Accounting Students and Business Ethics Perception

Abstract

Ethical violence which is often commited by businesspersons in Indonesia and the high interest of students to become an enterprenure make business ethics even more important to being studied. Business ethics subject is an effort to increase the students' understanding about business ethics components. So far, research about ethics is dominated by profession ethics. Therefore, it is important conducting a research about business ethics. The educational institution needs to involve the students in making the policy about business ethics curriculum. Therefore, the research focusing on the students' perception needs to be done. This research applied qualitative methods with phenomenology approach. The source of the data used in this research was primary data from the questionnaires. Research subject consisted of 53 accounting students of Malang University. The step of data analysis consists of data reduction, data presentation and conclusion.The result of this research showed that the students perceive ethics as a rule for people about the good and bad things, right or wrong, which is used as life guidance, while business ethics is a rule for the businesspersons (company, individual in the company) in doing their business. Ethics is related to religion and value in rationality searching. The difference of law, ethics and etiquette are on their scope. Ethics is not limited on the way how an action is done, while etiquette is only valid on the association. Meanwhile, the scope of the law is much wider and has force element. In understanding ethics, there is an intact human paradigm which means as a form of human balance in living their life. The whole respondent agreed that learning business ethics is important for accounting business as well as accounting education.