Empirical studies of moral reasoning in accounting research
To demonstrate the influence of moral reasoning on behavior, these two empirical studies are briefly reviewed and delineated: the Ponemon (1992) study and the Ruthedge and Karim (999) study. Ponemon's study (1992) explored the influence of motal reasoning upon auditors undemeparting behavior by employing an experimental lab study.
The underreporting is the situation that auditors report the few houts than actually utilized to complete a specific task. This dysfunctional behavior evidently reduces audit quality such as premature sign off In the other way, reporting the actual time exceeding the time budget signals the poor performance or inefficiency. Therefore, underreporting seems to be the easy solution for to the tight time budget.
The relevant literature involves the study of time budgets and behaviot, as well as the psychology of moral reasoning, For the time budgets, most studies focuses on the motivation of auditors under time pressure rather than the structure of the firm Recent studies examined the interaction between underreporting and other dysfunctional behaviors that decrease audit quality Underreporting has been attributed by many causes, From previous tesearch, the determinants of porting include unachievable time budget, explicit peer pressure. the personally-held beliefs underre and ethical values, fee arrangements, the perceptions of performance appraisals, fim size, position level, and stress.
The study advances the idea that auditors level of moral reasoning will lessen the effects of both time and peer pressure on underreporting because essential to this behavior are the ethical values that the individual brings to the task In this study, underreporting is perceived as unethical
The primary hypotheses examine the relationship betwoen two rms (presence or absence of audit sure underreported time. The secondary tests the influence of moral reasoning upon and the underreporting of audit time under conditions of either an unattainable time budget or peer