Accounting Faculty Ethical Codes: A Time for Action?
AACSB eligibility standards state that accounting academic units must establish expectations for ethical behavior by faculty and administrators. Obviously, this requirement can be met in a variety of ways but the most direct is to establish an accounting faculty ethical code. This paper reports on a two phase empirical study of 70 AACSB accredited accounting doctoral programs in the U.S. The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which the accredited accounting doctoral programs have adopted separate faculty codes of ethics. No separate codes for accounting academic units were found. Implications of these findings are discussed in this article. We believe the lack of specific ethical codes for accounting educators is of concern given the importance of ethics in both the educational process and in the business world. There is a need for a serious dialogue in the accounting academy about this issue.
Research Falsification in Accounting Literature: A Survey of the Most Prolific Researchers' Actions and Beliefs
Incidents of research misconduct, especially falsification, in the hard sciences and medicine have been widely reported. Motives for misconduct include professional advancement and personal recognition. Accounting academics are under the same tenure, promotion, and recognition pressures as other academics; and, without the life-and-death issues of medical research, rationalizing misconduct in accounting research seems much easier. It is reasonable to assume that dishonesty has occurred, even if little evidence exists about its prevalence. Further, accounting research can influence tax policy and market conditions, affecting people’s lives. This study is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to survey accounting researchers directly as to their ethical practices; it uses the randomized response technique of addressing sensitive questions. To maximize its relevance to the most respected accounting research, this questionnaire was sent only to the most prolific researchers at US colleges and universities who have published in the “top 30” accounting journals. The results indicate that serious misconduct has occurred among these established accounting researchers. The estimated percentage of seriously tainted articles in the top 30 accounting journals, based on self-reporting, is about 4 percent, while the respondents on average believe that about 21 percent of the literature is tainted. Faculty who were tenured more recently provide higher estimates of the falsification rate, and attribute more of the cause to external factors like tenure pressure. The paper concludes by discussing implications and offering policy recommendations.
What Happened to Suicide Bombings in Israel? Insights from a Terror Stock Model
An analysis of three years of suicide bombing data in Israel reveals an increase in such attacks through March 2002 followed by a steep decline through the end of 2003. The authors propose a terror-stock model that treats the suicide bombing attack rate as a function of the number of terrorists available to plan and execute suicide bombings. The intent of Israeli tactics such as targeted killings and preemptive arrests is to reduce the capacity of terror organizations to commit attacks. When fit to the data, this model suggests that the targeted killing of terror suspects sparks estimated recruitment to the terror stock that increases rather than decreases the rate of suicide bombings. Surprisingly, only the deaths of suspected terrorists, and not Palestinian civilians, are associated with such estimated recruitment. Although Israeli actions have reduced the rate of suicide bombings over time, it is preventive arrests rather than targeted killings that seem more responsible for this outcome.