National Culture and Ethical Judgment: A Social Contract Approach to the Contrast of Ethical Decision Making by Accounting Professionals and Students from the U.S. and Italy

Abstract

Globalization defines the business world today, yet globalization also leads to many types of misunderstandings regarding ethics, motives, and trust. We apply the theory of social contracts for the purpose of aiding the understanding of moral diversity arising from globalization. Specifically, we seek to better understand how country of origin, and role within country, lead to community “microsocial” norms that inform social contract ethical judgments. A total of 695 managerial accounting professionals and accounting students from Italy and the U.S. completed the survey. Employing a moderated mediation model, we find that country of origin is significantly related to intended behaviors in two business situations, and this relationship is mediated by social contract ethical judgment. Further, the impact of national culture on social contract ethical judgment is moderated by role (professional versus student). Multiple mediation analysis supports our contention that contractual evaluations precede moral equity assessments and that both contractual and moral equity ethical judgments affect ethical intentions.

The influence of issues on moral judgment: A comparison of college students and business practitioners in the Republic of Croatia

“…Their superior moral reasoning is possibly the result of age, experience, increased proximity of consequences, maturation and/or education. Our results confirm earlier work on the primacy of business practitioners over students (Brody et al, 2020; Curtis et al, 2017; Ford & Richardson, 1994; Kraft & Singhapakdi, 1991; O'Fallon & Butterfield, 2005; Wood et al, 1988).…”

“…The study investigated the impact of culture and while the preceding chronicled American responses Italian subjects were exactly opposite. That is, Italian culture is posited as impacting the finding that there was a difference in evaluating layoffs but no difference in evaluating bank loans (Curtis et al, 2017). Continuing, while professionals and students tended to agree on issues surrounding whistleblowing, professionals in India were more concerned with fixing problems arising from whistleblowing than their student counterpart (Brody et al, 2020).…”

Training for professional judgment in accounting education

“…From the perspective of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP ), Morrill (2005) recommends emphasizing accounting theory in accounting curricula even further to improve professional judgment capabilities. This concern has motivated the study of other factors as Curtis, Vinson, Conover, Lucianetti, and Battista (2017) do when analyzing how national culture influences professionals' and students' ethical judgment.…”

The effects of length of service and ethical ideologies on moral development and behavioral intentions

“…Previous literature suggests that individuals with greater idealistic orientation are more likely to sustain a higher level of integrity (Wakefield, 2008). It has been suggested that moral reasoning, ethical ideologies and how they influence each other differ among individuals from different countries of origin (Curtis et al , 2012, 2017). Although previous studies seem to indicate that more relativistic individuals vis-à-vis idealistic ones are at a lower level of moral development, there is only scarce evidence about this relationship (Craft, 2013).…”

“…Drawing on the assumption that a longer length of service allows for more socialization (Tuggle et al, 2010), which results from the greater number of opportunities for organizational participants to interact and acquire the values, knowledge, and expected behavior required by the different organizational contexts (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen, 2012), our primary research question looks to examine the effects of length of service on the antecedents of ethical behavior. 2 More specifically, our study examines the effects of length of service on cognitive moral development (CMD) (Kohlberg, 1969) and ethical behavioral intentions (Curtis et al, 2017) among public sector auditors in Brazil. To obtain a broader understanding of these relationships, we also examine associations between ethical ideologies and CMD, as well 1 The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) prepared by Transparency International (TI) ranks Brazil at 96 th with 37 points in 2017 (Transparency International, 2017).…”