context can drive an individual's response to an ethical dilemma in the workplace”.
In a working environment where the welfare of the workers is concerned, no individual will deny their rights. If they do well, they will be rewarded and vice versa. At the same time, the means of work also more or less create opportunities for fraudulent behavior, between manual and modern means of work. With manual means, it is easy to be fraudulent in the working process because it depends largely on human activities.
Many researchers such as Akman V. (2014); Kokthunarinan and Marko H. (2016) and the author also stated that the work environment factor has an impact on professional ethics. Contrary to this view, Maree KW and Radloff S. (2007) proved that accountants will not be affected whether they are in a healthy or negative work environment.
2.3.6. Working relationship
If we say that ethics is a category that refers to human relationships and rules of conduct in relationships between people in life activities, then ethics and relationships are closely related and interact with each other throughout the process of movement and development.
In work relationships, there are relationships that will have a very strong impact on professional ethics in general and accounting ethics in particular. It is necessary to mention the relationship between colleagues as well as the relationship between subordinates and leaders. Regular work contact with colleagues who often have unethical behaviors can easily cause serious effects as well as imitation of those behaviors.
Next is the leader, if working with a leader who has unethical behavior, often has instructions for his subordinates to perform behaviors that are contrary to their professional ethics. They are forced to choose between doing something unethical or following the leader's request to avoid losing their job.
or maintain professional ethics but risk being fired for going against the requirements of superiors.
The study of Eynon G. et al. (1997) with the view that the factor of work relationship does not have a direct impact on accounting ethics. But from the perspective and point of view of the author, the author believes that the factor of work relationship has a direct impact on accounting ethics. Therefore, the author decided to include the factor of work relationship in the research model.
2.4. Proposed research model and research hypothesis
2.4.1. Research model
Through analyzing previous studies on factors affecting the professional ethics of accountants, each researcher proposed different factors or groups of influencing factors.
In general, the author believes that there are 6 factors that have the strongest impact on the professional ethics of accountants: (1) Seniority; (2) Beliefs; (3) Legal environment; (4) Education level; (5) Working environment;
(6) Work relations. The remaining factors have insignificant impact and are not suitable for the research space in Vietnam.
Seniority level
Based on the research and inheritance of the research results of the authors presented in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, some of the author's views. The author proposes the following research model:
Beliefs Legal Environment
Education level
Professional ethics
accountant career
Working environment
Working relationship
Seniority level
(Source: Model proposed by the author)
Figure 2.1: Research model
In this research model, the dependent variable is the professional ethics of accounting staff at small and medium enterprises in Binh Duong province, the independent variable includes 6 factors: (1) Seniority level; (2) Beliefs; (3) Legal environment; (4) Education level; (5) Working environment and (6) Working relationships.
Table 2.1: Measurement of variables from previous studies
STT
Variable | Author | |
1 | Seniority level (Independent variable) | Nikoomaram H. et al. (2013); Costa AJ et al. (2016); Feil AA et al. (2017) |
2 | Education level (Independent variable) | Nikoomaram H. et al. (2013); Feil AA et al. (2017); Lam KC and Shi G. (2008) |
3 | Belief (Independent variable) | Lam KC and Shi G. (2008); Saat MM et al. (2009); Feil AA et al. (2017) |
4 | Legal Environment (Independent Variable) | Cohen JR and Bennie NM (2006); Maree KW and Radloff S. (2007); Lam KC and Shi G. (2008) |
5 | Working environment (Independent variable) | Maree KW and Radloff S. (2007); Akman V. (2014); Kokthunarinan and Marko H. (2016) |
6 | Working relationship (Independent variable) | G. Eynon et al. (1997) |
7 | Professional ethics of accountants (Dependent variable) | G. Eynon et al. (1997); Radtke RR (2000); Maree KW and Radloff S. (2007); Lam KC and Shi G. (2008); Saat MM et al. (2009); Nikoomaram H. et al. (2013); Akman V. (2014); Kokthunarinan and Marko H. (2016); Costa AJ et al. (2016); Feil AA et al. (2017); Gatu PN (2017) |
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(Source: Author's synthesis)
2.4.2. Research hypothesis
From the above research model, the author builds hypotheses to examine the impact of factors on the professional ethics of accountants at small and medium enterprises, specifically:
Hypothesis H1 – The higher the seniority level, the higher the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises.
Hypothesis H2 – The higher the educational level, the higher the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises .
Hypothesis H3 – The more religious individuals working in accounting profession have, the higher the professional ethics of accounting staff in small and medium enterprises.
Hypothesis H4 – The clearer and more complete the legal environment, the higher the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises.
