...Sears The Sears case is one of many multimillion companies who were trying to survive back in the 80’s while facing the new era of many distribution companies like Wal-Mart. They designed a commission program for the auto division in an effort to gain market share that included the mechanics and the service advisors. The goal was to sell an amount of front-end alignments or brake repairs during their shifts. Many customers were fixing their cars after this commission implementation because of Sears’ employees’ recommendations however the repairs weren’t necessary. Consumer affairs conducted an investigation finding unnecessary repairs due to consequences of Sears’ compensation system. The president took certain responsibility, but he denied any fraud; they eliminated the advisor commission and designed a system based on customer satisfaction however the mechanics’ compensation remains the same. Congress received a letter from a Sears’ employee stating that the majority of the inspecting employees were still being paid with the same commission structure. However, the mechanics were receiving another incentive for every hour of work completed; the more work performed, the more money earned. However, the mechanics could be cutting corners to get more work done or they could recommend unnecessary repairs. The main factor contributing to the unethical conduct was the advising of costumers on unneeded repairs for the sole purpose of commissions; attached to a compensation program...
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...Ethical risks and threats in the accounting profession Accounting ethics is primarily the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. Accounting ethics were first introduced by Luca Pacioli in 1494 in his book “Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportinalita”, and later expanded by government bodies, professional organizations and independent companies (Humphrey 2005). Throughout 2001 and 2002, the financial scandals in in the USA and some other countries, such as Australia, dramatically demonstrated how the efficiency of financial markets is based on assumptions of trust and ethical behavior of corporate managers (McPhail 2001). The collapse of companies such as Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing in the USA, HIH Insurance and OneTel in Australia, and Parmalat in Italy, has led to a loss of confidence by the investing public in the system of financial reporting and accountability. The globalization and diversification of accounting services, combined with market competition and high profile corporate collapses has drawn attention to the accounting profession and its perceived ethical standards. (Cooper 2007) Ethical values provide the foundation on which a civilized society exists. Without the foundation, civilization collapses. On a personal level, the answer to the question of the highest aspiration might be wealth, fame, knowledge, popularity, or integrity. But if integrity is secondary to any of the alternatives, it will be sacrificed...
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...Malaysia ETHICS IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION: CONTRIBUTION OF THE ISLAMIC PRINCIPLE OF MAêLAîAH Abdul Rahim Abdul Rahman Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting, Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (e-mail: abdulrahim@iiu.edu.my) ABSTRACT There is a growing concern over the apparently low moral standards of some accountants and an increasing number of academics who suggest that the education system should bear some of the blame. Ethical components in accounting education have been found to be insufficient and there is a lack of emphasis on humanizing accountants. The objective of this paper is firstly to address the importance of ethics in accounting education and evaluate the development of literature in this area. Secondly, the paper argues for the direction of accounting education to focus on religious ethical development and values in developing accounting ethics. The paper argues that the Islamic worldview and ethics perspective can provide some insights into the process of developing a more humanized and ethical accountant. This paper proposes the Islamic legal principle of ma§laúah as an ethical filtering mechanism to be taught as part of the ethical accounting education process. This is aimed at providing awareness to accounting students and accountants on the process to resolve ethical conflicts. The study of Islamic worldview and ethics provides ...
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...Accounting and Ethics DO ETHICAL STANDARDS EXIST IN ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENTS? Purpose: This analytical report is a required assignment in Kimmerly Brady’s Business 205 course. Due to time constraints the primary data (survey) required for the report were gathered in a limited fashion. A survey was developed, an a procedure was considered; however, the responses are the results of only ten collected surveys. The responses are only included to demostrate a n understanding of primary data usage. The purpose of this report is to convey the message that ethics are the foundation of the accounting profession. In order to maintain discipline & order in the professional realm, rules of ethics are not satisfactory enough to ensure the integrity of Accountants. Education and training in ethical matters should be mandatory for Accountants; evaluation and monitoring of their adherence to these rules is climacteric for maintaining standards. Ethical codes of conduct and compliance of these codes should be required in today’s accounting firms for honorability to exist. CPA’s are licensed practitioners, who as Accountants express opinions about financial statements. The globalization of business operations and technological advances have radically changed how accountants work. New ethical issues have been raised by this ...
