Modeling the tendency to disclose accounting fraud Based on personality traits, ethical status, and organizational justice
Subject Areas :
Management Accounting
Babak Nejad Toolami
1
(Accounting Department, Faculty of Management and Economics, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University)
fereydun rahnamaye rudposhti
2
(Professor-Department of Accounting and Management-University of Research Sciences-Tehran-Iran)
hashem nikoomaram
3
(استاد تمام گروه حسابداری، واحد علوم و تحقیقات، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، تهران، ایران)
Received: 2022-01-16
Accepted : 2022-01-16
Published : 2021-11-22
Keywords:
Accounting fraud,
Whistleblowing,
Personality Traits,
Ethical position,
Organizational justice,
Abstract :
Given the widespread negative consequences of accounting fraud and the effective whistleblowing, this study examines the whistleblowing intentions of accounting wrongdoing based on personality traits, ethical ideology, demographic situation and organizational justice manipulating of the accounting records and embezzlement. The statistical population was accounting staff and the sample size was 596 people. The data collection tools were the standard Big Five Personality Traits Inventory (NEO FFI) designed by Costa & McCrae (1992), Forsyth's Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ, 1980), and the organizational justice scenarios for accounting wrongdoing, Cronbach alpha was at least 0.9. Structural Equation Modeling-Partial Least Square were used as analysis methods. The research results showed that personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness), ethical positions (idealism and relativism), organizational justice (procedural, interactive and distributive), are related to the whistleblowing intentions of two types of wrongdoing and the whistleblowing intentions of embezzlement are more than that of manipulating of the accounting records at the significance level of 99.9%.
References:
خدایاری فرد، محمد، پرند،اکرم.(1391). ارزیابی و ازمونگری روانشناختی. تهران: انتشارات دانشگاه تهران، 163-183
رفیع پور، فرامرز.(1388). سرطان اجتماعی فساد. تهران: شرکت سهامی انتشار.15
رهنمای رودپشتی، فریدون،(1391). داده کاوی و کشف تفلب های مالی. دانش حسابداری و حسابرسی مدیریت. سال اول. شماره سوم، 17-33.
فتحی، آشتیانی (1393). آزمونهای روان شناختی. تهران انشارات بعثت، 37-73
وکیلی فرد، حمیدرضا، جبارزاده کنگرلوئی، سعید و پوررضا سلطان احمدی، اکبر.(1388). بررسی ویژگی های تقلب در صورتهای مالی. حسابدار.24سال،شماره 210، 36-41.
نمازی،محمد و ابراهیمی، فهیمه.(1395). مدل بندی و تعیین اولویت عوامل مؤثر بر قصدگزارش تقلب های مالی توسط حسابداران. فصلنامه علمی پژوهشی مطالعات تجربی حسابداری مالی. سال 12. شماره 49:1-28.
Adams,J.S.(1965).”Inequity in social ex-change”. In L.Berkowitz(Ed.), Advances in ex-perimetal social psychology (vol.2),New York:Academic Press,267-299.
Alleyne, P., Charles-Soverall, W., Broome, T., & Pierce, A. (2017). Perceptions, predictors and consequences of whistleblowing among accounting employees in Barbados. Meditari Accountancy Research, 25(2), 241–267.
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) (2018). Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Austin, TX.
Barnett, T., Bass, K., and Brown, G. (1996). Religiosity, ethical ideology, and intentions to report a peer’s wrongdoing. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(11), 1161-1174.
Berger, L., Perreault, S., & Wainberg, J. (2017). Hijacking the moral imperative: How financial incentives can discourage whistleblower reporting. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, 36(No. 3), 1–14.
Bies, R. J., C. L. Martin, and J. Brockner. (1993). Just laid-off, but still a “good citizen?” Only if the process is fair. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 6 (3): 227-238
Bies, R.J. and Moag, J.F. (1986) Interactional Justice: Communication Criteria of Fairness. In: Lewicki, R.J., Sheppard, B.H. and Bazerman, M.H., Eds., Research on Negotiations in Organizations, Vol. 1, JAI Press, Greenwich, 43-55.
Bjørkelo, B., Einarsen, S., and Matthiesen, S. B. ( 2010). Predicting proactive behaviour at work: Exploring the role of personality as an antecedent of whistleblowing behavior. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83, 371 -394.
Brink, A. G., Lowe, D. J., & Victoravich, L. M. (2017). The public company whistleblowing environment: Perceptions of a wrongful act and monetary attitude.Accounting and the Public Interest, 17(No. 1), 1–30.
