Accounting and Business Ethics »

Ken McPhail is Professor of Accounting at La Trobe University, Australia.

Diane Walters is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland and a part-time lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, UK.

Despite the enormous impact of various accounting scandals on the accounting profession, the general malaise amongst the profession more broadly, and the significant legislative and institutional reforms that have taken place as a result, there are still surprisingly few textbooks on accounting ethics.

This concise introductory text takes a broad view of ethics and accounting, taking into account contemporary social trends, such as globalization and terrorism. Rather than delineating codes of professional conduct, this text pushes the reader towards an understanding of the nature of ethical dilemmas and the factors that influence the ways in which accountants frame ethical questions.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on developing thinking about the different kinds of ethical questions that could be posed in relation to accounting. The second part focuses more explicitly on accounting practice, exploring the ethical function of accounting in relation to the market economy, ethics in relation to the accounting profession, and the ethics of the international accounting harmonization project.

Accounting and Business Ethics is a compact introduction aimed at both students and practitioners who want to understand more about the ethics of accounting.

List of illustrations viii

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xiii

Part I How to think ethically about accounting 1

1 Introduction 3

2 Descriptive perspectives on accounting ethics: what factors influence the way accountants respond to ethical dilemmas? 17

3 Normative perspectives on accounting ethics: how should accountants behave? 45

4 Political moral philosophy and accounting ethics: why should accountants be good? 61

5 Post and new-modern perspectives on accounting ethics: how have accountants become ethical? 94

Part II The ethics of accounting practice 109

6 The function of accounting and the morality of the market 111

7 The ethics of being a professional accountant 132

8 The ethics of international accounting: harmonization and terrorism 156

9 Ethics, intellectual capital and accounting reporting 184

Index 215