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...is on the based on ethical issues in financial accounting, I picked this subject because I believe that having good morals and ethics is the mainstay of life in general, But in finance and accounting it is very important to have this to be successful in business, which is based on personal, professional and corporate issues that will arise in day to day operation. Introduction Accounting is the profession of Analyzing, collection, recording and posting financial transactions in a manner to provide useful information essential to making financial decisions by leaders in a business or organization. Accounting is also called the language of business. The financial statements are used to communicate the effects of the operation and financial strength of a business or organization. By making comparisons of statements from a company from year to year, a professional could be able to predict the profitability, direction and financial condition of a business or organization (Juan, 2007). It is important that the accounting practice is immune to greed and selfishness, and should be a free emotional reporting function which requires a skillset to handle complex technical skills but have no moral involvement. People think on most financial issues or scandals are problems of disloyalty and distrust (Senaratne, 2011). Can we trust those who run the finances in today’s world? Can Accountants, auditors, bankers can be trusted? Yet when an issue is not of blatant mistrust...
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...Accounting ethics is primarily a field of applied ethics and is part ofbusiness ethics and human ethics, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. It is an example of professional ethics. Accounting introduced by Luca Pacioli, and later expanded by government groups, professional organizations, and independent companies. Ethics are taught in accounting courses at higher education institutions as well as by companies training accountants and auditors. Due to the diverse range of accounting services and recent corporate collapses, attention has been drawn to ethical standards accepted within the accounting profession.[2] These collapses have resulted in a widespread disregard for the reputation of the accounting profession.[3] To combat the criticism and prevent fraudulent accounting, various accounting organizations and governments have developed regulations and remedies for improved ethics among the accounting profession. ------------------------------------------------- Importance of ethics The nature of the work carried out by accountants and auditors requires a high level of ethics. Shareholders, potential shareholders, and other users of the financial statements rely heavily on the yearly financial statements of a company as they can use this information to make an informed decision about investment.[4] They rely on the opinion of the accountants who prepared the statements, as well as the auditors that verified it, to present a true and fair...
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...Running Head: Is Ethics The Main Reason For Accounting Scandals? Is Ethics The Most Important Reason Behind Years of Accounting Scandals? Joshua A. Williams DeVry University Is Ethics The Main Reason For Accounting Scandals? Ethics: Is It The Most Important Reason Behind Years of Accounting Scandals? Ethics is a term that refers to a code or moral system that provides criteria for evaluating right and wrong (Spiceland, Spe, Tomassini, 2007). An ethical dilemma is a situation in which an individual or group is faced with a decision that tests this code. Many of these dilemmas are simple to recognize and resolve. For example, have you ever been tempted to call your professor and ask for an extension on the due date of an assignment by claiming a fictitious illness? Temptation like this will test your personal ethics. The direct issues when dealing with ethics is that it cannot be measured or quantified it is intangible almost to a fault. A person’s ethical background can be affected by all types of outside forces such as familial background, financial status, and educational backgrounds as well to name a few. Ethical codes are informative and helpful. However, the motivation to behave ethically must come from within oneself and not just from the fear of penalties for violating professional codes (Spiceland, Sepe, Tomassini, 2007). There is specific analytical model which gives a sequence of seven steps that provide a framework for analyzing ethical issues. These steps...
