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.

Understanding whistleblowing behavior by identifying preferred reporting channels and associated personality characteristics can aid organizations in their attempts to encourage whistleblowing. The authors investigate whether both Dark Triad characteristics and gender affect whistleblowing intentions and whistleblowing channel preferences. Using a sample of undergraduate business students, the authors find individuals with higher levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics indicate that they are less likely to blow the whistle than individuals with lower levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics. They are also more likely to use non-anonymous channels over anonymous channels and individuals with lower levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics show the opposite channel preference. The authors also find women more likely to report, and when reporting, they prefer anonymous over non-anonymous channels. The results provide support for organizations in cultivating an organizational culture that promotes communication among employees and potentially includes incentives to promote whistleblowing.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore aspects of both enabling and coercive control usages and to extend the literature stream by integrating relevant ethical variables at both the level of the individual and the group. We also provide multiple ideas for future research studies.

An overview of prior literature in management control systems is presented with an aim toward identifying gaps in research knowledge.

As a result of our investigation into the intersection between management control and ethics, it is evident that there are many future areas ripe for enquiry.

This study contributes theoretically by conceptualizing the integration of ethical considerations with how control systems are used, and then offering ideas for future research directions.

Our research investigates the intersection between management control and ethics. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to delve into this critical area.

This research note investigates the relationship between the constructs of professional skepticism and client advocacy as they relate to accountants’ roles as auditors and tax professionals. Although Pinsker, Pennington, and Schafer (2009) implicitly treat advocacy and professional skepticism as opposing constructs, the purpose of this research note is to explicitly examine whether an accounting professional can be both a professional skeptic and a client advocate. Two hundred and six experienced accounting professionals with a mixture of accounting and tax backgrounds responded to a client advocacy scale (Pinsker et al., 2009) and a professional skepticism scale (Hurtt, 2010). Results indicate that while tax professionals have higher levels of client advocacy than auditors, both groups have similar levels of professional skepticism. Moreover, no correlation emerges between participants’ responses to the advocacy and the full professional skepticism scale or five of its six sub-scales. These results provide evidence that client advocacy is a separate and distinct construct from professional skepticism. These findings have implications for behavioral accounting researchers by demonstrating that these two constructs are not related; thus, it is important to separately measure client advocacy and professional skepticism when they are relevant to a research question.

Tax practitioners are accountable to multiple parties with divergent objectives when carrying out their function as both client advocates and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents. In addition, tax practitioners are employed by firms that simultaneously demand client satisfaction and tax law compliance. Thus, firm pressure may serve to magnify the level of goal incongruence faced by tax practitioners. This study measures the sources and levels of accountability pressure felt by practitioners. In addition, the study investigates how tax return behavior is affected by multiple sources of accountability pressure. A survey of 227 tax professionals is used to measure accountability pressure and responses to various tax scenarios. Results indicate that significant accountability pressure exists from respondents' firms to comply with the tax law and to please tax clients. Additionally, tax practitioners from larger CPA firms report feeling more accountability pressure from their employers. Finally, while the amount of reported accountability pressure differs across several demographic variables, actual tax return behavior seems to be affected only by the accountability pressure felt from respondents' firms to comply with the IRS.

If individuals exhibit less ethical behavior in the workplace than in their personal decisions, this may constitute evidence of role morality behavior. Role morality can be defined as “claim(ing) a moral permission to harm others in ways that, if not for the role, would be wrong” (Applbaum, 1999. Ethics for adversaries: The morality of roles in public and professional life (p. 3). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.) To investigate this issue, 55 practicing accountants completed and returned the experimental survey. Results show that in many situations, business decisions were less ethical than personal decisions, consistent with the theory of role morality. The implications and limitations of this study as they relate to practicing accountants are discussed.