Hypothesis H5 – The more honest, transparent, strict and fair the working environment is, the higher the professional ethics of accounting staff in small and medium enterprises.
Hypothesis H6 – The clearer and more impartial the working relationship is, the higher the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises.
CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 2
Chapter 2 presents the concepts related to the study, introduces the type of small and medium enterprises, the basic principles of professional ethics in accounting and the factors affecting professional ethics. These basic principles of professional ethics are presented from each specific perspective, such as from the perspective of the Portuguese Certified Accounting Ethics Code, from the perspective of Circular No. 70/2015/TT-BTC of the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam. According to each perspective, the principles of professional ethics in accounting will have different points of assessment but in general, they are quite similar in meaning. This is the theoretical basis that the study will apply to find out which factors will affect professional ethics in accounting. At the same time, the study also relies on related studies presented in Chapters 1 and 2 to identify 6 factors affecting the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises including: seniority, education level, beliefs, legal environment, working environment and work relations. At the same time, this chapter also presents background theories such as: economic theory, social benefit theory, secularization theory, organizational uncertainty theory and theory of social psychology of organizations.
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Chapter 2 introduced the theoretical basis and impact of factors affecting accounting ethics along with the underlying theories. Chapter 3 will present the research process, preliminary research and formal research. At the same time, it also presents the scales, questionnaires used in formal research along with the determination of sample size, data collection and steps for analyzing the collected data.
3.1. Research process
The author's thesis research process is carried out according to the following process:
Research problem
Research objectives
Research model
Research method
Quantitative method
(Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, correlation and regression testing)
Qualitative method (Expert interview)
Research results
Conclusion and recommendations
(Source: Framework proposed by the author)
Figure 3.1: Thesis research framework
Step 1 : Based on the literature review and previous studies, and based on the reality of the research geographical space, the author proposes the research problem. Based on the research problem, the author determines the research objective of the topic. When this objective is achieved, the research problem will be answered.
Step 2 : Based on the problem and research objectives, the author selects fundamental theories to support the achievement of research objectives in the right direction, and at the same time reviews previous studies conducted in the world. From this review, the study proposes a theoretical research model and research hypothesis.
Step 3 : Due to differences in research contexts, as well as human characteristics in each geographical space, the organization may be different. Therefore, the systematic scale is unlikely to accurately measure the research concepts in the proposed theoretical model. Therefore, the study will conduct qualitative research using the group discussion method to adjust the factors affecting accounting ethics and the scale to suit the reality in the research space. After adjustment, the study will have an official research model and scale. Based on the official scale, this step will design a questionnaire to conduct quantitative research in the next step.
Step 4 : Based on the pre-designed discussion board, in this step the author conducted a survey of individuals working as accountants of small and medium enterprises in Binh Duong province. The data after the survey was encoded and cleaned on SPSS software tool to prepare for the next step of analysis.
Step 5 : After the data is cleaned, in this step, Cronbach alpha coefficient and EFA exploratory factor analysis will be analyzed such as checking EFA weights, factors and extracted variance.
Step 6 : Correlation test; model suitability test; regression coefficient test; multicollinearity test; variance test of changing residuals.
3.2. Research design
Research design is a detailed design that specifically defines the methods of information collection, processing tools and data analysis that the study chooses to verify the hypothesis. Research design includes main contents such as sampling method, data collection method and data analysis method (Dinh Phi Ho, 2014).
3.2.1. Qualitative research methods
The purpose of qualitative research in this study is to explore, adjust and supplement the scale of factors affecting the professional ethics of accountants at small and medium enterprises in Binh Duong province.
In this study, qualitative research used group discussion technique with 13 experts participating. These experts are university lecturers specializing in economics, management and law; lawyers; officials of Thuan An town court; officials of Binh Duong provincial committee.
The first step was to discuss with the experts using some open-ended exploratory questions to see what factors they found and in what aspects affect the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises. The experts were asked to list the factors that affect the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises.
Next, the factors affecting the professional ethics of accountants in small and medium enterprises proposed in Chapter 2 are introduced for members to express their opinions. The opinions of an expert (additions, changes) will be discussed further with other experts. Finally, the opinions of the experts will be summarized. Factors and observed variables that are agreed by more than 2/3 will be retained.
After receiving the results from the experts, a preliminary questionnaire based on the Likert scale was developed and a pilot interview was conducted with 20 accountants of small and medium-sized enterprises. From the results of the qualitative research, the questionnaire was determined to be accurate.
3.2.2. Quantitative research methods
The purpose of quantitative research is to test the measurement scale and theoretical research model. The quantitative research in this thesis is conducted through direct interview techniques with accountants of small and medium enterprises in Binh Duong province based on a prepared questionnaire.