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...Behavioral Aspect of Accounting: The Need to Emphasize on Ethics ------------------------------------------------- Ahmad Zubair Chedi ------------------------------------------------- Abstract Accounting plays a vital role in providing information that permit economic decision, therefore the information has influence on its users. The financial statements that serve the basis for the economic decision are drawn up, not by the users, but by the enterprise’s accountants under the authority and control of the enterprise’s management. Ideally the preparers should take as their objective the fulfillment, (to the best of their ability) of the users’ needs. However the preparers have their own objectives, which often are quite different from those of the users. The financial statements can play a very important role in helping the enterprise’s management to achieve its objective. If the accounts show that the enterprise is doing well, the shareholders will be happy also the market price of the company’s shares will remain high. Since the accounts are prepared under the direction of the management there is a temptation for the management not to present the full truth about the enterprise in the financial statements, particularly when the company is doing badly. The paper examines the behavioral aspect of accounting with emphasis on the need of ethics; the methodology used is purely content analysis, using secondary data. The study reveals that unethical behavior is less...
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...Abstract It is fairly easy for a top executive to reduce the price of his or her company's stock. Due to information asymmetry. The executive can accelerate accounting of expected expenses, delay accounting of expected revenue, engage in off balance sheet transactions to make the company's profitability appear temporarily poorer, or simply promote and report severely conservative estimates of future earnings. And this phenomenon of accounting scandal exist in contemporary society. The integrity of the accounting profession and the credibility of financial information provided by businesses have been undermined by scandals. Accounting and business education should pay more attention to the ethical to prevent accounting scandals. And they should not be focused on the teaching of accounting techniques. Neoliberal ideology is a political movement beginning in the 1960s that blends traditional liberal concerns for social justice with an emphasis on economic growth. And it is similar to globalization. Globalization includes three elements that are difficult decreasing, quick response to alterations, and multilateral trade liberalization. And accounting professional contains individual professional judgment and professional self-regulation. Globalisation brings many benefits but also a number of problems, for instance, low price labour used by multinationals that Increasing wages for highly-skilled workers and reducing wages for less-skilled workers obviously leads to greater inequality...
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...ETHICAL ISSUES Ethical issues is deem to give implication on the nature and role of accounting. Thus, to ensure that accounting stated roles can be perform successfully, accountants, as professionals, are expected to maintain a level of ethical conduct that goes beyond society’s laws. They have the responsibility to ensure that their duties are performed in conformity with the ethical values of honesty, integrity, objectivity, due care, confidentiality, and the commitment to the public interest. Luca Pacioli, the "Father of Accounting", wrote on accounting ethics in his first book Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportionalita, published in 1494. Ethical standards have since then been developed through government groups, professional organizations, and independent companies. These various groups have led accountants to follow several codes of ethics to perform their duties in a professional work environment. However, accountants’ involvement with large corporate scandals in recent times reflects that they have not complied with the expected ethical standards. Thus, ethics has become a key area of concern in accounting at present owing to the series of corporate scandals that had taken place in the world questioning the credibility of the accounting profession. These scandals have placed in doubt the effectiveness of contemporary accounting, auditing and corporate governance practices, for which accounting profession is responsible for. Unethical...
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...What does ethics have to do with accounting? Everything, since there have been some recent financial accounting scandals; a few examples being Xerox, WorldCom, Enron, which have generated much unwanted and unfavorable publicity for CPA's, including those working as controllers or chief financial officers for organizations. When you hear the word "ethics," what is the first thing that comes to mind? Having to make the decision of doing what is right versus doing what is wrong. Some idealists say that decisions of ethics should not be conditional. However, that is not as simple as it may sound. What constitutes "right" to one person may be "wrong" to anther; what clearly distinguishes the line between right and wrong? What some may look at as being unethical does not necessarily make it illegal. In the predicament of David Duncan, the lead audit partner at Arthur Anderson the Accounting Firm for Enron, underscores the penalty that accountants may face under professional accountability. Duncan had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice when he was involved in the connection with document shredding. The scandals have made some big implications on the profession as a whole. One being the decision from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) of 2002, in April 2003 they voted to assume the responsibility for establishing auditing standards. The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants...
