Ethics Of Ethics In Accounting

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1 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
Almost all professions are demanded by a society to be ethical, especially the accounting profession. The accounting profession was founded on the notion that proper ethical behaviour is the cornerstone of providing professional services to clients. The collapse of Enron, the largest energy-trading company in the US had jolted the profession out of its complacency and serves a warning that all is not well with the profession. Ethics had aroused significant interest amongst practitioners and academics alike. The message is clear that it is under scrutiny, if accountants want to be relevant, they have to be more diligent and ethical. In recent years, there are many financial scandals in some very big corporations in Malaysia. According to the former Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) President, Abdul Rahim Abdul Hamid, the responsibility of any wrongdoing in any company is on the shoulders of the directors, senior management team as well as the auditors, among others (MIA, 2007). As a result, litigations taken against auditors are increasing in number. For example, there are many financial scandals which include Perwaja Steel, Oilcorp Berhad, Transmile Group Berhad, Megan Media Holdings, Southern Bank and Technology Resources Industries Berhad.

Hence, these financial scandals had caused a high level of accusation and criticism by outsiders that auditors are unethical in their judgments (Lee et al., 2008). It is noted that individual will be more receptive and will be more likely to copy behaviours of their peers and group members. Valentine et al. (2011) found that corporate ethical values were associated with decreased turnover intention in a survey of administrative employees and...

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...rch proposes that to expect ethical behavior of colleagues and ethical behavior of successful accounting professionals have a significant impact on organizational commitment of employees in accounting firms. It is important to note that while these two variables have been shown to have a significant impact on ethical behavior of employees, their impact on organizational commitment of employees in accounting firms has not yet been studied by business ethics researchers.
Previous research has shown a strong relationship between various facets of job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Meyer et al., 2002). Azeem (2010) found that supervision satisfaction and pay satisfaction were significant predictors of organizational commitment through a sample of 128 employees from service industry. Tang and Chiu (2003) report that pay satisfaction was positively related to

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