The Influence Factors Of Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making Of Earning Management

Corporate scandals, such as exaggerating revenue, paying bribes, facilitating corrupt officials, and mishandling confidential business information, have generated world-wide interest in unethical behavior (Trevino et al.2006).In response to Corporate scandals as well as the general public lost confidence in the accounting profession,more and more scholars strengthen the study on earnings management practice and enterprise moral values. Because of the principal-agent relationship and the objective reality of asymmetric information, the management always have maneuverability earnings management behavior motivation and ability to whitewash financial statements.Accountants will be confronted with pressure from the management, they will face a dilemma between real expression and achieve surplus, as a result, they are more likely to get into dilemma than other people. Therefore, to understand the main factors of the accounting personnel considering in making moral decisions of earnings management is beneficial in ultimately curtailing such practices.Most of previous studies of earnings management focus on investigating whether the company making earnings management behavior, only some scholars studied the different groups’ moral judgment of earning management and studies about moral decision-making of earning management is very few. Some scholars points out that the deontology and teleology is a major determinant of ethical decision-making process.This article will use Hunt and Vitell marketing ethics theory model, from the viewpoint of deontology and teleology of psychological research of accountants’ earning management decision-making process, this article focus on the immoral situation of earnings management, accountants’ ethical decision (moral judgment and moral intent) is more guided by deontology(conform to social norms)or the guidance of teleology(produce good outcome for the company)? We adopted the method of combining experiment and questionnaire, and developed a scenario describing immoral earning management in a business organization which was close to actual company event. We observed the moral judgment and moral intent of the subjects in the different situations.Our conclusions are as follow:First, under the situation of deontology (conform to social norms), teleology (produce good outcomes for the company) have a negative significant impact on accountants’ earning management moral intentions;Second, deontology (conform to social norms) have a negative significant impact on accountants’ earning management moral judgment and moral intentions.Finally, deontology (conform to social norms) plays a positive role in the relationship between teleology (produce good outcomes for the company) and attitude clarity regulation of moral judgment and moral intent of earnings management;teleology(produce good outcomes for the company) plays a positive role in the relationship between deontology (conform to social norms) and attitude clarity regulation of moral judgment of earnings management, namely deontology and "teleology" interaction has a significant positive influence on the attitude clarity regulation of earnings management moral decision making.The contributions are as follow:Past studies mainly focused on the morality of the earning management,there are few studies from the perspective of moral philosophy such as deontology and teleology to study earning management of psychological decision-making process.