Examining fifteen years of ethics research in the Journal of Accountancy: 2002 to 2016

Abstract

In the past fifteen years, ethics has come under the spotlight in the accounting profession. In this study, I examine ethics research in accounting by looking at publications in the Journal of Accountancy, a leading professional journal in accounting, over the period from 2002 to 2016. I found that 32 out of 4,851 (0.66%) articles published in the journal were ethics-focused. Further, I observed spikes in the percentage of ethics-focused articles in the years 2003 and 2009/2010, following key events such as the passing of SOX and the global financial crisis. I also perform content analysis of the ethics-focused articles by categorizing them to one of four research areas: (1) code of conduct, (2) corporate culture, (3) ethical decision making, and (4) reputation management. Given that the majority of ethics-focused articles published relate to encouraging ethical behaviour among accounting professionals, my results suggest that such articles present a good source of information that accounting professionals can turn to when making decisions which have ethical implications.