Discussion and conclusion
In this study we introduce the construct of ethical
commitment and examine through an online survey
of professional accountants the relationship between
their ethical commitment towards auditor independence
and features of their work and cultural
environment. We conceive of independence commitment
as the extent to which the individual
accountant considers auditor independence as a key
attribute of the profession, and believes that regulatory
standards of auditor independence should be
rigorously binding and enforced in the public
accounting domain. The results indicate that, at the
time of data collection around the end of 2002,
respondents’ independence commitment was, on
average, relatively high, thereby suggesting that
professional accountants were then considering
independence as a key feature of public accounting
and also quite receptive to its regulation through
control mechanisms.
With higher independence commitment indicating
a higher preference for more rigorous regulatory
control, the results suggest a viewpoint in which the
individual accountant is to some extent unsure about
her/his peers applying appropriately, on their own
without regulatory coercion, the profession’s independence
standards. This viewpoint is in contrast to
an ethical philosophy centered on character and
idealism that assumes that the moral strength of
members of the profession, forged through a proper
upbringing and moral education, renders them
trustworthy and very reliable (Preston et al., 1995).
A relatively high independence commitment also
suggests the individual accountant having some
concerns about the effectiveness of the free-market
logic in disciplining, without any regulatory support,
members who offer public accounting services.
More research is needed, however, in order to address
more systematically the regulatory implications
of a higher degree of independence commitment.
Most of the relationships that we hypothesized
about work (H1a to H1e) were found to be statistically
significant, in accordance with one of the
study’s underlying themes, namely, that work
constitutes an inescapable feature of accounting
ethics. Our research therefore points to a need for
researchers to focus more heavily on the concept of
work in research endeavors aimed at developing a
better understanding of professional ethics in the
accounting domain.
Several other features of the results are noteworthy.
The data indicates that not only is public
accountants’ independence commitment lower than
that of non-public accountants (H1a), with a mean
independence commitment value of 14.5 versus 16.3, but
also it is resistant to the influence of the individual’s
involvement in accountancy’s core areas of work
(H1d), as indicated by the non-significant coefficient
for proportion of time spent in current job in accounting/
auditing in Table V. These results are consistent with
segments of auditing research that point to the significance
of the influence of commercialism within
public accounting, exerted through a variety of
institutional and organizational mechanisms having
powerful disciplining and self-disciplining effects on
public accountants (e.g. Covaleski et al., 1998). The
results are also in accordance with Wyatt’s (2004)