Accounting and Auditing Research

Accounting and Auditing Research

Prioritization of Accountants’ Personal Values and Individual Characteristics: Some Criticism on Accountants Education

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Hasan Farajzadeh Dehkordi
Kobra Nourshahi
10.22034/iaar.2015.103920
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between personal values and accountants’ individual characteristics. This relationship is important because accountants ‘conformity of some specific personal values can explain their behaviors in special situations. For example, some prior studies in the field of ethical thinking have shown despite of accountants’ ethical education, these persons obtain lower ethical scores in compare of society. One possible explanation for this phenomenon could be educate accountants in a manner that they must to follow accounting principles and standards. As a result of this education system, strength conformity values in accountants. While ethical reasoning tests ignore conformity values. This study used a sample comprised of 203 students in the fields of accounting and business to examine the effects of individual characteristics (Gender, Age, Field, Degree, Experience, Familiarity Code of Ethics and etc.) on the prioritization of personal values. The results show that accounting students have higher emphasis on conformity values. Furthermore, some characteristics such as gender and age have meaningful impacts on the prioritization of personal values.
Keywords
Personal Values
Accountants’ Individual Characteristics
Behavioral Accounting Theory
Accounting and Auditing Research
Volume 7, Issue 25
Spring 2015
Pages 118-133