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The role of Moral Development and Ambiguity Tolerance on Unethical Decisions in an Earnings Management Situation
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Seyedeh Maryam Mousavi   , Ali Khozein * , Ebrahim Abbasi , Arash Naderian |
| Aliabad Katul Islamic Azad University & Department of Accounting, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran (corresponding author) Mail: (khozain@yahoo.com). |
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Abstract: (469 Views) |
Ethical growth is one of the influencing factors on the ethical decision making of accountants in ethical dilemmas that arise in the workplace. Following the recent financial scandals, accountants have been severely criticized and lost their professional credibility due to unethical decisions and complicity with their superior managers in companies. The consequences of unethical decision-making in companies have made the influencing factors one of the challenging issues in accounting research. Based on this, in order to identify the influencing factors on accountants' decision-making, the purpose of this research is to investigate the role of ethical growth and ambiguity tolerance on unethical decisions in the position of profit management. In order to collect the required information, 93 accountants from companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange were selected as a sample, and the research questionnaire was distributed and collected among them. In order to test the research hypotheses, structural equation modeling method with partial least squares approach and Smart-PLS software were used. The results of the research showed that there is a significant and inverse relationship between the ethical growth of accountants and their unethical decision-making in the position of profit management, so that the higher the level of ethical growth of accountants, the less unethical decision-making they have. Also, the results of the research showed that the level of moral development and ambiguity tolerance of accountants have a positive and significant relationship with each other. In addition, the level of ambiguity tolerance and unethical decision-making by accountants in earnings management situation have a significant and inverse relationship with each other, and ambiguity tolerance as a mediating variable can influence the relationship between the level of moral development and unethical decision-making by accountants in earnings management situation. make an impact The evidence shows that the higher the level of moral development of accountants and the greater their ability to tolerate ambiguity, the more ethical decisions they make and the less unethical decisions they make, and they will not fulfill the unethical demands of managers. |
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| Keywords: Ambiguity Tolerance, Unethical Decisions, Moral Growth, Earnings Management Situation. |
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Full-Text [PDF 1124 kb]
(201 Downloads)
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Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Accounting
Received: 2023/07/2 | Accepted: 2023/08/5 | Published: 2024/06/19
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