Do ethics education and religious environment mitigate creative accounting?

Abstract

There are increasing volumes of corporate scandals and declining ethical reasonings of accountants. The credibility crisis of accountants arouses the awareness of educators concerning the importance of instilling ethical values in the context of education because ethics is the most effective way to limit the scope of creative accounting. University learning environment is critical to the development of ethical values. The social norm theory implies that religious institutions will shape people’s behaviors. Otherwise, the theory of the sacred canopy argues that religion no longer affects the aspects of life due to the increased level of modern society materialism. The purposes of this study are: first, to examine the effect of ethics education on ethical perception of creative accounting; second, to test the differences of ethical perceptions of undergraduate students in religious and public universities; third, to examine the effects of individual’s ethical ideology on ethical perceptions. The data collection method involved a questionnaire to a total of 225 respondents from two religious-based universities and one public university. SEM PLS was used to test the hypothesis. The results show that business ethics education did not influence ethical perceptions on creative accounting. However, there is a significant difference in students’ ethical perceptions between the public university and religious-based universities. Individuals’ ethical ideology has an impact on ethical perceptions. Educational implication and suggestion for future research are proposed.