Title: The ethical behaviours of final year Turkish accountancy students compared with their Australian and Irish counterparts

Authors: S. Burak Arzova, Linda A. Kidwell

Addresses: Department of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Marmara University, Ressam Namik Ismail Sok. No:1, Bahcelievler/Istanbul, Turkey. ' Niagara University, Niagara Falls, NY, USA; Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

Abstract: Business ethics is the application of ethical principles to manage complex dilemmas. Business ethics asks, ||What is right and wrong and good and bad ?|| in business transactions. Ethical solutions may have more than one, or no ||right|| alternative (Yalcin et al., 2000). In this study, ethical attitudes of Turkish accounting students are compared to the results of O|Leary and Cotter (2000), regarding Australian and Irish students. Turkey is a developing country while Australia and Ireland are developed, and the countries differ on a number of cultural variables. Thus ethical attitudes may be expected to differ significantly. Despite the wealth and cultural variables that might suggest higher unethical behaviour of students from Turkey, the opposite results were obtained. As in other studies, however, males were found to be more likely to take unethical actions. Finally, collectivism did have some effect on how students would behave if refusing the unethical offer came from a friend.

Keywords: business ethics; cultural differences; Turkey; developing countries; collectivism; bribery; academic integrity; Australia; Ireland; unethical behaviour; accounting students; accounting education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAPE.2004.005927

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2004 Vol.1 No.3, pp.385 - 400

Published online: 28 Dec 2004 *

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