Ethical judgement among university accounting students: The case of prescriptive and deliberative moral reasoning behaviour

• Main Authors: Abdul Wahab, Nor Shaipah, Che Ahmad, Ayoib, Mat Udin, Noraza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fakulti Pengurusan Perniagaan, Universiti Utara Malaysia 2004
• Subjects: HF5601 Accounting
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/1408/1/Nor_Shaipah_Abdul_Wahab%2C.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/1408/; http://lintas.uum.edu.my:8080/elmu/index.jsp?module=webopac-l&action=fullDisplayRetriever.jsp&szMaterialNo=0000233251

The purpose of this paper is to investigate moral reasoning behaviour of final semester Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) Accounting students. This research was motivated by a recent development of accounting specific measures of accountants' moral reasoning (i.e. prescriptive and deliberative reasoning) by Thorne (2000). Furthermore, the paper seeks to explore the cultural influence on the ethical judgement of UUM accounting students. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper that examines the moral reasoning behaviour in the context of prescriptive and deliberative reasoning in the Malaysian environment. A total of 594 final semester accounting students were chosen as participants. The findings revealed that students' prescriptive moral reasoning scores are significantly higher than students' deliberative moral reasoning as expected. With respect to the cultural influence, there is no significant difference in prescriptive and deliberative moral reasoning between Malay and Chinese students. This research would be useful to the regulators and the academicians in understanding moral reasoning behaviour in professional judgement. The findings also shed some light on the influence of culture on moral reasoning behaviour.