Brink a., et al (2015).The Effects of Personality Traits, Ethical Position, and the Materiality of Fraudulent Reporting on Entry-level Employee Whistleblowing Decisions. Journal of Forensic & Investigative Accounting, 7(1), 180-211.
Cassel, C., Hackl, P., & Westlund, A. (1999). Robustness of Partial Least-Squares Method for Estimating Latent Variable Quality Structures. 26, 435-446.
Chin, W. W. (1998). The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. In G. A. Marcoulides (Ed.), Methodology for business and management. Modern methods for business research (pp. 295-336). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Cohen Charash Yochi & Paul E.Spector.(2001): The role of justice in organizations: ameta – analysis; organizational behavior and human decision processes" , Volume 86, No.2, . November, pp 278-321.
Colquitt, J.A., M. J. Wesson, C. O. Porter, D. E. Conlon, and K. Y. Ng. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (3): 425-445.
Cronbach, L. J.(1951).Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests.psychometrika,16(3),297-334.
Diamantopoulos, A., & Winklhofer, H. M. (2001). Index construction with formative indicators: An alternative to scale development. Journal of Marketing Research, 38, 269-277.
Dozier, J.B. & Micelli, M.P., (1985). Potential predictors of whistleblowing: A prosocial behavior perspective. The Academy of Management Review, 10 (4), 823 – 836.
Dyck, A., Morse, A., and Zingales, L. ( 2010). Who blows the whistle on corporate fraud? Journal of Finance, 65 (6), 2213-2253.
Elias, R. (2008). Auditing students‟ professional commitment and anticipatory socialization and their relationship to whistleblowing. Managerial Auditing Journal, 23 (3), 283-294.
Elliston, F.A. (1982), ‘Anonymity and Whistleblowing’, Journal of Business Ethics 1:3, 167–77.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F.(1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of marketing research, 39-50.
Forsyth, D. R. (1992). Judging the morality of business practices: The influence of personal moral philosophies. Journal of Business Ethics, 11 (5/6), 461-470.
Forsyth, D. R. (1980). A taxonomy of ethical ideology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39 (1), 175-184.
Francalanza, C.; Buttigieg. B. (2016) Maltese certified public accountants and whistle-blowing: traits, influences and propensity.Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Vol. 17 Issue: 3, pp.262-284.
Greenberg, J. and Weithoff, C.: 2001, ‘Organizational Justice as Proaction and Reaction:Implications for Research and Application’, In R. Cropanzano (Ed.) Justice in the Workplace: From Theory to Practice, Volume 2, 271-302, New York: Psychology Press.
Greenberg, J.,(1993). Justice and organizational citizenship:A commentary on the state of the science. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal 6 (3): 249-256.
Greenberg, J. (1990)a. Employee theft as a reaction to underpayment inequity: The hidden cost of pay cuts. Journal of Applied Psychology 75 (5): 561-568.
Grewal, R., Cote, J., & Baumgartner, H. (2004). Multicollinearity and Measurement Error in Structural Equation Models: Implications for Theory Testing. Marketing Science, 23(4), 519-529.
Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T. M., Ringle, C. M., and Sarstedt, M. (2017). A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM)., 2^nd^ Ed., Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage.
Henseler, J., Dijkstra, T. K., Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., Diamantopoulos, A., Straub, D. W., Ketchen, D. J., Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T. M., and Calantone, R. J. (2014). Common Beliefs and Reality about Partial Least Squares: Comments on Rönkkö & Evermann (2013), Organizational Research Methods, 17(2): 182-209.
Henseler, J. , Ringle,C., M. , Sinkovics, R., R. (2009), The use of partial least squares path modeling in international marketing, in Rudolf R. Sinkovics, Pervez N. Ghauri (ed.) New Challenges to International Marketing (Advances in International Marketing, Volume 20) Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.277 – 319.
Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., and Sarstedt, M. (2015). A New Criterion for Assessing Discriminant Validity in Variance-based Structural Equation Modeling., Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1): 115-135.
Hooks, K. L., Kaplan, S. E., Schultz, J. J., and Ponemon, L. A. (1994). Enhancing communication to assist in fraud prevention and detection: Comment: Whistleblowing as an internal control mechanism: Individual and organizational considerations. Auditing, 13 (2), 86-131.
Hu, L.-t., and Bentler, P. M. (1998). Fit Indices in Covariance Structure Modeling: Sensitivity to Underparameterized Model Misspecification, Psychological Methods, 3(4): 424-453.
Jecker, N. S. (2007). The role of standpoint in justice theory. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 41, 165 – 182.
