The effect of agency relationship and individual ethical ideology on decision duplication with regard to questionable accounting policy choice. An experimental study

Abstract

Recent studies confirm that the principal-agent relationship adversely affects managers’ decisions. This study experimentally investigates willingness to copy a decision that is ethically suspect in both high and low adverse selection criteria. It revealed that when the agency problem was observed, the respondents were less eager to misuse accounting discretion within foreign currency. It showed that without adverse selection criteria, respondents behave unreflectively, duplicating a choice to the detriment of financial reporting. The findings were also compared with Forsyth’s taxonomy of personal moral philosophies, which show that most respondents represent the situationist and absolutist orientation, while situationists and exceptionists are less prone to misbehave. It suggests that individual moral orientation has an unex-pectedly small impact, whereas witnessing the agency relationship tends to make subjects duplicate the choice described in the scenario to a lesser degree. Idealists are more severe in ethical evaluation com-pared to relativists, although the majority of respondents, who did not observe adverse selection condi-tions, showed a high propensity to would duplicate the misconduct. The most important variable is the existence of adverse selection criteria, indicating that decision-making and the choice of professionals lie at the heart of accounting policy choice, and that further research should be considered.