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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ethics training (ET) on workplace behaviors. The study also aims to test the mediating effect of ethical culture (EC), on the relationship between ET and workplace behaviors.

An experimental model has been developed to address the problem statement. The success of ET intervention has been measured in terms of workplace behavior, which is evaluated by job satisfaction, employee commitment and intention to stay. The proposed research model is empirically tested by data collected from 175 mid-level managers in 30 Indian construction firms.

The results obtained from process macro showed partial mediation. Stronger perceptions of ET were associated with stronger perceptions of EC. EC is related to positive workplace behavior.

The partial mediation suggests that there is a need for exploring other potential mediating variables through which ET interventions can succeed. Future research can investigate group-level variables such as team psychological safety, which can potentially explain the complete mediation.

The results suggest that ET interventions can be used to strengthen the EC in the firms. If the ET intervention is designed purely on the compliance orientation, it will impede the opportunities for long-term development. The focus should not be with the intent to observe ethical conduct. It should be more inclusive and value-oriented. Firms need to sensitize employees and train them on how to deal with ethical dilemmas. Employees are inclined to study in the firms exhibiting a strong EC. In the construction sector, where multiple projects are handled by employees with unique and niche skill sets, retainment of employees is very important. The human resource departments need to think of introducing ET interventions not only from the study of compliance adherence but also with the motive of retaining employees.

The ET literature seldom discussed long term benefits related to creating an EC. The study critiques the intent of human resource (HR) departments while designing an ET intervention. The ethics intervention is often designed with an intent to fulfill the compliance requirements. This study contrasts this intention and shows the importance of ET intervention to create the EC in the firm, which not only includes compliance requirements like code of conduct but also has a significant focus on sensitizing employees about ethical dilemmas and grey areas.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how individual differences predict personal business ethics of business students with a particular focus on how these factors moderate the relationship between ethical organizational interventions and personal business ethics perception.

Totally, 488 participants completed Clark’s Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) survey. ANOVA analyses were then performed.

Significant correlations were observed between personal business ethics and diversity professional development, age, and education. The authors found significant difference on ethical behavior and diversity professional development. Professional development focusing on diversity was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for women but no significant relationship was observed for men. Furthermore, professional development focusing on ethics was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for younger employees but no significant relationship was observed for older employees.

Researchers and scholars in cross-cultural management and business ethics fields can benefit from this study as it provides more empirical results in understanding the impact of demographic, educational, and cultural factors on the ethical maturity of business students in different countries.

Leaders, managers and practitioners, can benefit from this study as it provides managerial implications in managing this workforce in the most effective and efficient manner. The results from this research suggest that ethics education and diversity training play the critical role in creating an ethical climate on workplace.

This study fills the gap within the literature and offers a unique analysis of the personal business ethics of Russian business students. Determining the types of business ethics education and training that are the most effective in Russia would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of moral conflicts in information systems development by studying student perceptions in an information systems (IS) project course implemented in close collaboration with information technology firms.

The paper is based on an empirical case study. Students' perceptions of moral conflicts were gathered through diaries, drawings, and questionnaires; and the analysis was inspired by phenomenography.

The analysis reveals six types of moral conflicts. Students face conflicts related to their work tasks and to human and outside parties, and inherent in them is an inclination to moral failure in terms of doing something they perceive to be morally wrong, and also the desire for moral success in resolving the conflicts as well as possible. Students practicing the project manager's job confronted the most difficult moral conflicts.

The just IS student project community is suggested as a way of integrating ethics into IS education, and extending the research on moral conflicts to the business context is recommended.

The paper offers two contributions. First, it develops the research on IS and project‐based learning (PjBL) from a moral perspective and second, it facilitates ethics integration into IS education in the PjBL context.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effectiveness of an International Federation of Accountants (IFAC)-aligned business ethics course in relation to its ability to positively influence the ethical sensitivity of accounting students.

Using a quantitative, quasi-experimental design, senior accounting students were subjected to a pre- and post-test, measuring ethical sensitivity, with an IFAC-aligned business ethics course as the intervention. Multivariate analysis also focused on the interrelation of demographic characteristics with ethical sensitivity.

The results indicate that the business ethics course was indeed effective in increasing the ethical sensitivity of accounting students. Students' demographic characteristics, in terms of accounting specialisation area and years of work experience, did play a role in the extent of their changes in ethical sensitivity. However, gender and previous ethics education as influencing factor in ethical sensitivity was negated.

The study focused on the first component (ethical sensitivity) of Rest's four-component model that predicts ethical behaviour. Additional research is therefore needed into the other components in Rest's model and their respective interrelations. The current study also used a small convenience sample rather than one that was randomly selected. The findings in this study do, however, add to the limited body of evidence on ethical sensitivity in accounting education world-wide.

The results can assist accounting professional bodies, associated higher education institutions and accounting firms in implementing specific educational interventions to develop greater ethical sensitivity in prospective and current accountants.

The audit failures at the start of this century placed a renewed focus on the ethical behaviour of accountants. Consequently, ethics training was included in the curriculum of aspiring accountants. The research that informed this article attempted to gauge the effectiveness of this response, given the current knowledge gap, specifically in the South African context. Professional accounting bodies, associated higher education institutions and accounting firms could use the curriculum design presented in this study to implement a similar intervention. Such interventions could enhance the ethical behaviour of both prospective and current accountants, and this, in turn, should aid in lessening ethical crises, thus protecting the social stature of the accounting profession.

The paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics courses provided to Malaysian accounting students and their impact on ethical judgement‐making ability.