Jubb, P. (2000). Auditors as whistle-blowers. International Journal of Auditing, 4, 153-167.
Kaplan, S. E., Pany, K., Samuels, J. A., & Zhang, J. (2009). An examination of the effects of procedural safeguards on intentions to anonymously report fraud. Auditing:A Journal of Practice & Theory, 28(2), 273–288.
Kaplan, S. E., Pope, K. R., & Samuels, J. A. (2010). The effect of social confrontation on individuals’ intentions to internally report fraud. Behavioral Research In Accounting, 22(2), 51–67.
Kaplan, S. E., Pope, K. R., & Samuels, J. A. (2015). An examination of the effects of managerial procedural safeguards, managerial likeability, and type of fraudulent act on intentions to report fraud to a manager. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 27(2), 77–94.
Kline, P. (1994). An Easy Guide to Factor Analysis: Routledge.
Latan, H., Ringle, C. M., & Jabbour, C. J. C. (2017). Whistleblowing intentions among public accountants in indonesia: Testing for the moderation effects. Journal of Business Ethics [in press].
Leventhal, G. S., J. Karuza, and W. R. Fry. (1980). Beyond fairness: A theory of allocation preferences. In Justice and Social Interaction, ed. G. Mikula. New York, NY: Springer-erlag.
McCrae, R.R.; Costa, P.T.; Jr (1987). "Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1): 81–90.
Menk, K. B. (2011), “The Impact of Materiality, Personality Traits, and Ethical Position on Whistle-Blowing Intentions”, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.
Miceli, M. P., and Near, J. P. (1992). Blowing the whistle: The organizational and legal implications for companies and employees. Lexington Books, New York, NY.
Miceli, M. P., Near, J. P., and Dworkin, T. M. (2008). Whistleblowing in organizations. Routlegde, Taylor and Francis Group, New York, NY.
Miceli, M. P. and Near, J. P. (2013), An International Comparison of the Incidence of Public Sector Whistle‐Blowing and the Prediction of Retaliation: Australia, Norway, and the US. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 72: 433-446.
Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology 76 (6): 845-855
Near, J. P., and Jensen, T. C. (1983). The whistleblowing process: retaliation and perceived effectiveness. Work and Occupations, 10(1), 3-28.
Nunnally, j. (1978). Psychometric theory, 2nd Edn. New York:McGraw-Hill.
Global economic crime survey 2018.
Robinson, S., Robertson, J., & Curtis, M. (2012). The effects of contextual and wrongdoing attributes on organizational employees’ whistleblowing intentions following fraud. Journal of Business Ethics, 106(2), 213–227.
Qusqas,F.,and Kleiner, B., H. (2001) "The difficulties of whistleblowers finding employment", Management Research News, Vol. 24 Issue: 3/4, pp.97-100.
Read, W.J., and Rama, D.V. (2003). Whistleblowing to internal auditors. Managerial Auditing Journal, 18 (5), 354 -362.
Scaturo,R., (2018). Defining whistleblowing.IACA Research paper series NO. 05. 5.
Scott, B., Colquitt, J., & Zapata-Phelan, C. (2007). Justice as a dependent variable: Subordinate charisma as a predictor of interpersonal and informational justice perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1597–1609
Schmidt, M. (2005). ‘‘Whistle Blowing” regulation and accounting standards enforcement in Germany and Europe – An economic perspective. International Review of Law and Economics, 25,143–168.
Siefert, D. L., Sweeney, J. T., Joireman, J., and Thornton, J. M. (2010). The influence of organizational justice on accountant whistleblowing. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 35 (7), 707-717.
Siefert, D. L., Stammerjohan, W. W., Joireman, J., and Martin, R. B. (2014). Trust, organizational justice and whistleblowing. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 26 (1), 157-168.
Soni, F., Maroun, W. and N. Padia (2015), “Perceptions of Justice as a Catalyst for Whistle-Blowing by Trainee Auditors in South Africa”, Meditari Accountancy Research, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp.118-140.
Transparency International. Corruption Perceptions Index 2017.
Vandekerckhove, W. (2006). Whistleblowing and Organizational Social Responsibility: A Global Assessment: Ashgate.
Wetzels, M., Odekerken-Schroder, G. and Van Oppen, C. (2009) Using PLS Path Modeling for Assessing Hierarchical Construct Models: Guidelines and Empirical Illustration. MIS Quarterly, 33, 177-195.
Wilmont, S.: 2008, ‘Nurses and Whistleblowing: The Ethical Issues’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32, 1051-1057.
_||_