Manner Ethics Addressed in Existing Accounting Curriculum

Haslinah Muhamad,Arfah Salleh,Nor Aziah Abu Kasim

doi:10.6007/ijarbss/v8-i12/5148

Haslinah Muhamad, Arfah Salleh + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v8-i12/5148

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Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the manner in which ethics was addressed in the existing accounting curriculum, the content of syllabus by international business schools and instillation of ethics elements in the local universities’ vision and mission. Ethics syllabus of top 55 international business schools and 4 local universities web pages were reviewed. Summative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The results showed that not all universities involved in this study embedded ethics in their accounting curriculum as emphasised by IES 4, AACSB or MIA. In general, the content of current syllabi focuses on corporate governance. Issues regarding moral judgment, stewardship and accountability to shareholders are rarely discussed in ethics course as well as the element of human governance. This shows that the goal of ethics education is not on moral conversion, but on helping well-intentioned students to develop the skills necessary to identify and resolve their ethical dilemmas. Not all local public universities selected in this study encourage embedding ethics through their vision and mission. This is the sign that business schools do not show their commitment to centralise ethical responsibility at their corporate level.

Highlights

Accountants face pressures to show and demonstrate that accounting is a highly credible profession (Low, Davey, & Hooper, 2008) after the scandals including Enron, WorldCom and Tyco
This study found that despite the encouragement by International Education Standards (IES) 4, not all universities involved in this study either internationally or locally have one separate core or optional course of Business Ethics offered in business faculty as well as accounting department
This study had found that the issues of moral judgment, stewardship and accountability to shareholders are rarely discussed in ethics course as well as human governance principles such as oneness, interconnectedness and consciousness

Summary

Introduction

Accountants face pressures to show and demonstrate that accounting is a highly credible profession (Low, Davey, & Hooper, 2008) after the scandals including Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. To ensure that public confidence on the profession remains high, professional accounting bodies and regulators of the profession are proactive in combating unethical behaviour among practitioners. Ethics has naturally continued to generate a significant interest among practitioners and academics. The unethical behaviour continues with the involvement of business leaders with accounting background. The supermarket’s former finance chief, managing director and food commercial head were charged with fraud for abusing position and false accounting (Wylie & Wardle, 2017). The Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) is currently investigating KPMG and Deloitte, the two accounting firms involved in signing off the accounts of troubled state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). The investigations centre on whether or not the auditors had breached the Accountants Act when signing off the 1MDB's accounts between 2009 and 2014 (The Straits Times, 2018)

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