Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism and (...) relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify the relative contribution of individual and contextual predictors to students’ attitudes toward the acceptability of cheating and plagiarism. A group of 324 students from a tertiary institution in New Zealand completed an online survey. The findings indicate that gender, justice sensitivity, and understanding of university policies regarding academic dishonesty were the key predictors of the students’ attitudes toward the acceptability of cheating and plagiarism, both as agents of dishonest conduct and as witnesses (...) of misconduct among their peers. The implications of these findings for the development of policies and initiatives in tertiary institutions are discussed. (shrink)

This study examines the theory of planned behavior and the multidimensional ethics scale. Variables from both are included to determine which ones significantly correlate with student ethical behavioral intention in an academic setting. Using a survey, responses are collected from undergraduate business students from two southwestern universities in the United States using a scenario-based approach, looking at individual situations and group situations. SmartPLS was used to assess the results for four scenarios. From the theory of planned behavior, attitude was a (...) significant predictor of behavioral intention across all four scenarios while subjective norm was significant in one scenario. From the multidimensional ethics scale, moral equity and relativism were significant in one group scenario while moral equity and utilitarianism were each significant in an individual scenario. The findings indicate support for the use of the TPB and the MES when exploring ethics in an academic setting and for the need to study both individual and group situations. A discussion of the findings and implications is given. (shrink)

Since the financial crisis, the malfeasance of business leaders has been a recurring theme in the news, along with calls for increased regulation and oversight. This focus on the ethics of the business community raises a concern about the ethics of those in business or going into business. The ethics of business people and business students has been explored by a number of researchers using survey techniques. We propose and report the results of an alternative method for investigating unethical behavior (...) by students. In a motivated economic experiment with introductory level students, we find that business students were almost twice as likely to lie for a monetary reward as students in other disciplines, demonstrating the need for effective business ethics. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli is credited with inspiring the MACH IV personality assessment instrument, which has been adopted widely in management, both public and private. The personality this instrument maps is manipulative, deceitful, immoral, and self-centred. The instrument emerged in 1970 and created a minor industry. There are at least eighty empirical studies in management that involved more than 14,000 subjects. Richard Christie, who created the scale, has said that it is derived from the works of Machiavelli. In a standard debriefing after (...) completing this scale, respondents would be told it concerns the Machiavellian personality. We argue that the Machiavellian personality in MACH IV has little, if anything, to do with Machiavelli, either the man or his works. If Machiavelli is alleged to be relevant to management, we argue that this personality assessment instrument does not demonstrate such relevance. To advance this case we first describe the development of the instrument, identifying some of the assumptions upon which it rests; then we assess each of its twenty items against Machiavelli’s texts. Wefind fewer than half of the items have even a tenuous connection with Machiavelli’s works, yet the instrument bears his name. Against this spurious Machiavelli we juxtapose another twenty passages from The Prince, showing a much more complex and subtle thinker than the one-dimensional cipher in the MACH IV scale. Machiavelli studies have done much to dispel the cloud of mythology around the man and his reputation, and we hope to do the same to MACHIV. In the name of intellectual honesty and sound scholarship, we urge management scholars to take note of this distortion of Machiavelli, and where possible address it, and that users of the MACH IV scale distinguish the man, Machiavelli, and his works from this instrument. (shrink)

Past research (Lawson, 2004; Nonis & Swift, 2001) has revealed a correlation between academic and business ethics. Using a sample survey, this study extends this inquiry by examining the role of dispositional variables (neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) and academic honesty on business ethics perceptions. Results indicate that (1) neuroticism and conscientiousness were positively related to more ethical perceptions in a work context, and (2) academic honesty partially mediated the relationship between conscientiousness and business ethics. Implications to business practitioners and educators (...) are discussed as well as directions for future research. (shrink)

A well-known common wisdom asserts that strong social bonds undermine delinquency. However, there is little empirical evidence to substantiate this assertion regarding adolescence academic cheating across cultures. In this study, we adopt social bonding theory and develop a theoretical model involving four social bonds and adolescence self-reported academic cheating behavior and cheating perception. Based on 913 adolescents in France and China, we show that parental attachment, academic commitment, and moral values curb academic cheating; counterintuitively, peer involvement contributes to cheating. We (...) test our theoretical model across culture and gender, separately, using multi-group analyses. For French teens, peer involvement encourages and moral values undermine cheating; for Chinese adolescents, all four social bonds contribute to cheating, similar to the whole sample. For girls, parental attachment deters, but peer involvement enhances cheating. For boys, parental attachment is the only social bond that does not affect cheating. We treat social integration as a mediator of the relationship between peer involvement and social bonds that construct, in turn, is related to cheating and ask: Considering popularity, who are likely to cheat? Our answers provide an interesting paradox: Popularity matters, yet popular French girls and unpopular Chinese boys are likely to cheat. Social sharing is a positive pro-social behavior in consumer behavior. However, academic cheating and rule breaking, reflecting self-serving altruism and the red sneakers effect, at a very young age may have the potential to grow into the Enron Effect later in their lives as executives in organizations. We shed new lights on both the bright and dark sides of social bonds on cheating, demonstrate bad company corrupts good morals, differently, across culture and gender, and provide practical implications to social bonding, business ethics, and cheating. (shrink)