Third‐year accounting students from six Malaysian universities participated in a pre‐ and post‐ethics course study. The sample consisted of four universities which provide an ethics course (experiment group) and two universities which do not provide an ethics course (control group). Rest's Defining Issues Test instrument was employed and the p‐score was calculated. Univariate tests were used to compare levels of ethical judgement‐making ability.

Students who attended an ethics course improved significantly in their ethical judgement‐making ability compared to students who did not attend the course. Male students, non‐Muslim students and students in private universities benefit more from attending an ethics course compared to their female and Muslim students and those students in public universities.

The findings indicate that providing ethics courses reshapes the ethical thinking of future accountants and thus are likely to improve the local ethical climate amongst professionals in the field. Results indicate significant improvements in cognitive moral development, although many students continue to apply conventional (Stage 4) reasoning skills when dealing with issues. The research provides a positive signal to the accounting faculties indicating that their effort in inculcating ethical values is worthwhile and this endeavour has to continue.

This study involves a controlled field study of a unique group of Malaysian accounting students and applies Kohlberg's theory of moral development to demonstrate the effect of an ethics intervention. Particular attention was given to examining conventional (Stage 4) judgment‐making processes and how this appears to be influenced by religious affiliation and university type. This adds value to the ethics literature as there are only a few studies examining the merits of Stage 4 reasoning. Most importantly, it helps to fill a gap in the literature by providing both cross‐sectional and longitudinal data from multiple samples of ethics classes, using both experiment and control groups.

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.

This research aims to measure compliance in a tax experiment among students. The aim of the study is to investigate relationships between claimed behaviour in a questionnaire and actual behaviour in an experimental environment, together with different behaviours between males and females, and different age cohorts.

A total of 630 undergraduate Commerce students at a New Zealand university completed a questionnaire on attitudes towards the tax system. The students subsequently participated in a simulation experiment requiring responses to hypothetical tax evasion decisions. Individual reward payments were contingent on the outcome of these tax evasion decisions. Questionnaire responses, which captured intended behaviour, were compared with actual behaviour in the experiment.

The study finds more compliant behaviour among older students and students who have been at university longer. It also finds female students demonstrate more ethical responses in their behaviour than male students. In contrast to extant literature, it finds a positive relationship between students indicating a preference for compliant behaviour in the questionnaire, and behaviour in the experiment. This leads support for the use of Defining Issues Tests (or similar instruments that capture moral development intentions) in ethics education research, and challenges recent studies that find a gap between intended and actual behaviour.

As with all experimental research, the design is necessarily an artificial representation of the real world. Thus, the ability to generalise from this research is restricted.

Much of the research into the influence of ethics education on accounting students focuses on student claims of how they would respond in a hypothetical situation as measured by a Defining Issues Test or similar instrument, in order to provide a measure of ethical development. In contrast, this study adopts a behavioural approach. The findings indicate that Defining Issues Tests are likely to be an appropriate tool for ethics education research.

Rest posited that to behave morally, an individual must have performed at least four basic psychological processes: moral sensitivity; moral judgment; moral motivation; and moral character. Though much ethics research in accounting has been focused on component two, ethical judgment, less research has been undertaken on the other three components. The purpose of this study is to focus on component one, ethical sensitivity, of Rest's four‐component model.

A sample of 156 accounting undergraduates was employed to investigate the ethical sensitivity of accounting students and the effects of their ethical reasoning and personal factors on their ethical sensitivity.

Results of this study show that accounting students vary in their ability to detect the presence of ethical issues in a professional scenario. There is no significant relationship between accounting students' ethical sensitivity and their ethical reasoning (P‐score). Accounting students characterized as “internals” are more likely to show an ability to recognize ethical issues than those characterized as “externals.” The results also indicate that an accounting ethics intervention may have positive effect on accounting students' ethical sensitivity development. Hence, an individual who possesses the ability to determine what is ethically right or wrong (high ethical reasoning) may fail to behave ethically due to a deficiency in identifying ethical issues (low ethical sensitivity) in a situation.

Whilst much research has concentrated on ethical reasoning and ethics education to enhance the ethical conduct of accountants, it is important that the profession and researchers also direct their attention and efforts to cultivating the ethical sensitivity of accountants. The findings of this study provide additional evidence to support Rest's theory of a more comprehensive cognitive model of ethical decision‐making and suggest a more balanced research effort in evaluating the ethical development of individuals.

‘Black Africans’ in England are disproportionately and highly affected by the heterosexually contracted HIV epidemic. Policy and practice frameworks have advocated ethnic matching in HIV prevention. We explore how self‐identifying ‘black African’ workers in London were co‐producers of ‘black African’ identities to target in preventative HIV interventions. Drawing on a focused literature review and 12 in‐depth interviews with workers, the paper identifies themes associated with co‐production of an African identify by workers. The historical inclusion of the category ‘black African’ in the 1991 census coincided with the emergence of Africans as at higher HIV ‘risk’. In co‐producing an African public, the workers projected their heterosexual and Christian affiliations on to the targeted population, perceiving themselves as ‘insiders’ knowledgeable about rumours that had historically co‐produced African identities. Fear of those in authority galvanised the formation of African‐led agencies, offering entry points for HIV prevention to Africans. By projecting aspects of their complex ‘selves’ on to the ‘other’, encounters in public spaces were deemed ‘opportunities’ for outreach interventions. The ethics of ‘cold calling’, confidentiality and informed consent were taken as ‘given’ in these socially produced ‘private’ spaces located in ‘public’ venues. In following HIV prevention frameworks as advocated by Pulle et al (2004), the workers endorsed yet problematised the notion of ethnic matching.

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.