An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Mohammad J. Abdolmohammadi
Bentley College

C. Richard Baker
Adelphi University

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between accountants’ personal values and their moral reasoning. This investigation is important because the literature suggests that accountants’ conformity with rule-based values may be one reason for their relatively lower scores on measures of moral reasoning. We administered the Rokeach Values Survey (Rokeach 1973) and the Defining Issues Test (Rest 1979) to 164 graduating accounting students enrolled in capstone courses at two universities in the Northeastern United States. We find a highly significant inverse relationship between “Conformity” values and moral reasoning, however we also find that graduating accounting students do not necessarily prefer Conformity values above other personal values such as Self-actualization and Idealism. We also find positive relationships between accountants’ Self-actualization and Idealism values and their moral reasoning. Implications for accounting pedagogy and research are discussed.

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