Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Publication Title

Journal of Leadership and Management

Volume

1

Issue

18

Pages

25-36

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of contextual factors in organizations on accountants’ ethical decisions. Specifically, the study investigated whether professional identity salience and ethical leadership climate affected accountants’ ethical judgments and intentions to act more ethically. A study is conducted, in a 2 x 2 between-factorial design, by using certified public accountants (N=375) as participants. The findings show that accountants made more ethical judgments when professional identity salience was increased by highlighting the professional code of ethics. Accountants intended to act more ethically only when the leadership climate was positive. The results suggest that a good ethical climate created through management practices potentially constitutes a necessary condition to influence employees’ ethical behavior.

Comments

© 2021 Institute of Management and Leadership Inc.

"Authors retain copyright and grant Journal of Leadership and Management right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal."

Original Publication Citation

Xu, Y., Wang, K. J., & Ziegenfuss, D. E. (2021). The effect of professional identity salience and leadership climate on accountants’ ethical decisions. Journal of Leadership and Management, 1(18), 25-36. http://leadership.net.pl/JLM/article/view/202

Download

Share

COinS