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...Review of Accounting Ethics Dr. ACC 557: Financial Accounting May 22, 2013 Table of Contents 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. 3 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and their impacts 3 2.1 The Scandal of Enron 3 3.0 Organizational ethical issues and the management failure 5 4.0 Breach of the accounting practices and its impacts 5 5.0 Recommendations by the CFO 6 6.0 References 8 1.0 Corporate ethical breaches in recent times. Ethics is an important aspect of business in today’s enironment. Sometimes management ignores or leaves to state laws to govern the code of ethics within a company. Companies have faced a lot of issues regarding ethical situations in modern times. According to Baker (2012) contrary to the popular belief of the recent global financial crisis resulting from failures of accounting ethics, he argues that there is not enough evidence to support this connection. 2.0 Accounting ethical breaches and its impacts Breaches of the accounting ethical policies have become a source of concern for the firms today. The proper application of IFRS and GAAP standards is vital for each firm. In recent years as more scandals have come into the spotlight firms have taken more and more internal measures in addition to the policy making at the governmental level to ensure breach of consumers’ trust and laws does not take place in the future. There has been a tremendous increase in the interest in accounting ethics (Cowton, 2013). 2.1 The Scandal of Enron...
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...Ethics in Accounting Linh Pham University of Mount Olive Author Note This research paper was prepared for ACC483, taught by Professor Henry Singletary. Ethics in Accounting Ethics in Accounting has recently attracted a lot of attention in the field of business. Based on my knowledge, ethics in accounting are the behavior or actions that doesn’t allow for intentionally inaccurate and false in accounting practices. This is quite complex because we not only have to follow the accounting rules, but also need to make decisions based on the moral or ethics principles. However, ethics varies by cultures, individual perceptions, religion. For example, what seems about right in one country could be totally wrong in another country. Or what you think is right may actually be wrong. Therefore, it’s really difficult for us to follow the same ethics principle and apply those principles to ethics in accounting practices. In this paper, I will bring a thorough discussion of how to make accounting behaviors become more ethical. Ethics in Accounting is what we really need to take into our consideration in this era, especially after the financial and accounting failures of many big firms such as Enron, WorldCom, AOL, Global Crossing, Tyco, Lehman and AIG. As a matter of fact, experts and analysts are trying to find out the root causes of these failures. It is also significant to realize that more and more fraud cases are detected in this era. Therefore, there is a big question that...
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...Introduction Accounting is a system, and its practice is a workmanship or art created to individuals screen their monetary exchanges. Accounting gives individuals a money related photo of their undertaking. Its unique - and continuing – crucial reason for existing is to give data about the financial dealings of a man or association. At first, just the individual or association required the data. The legislature required the data. As the economy turn out to be more intricate and controlled, the quantity of the individuals who required the data – the quantity of client of monetary proclamations – expanded. The degree of the significance of the data to the client builds the moral variables administering the improvement and payment of that data....
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...Why are Certified Public Accountants Important to the Accounting Industry, and why their role is Important to Business, Industry, and Society? Virginia Commonwealth University Writing and Rhetoric April 15, 2011 Why are Certified Public Accountants Important to the Accounting Industry, and why their role is Important to Business, Industry, and Society? CPAs became prominent after the 1800s when America started into the industrial era. They mainly did the basic bookkeeping for businesses at that time. As the industrial age grew and the government started to impose taxes, CPAs became more important to businesses as they now had to handle the filing of taxes for businesses. Although many people don’t see how important CPAs are to business, industry, and the economy, as well as, society. With the many changes over the centuries that government and CPA societies have put on CPAs, there have been some big changes in educational requirements, as well as governmental regulations. But in today’s society ethics has become the biggest problem that CPAs have to deal with and yet have more control over in the economy, and especially in business and industry. History has shown just how business and industry has needed CPAs, from controlling payroll and taxes, auditing accounting journals at the local mom-and-pop stores, to auditing financial papers of big corporations in order to let the investors at banks and Wall Street have some sort of an...
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