Ethical decision-making of undergraduate accounting and business students as a function of personal variables : empirical evidence from Kuwait

Abstract EN

The current aims at examining the influence of certain personal variables on the ethical decision-making of Kuwaiti undergraduate accounting and business students.

The current Study is motivated primarily by the recently increasing public attention around the globe to the importance the perseveration of proper ethical conduct of accounting and business professionals, and understanding of the various factors that can have an effect on their ethical decision-making.

The empirical evidence reported in this Study is anticipated to be of interest and value to accounting and business researchers and regulators since, to the beSt of authors’ knowledge, it sheds light for the firSt time on such a critical research issue in the context of a GCC country.

The current Study uses a regression model to examine the research hypotheses of interest on a data set related to 431 Kuwaiti accounting and business Students.

The Study’s results show that evidence of a negative relation between the ethical decision-making of Students and both Student’s number of years in college and majoring in accounting.

The results also show that Students’ ethical decision-making is positively related to their academic performance.

The Study’s results, however, do not show any significant effect of gender on the ethical decision-making of Students.