Given the importance of the Machiavellianism construct on informing a wide range of ethics research, we focus on gaining a better understanding of Machiavellianism within the whistle-blower context. In this regard, we examine the effect of Machiavellianism on whistle-blowing, focusing on the underlying mechanisms through which Machiavellianism affects whistle-blowing. Further, because individuals who are higher in Machiavellianism (high Machs) are expected to be less likely to report wrongdoing, we examine the ability of an organization’s ethical environment to increase whistle-blowing intentions (...) of high Machs. Results from a sample of 116 MBA students support our premise that Machiavellianism is negatively related to whistle-blowing. Further, we find that Machiavellianism has an indirect effect on whistle-blowing through perceived benefits and perceived responsibility. Finally, we find that a strong ethical environment, relative to a weak ethical environment, increases whistle-blowing intentions incrementally more for individuals who are higher in Machiavellianism. Taken together, these findings extend our understanding of how Machiavellianism and an organization’s ethical environment impact whistle-blowing. (shrink)

Corruption continues to represent a tenacious challenge to internationally active companies. According to prevailing international anti-corruption standards, a company can be held criminally liable if it does not put all necessary and reasonable organizational measures in place to prevent corruption. The regular training of employees is considered one of the most effective ways to prevent corruption. Employee training is considered helpful in efforts to minimize the risk of employees becoming involved in corrupt behavior. With this idea in mind and building (...) on the fraud triangle model and neutralization theory, this paper examines whether business professionals who have undergone anti-corruption training are more likely to reject prevailing justifications of corrupt practices than are those who have not undergone such training. The empirical analysis in this paper is based on regression models using data obtained from a unique dataset that includes 200 business professionals. The findings provide evidence that training is positively linked to the likelihood of rejecting justifications of corruption. However, the research also suggests that methods of training must become more specific in order to tackle challenging questions regarding the gray areas of ethics and compliance. (shrink)

This study examines how codes of conduct, monitoring, and penalties for dishonest reporting affect reporting honesty in an online labor market setting. Prior research supports the efficacy of codes of conduct in promoting ethical behavior in a variety of contexts. However, the effects of such codes and other methods have not been examined in online labor markets, an increasingly utilized resource that differs from previously examined settings in several key regards (e.g., transient workforce, lack of an established culture). Leveraging social (...) norm activation theory, we predict and find experimental evidence that while codes of conduct and monitoring without economic penalties are ineffective in online settings, monitoring with economic penalties activates social norms for honesty and promotes honest reporting in an online setting. Further, we find that imposing penalties most effectively promotes honest reporting in workers who rate high in Machiavellianism, a trait that is highly correlated with dishonest reporting. In fact, while in the absence of penalties we observe significantly more dishonest reporting from workers who rate high versus low in Machiavellianism, this difference is eliminated in the presence of penalties. Implications of these findings for companies, researchers, online labor market administrators, and educators are discussed. (shrink)

Numerous researchers have investigated accounting students’ levels of moral reasoning, ethical choice and judgment employing the Defining Issues Test and using its P score as an indicator of moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, a number of DIT studies report conflicting results. Moreover, despite widespread use of the DIT, there is concern that it may not adequately measure all facets of ethical judgment :1–26, 2010). Thus, we endeavor to provide insight not only into the contradictory results but also about the applicability of (...) the DIT for studying accounting students. To do so, we collect published and unpublished DIT studies employing accounting students as subjects and use meta-analysis to aggregate findings across these studies to quantify their results, examining commonly employed variables. We show significant relationships between P scores and some variables but not others. Further, our findings demonstrate that the DIT provides added insights when exploring questions of ethical choice, and ethics instruction, particularly when the instruction is embedded in an accounting course. Finally, we find that the level of DIT P scores reported in the studies relates to whether the study was published. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty (AD) is a threat to quality education, ethics of professional practices and career outcomes. Psychopathy is connected to AD. This study investigated whether academic confidence (AC) mediates the relationship between psychopathy and AD. University students (N = 335, mean age = 18.38 years) completed measures of relevant variables, in addition to providing demographic details. Results of statistical analysis showed that AC mediated the association between primary psychopathy and AD. Considering the extent of students' belief, trust and expectation that (...) they can execute their academic tasks by themselves could be important target in enhancing ethical behaviors among students. (shrink)