| The normal operating of capital market needs high quality accounting information. However, during recent decades, investors'confidence on the capital market has been weakened due to the notorious accounting fraud in listed companies. In2006, China released Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises, which is a convergence with the International Accounting Standards (IAS). Nevertheless the Chinese accounting standard is of a directory basis without specific interpretation, leaving professional judgment to accountants. Therefore, the high quality accounting information requires accountants'professional judgment, which depends on accounts'solid accounting knowledge and ethical behavior. However, previous accounting researches tend to focus on various practical accounting issues. Studies on accountants'behaviors, particularly the dilemma about accountants'professional judgment and influential factors, are still limited.This study aims to fill this gap, investigating accountants'ethical behaviors. The study has two main objectives. Firstly, it explores the scenarios in accountants' working environment. Secondly, it analyses the mental activities in accountant's ethical decision-making process, which is mainly ignored by past studies. The analysis will focus on the following four aspects:moral development level, moral intensity, superior pressure, and supervision. Experiments and multi-factor analysis are adopted as the major research methodology in this study.The research of accountants'ethical behavior fits into the field of behavior financial accounting. It focuses on the decision-making of stockholders, managers, accountants at the micro-level. As a cross-discipline subject, the behavioral research inherits findings from psychology. The structure of this study is as following:Firstly, it reviews previous literature on accountant's ethical behavior in two streams, including the cognitive psychology literature on moral reasoning and literature on accounting moral. The literature review section shows the current status of research, and helps to set the scene for the whole study. Secondly, it presents the theoretical framework, including agency theory, role conflict theory, market failure theory, moral development stage theory, and theory of moral intensity. Thirdly, it sets forth the meanings and status about the accountant's ethical dilemma, develops a scenario for accountants, and adapts a scenario for financial accountant. Moreover, this study introduces Defining Issue Test (short for DIT) in cognitive psychology, and describes the principle and method in detail. DIT for measuring individual moral development level is used in this study to collect data and2*2*2*2four factors mixed design is adopted to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. Finally, based on the research findings, this study provides measures for optimal control in the future.This study contributes to the previous knowledge in following ways:1. It studies accountant's ethical behavior from cognitive psychology and work environment perspectives. According to related research at home and abroad, it takes moral development level and moral intensity into account, and use full-fledged DIT to measure individual moral development level. On the other hand, being a rational person, accountant may consider the influence from superior pressure and supervision when he makes moral decision-making.2. It develops scenarios for accountant's moral dilemma, which is limited in previous research. Through source of information, this paper reviews four case studies on obeying items of accounting standards, but breaching stockholder's interests. Then, it adapts these cases into moral scenarios by adding moral agent, issue typeand its intensity, and the victim. Meanwhile, this study intensifies the moral description. Followed by the pre-test, it develops one accountant's moral scenario by communicating with subjects and experts. In addition, one financial accountant's moral scenario is also included according to past literature. It changes project manager into financial management, strengthens moral intensity, and adapts expression to meet the Chinese language habits. The development of accountant's moral scenario enriches the measures in accountant's moral study, and establishes a basis for later studies. The development of accountant's moral scenario enriches the measures in accountant's moral study, and establishes a basis for later studies.3. In terms of research findings, individual moral development level, superior pressure, and supervision are main factors influencing accountant's moral intent significantly. Individual moral development level and superior pressure interaction; superior pressure and supervision interaction are also significant influential factors. Through further test, it identifies that superior pressure influences accountant's moral intent with low moral development level significantly, but does not influence accountant's moral intent with high moral development level significantly. Meanwhile, it finds that the superior pressures influence accountant's moral intent with week supervision in significance, but not influence accountant's moral intent with strong supervision. In other words, accountant's moral intent is not significantly different when supervision is strong regardless of high or low superior pressure. In terms of demographic variables, educational level and birthplace significantly influence accountant's moral intent. However, the main effect of moral intensity is not significant as conservatism principle in accounting influences routine thinking habits of accountant. Therefore, accountant considers to be cautious of doing moral judgment no matter how weak moral intensity is. |
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