e-journal

The effect of ethics courses on the ethical judgement-making ability of Malaysian accounting students

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Purpose – The paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics courses provided to Malaysian
accounting students and their impact on ethical judgement-making ability.
Design/methodology/approach – 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.
Findings – 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.
Research limitations/implications – 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.
Originality/value – 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 fewstudies 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.

Keywords Universities, Students, Accounting, Ethics, Malaysia

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Ketersediaan

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting

No. Panggil

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Penerbit

: Emerald Group., 2010

Deskripsi Fisik

Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting Vol. 8 No. 2, 2010 pp. 92-109

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

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Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

AKUNTANSI

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

Asmawati/Syahrial

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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