The Analysis of Factors Affecting Ethical Judgements: The Turkish Evidence

Abstract

This study examines the factors affecting ethical judgment of financial and accounting practitioners in Turkey. Our research findings show that there is no significant relationship between importance given to the code of ethics and ethical judgments of Turkish accounting and financial executives, though they generally agree that the code of ethics provides adequate guidance to resolve ethical dilemmas. The most effective factors on the ethical judgments are the environmental factors. We found marginal support for the effects of corporate ethical values on the ethical judgments. The effects of the age of practitioners on their ethical judgments are two-way. This study on Turkish experience produces results different from the study by Martinson and Ziegenfuss (2000) which employed similar methodology over the case of United States. The most effective factor affecting ethical judgments in Martinson and Ziegenfuss (2000) is the importance given to the code of ethics, whereas we found no relationship between these two variables. This difference is attributed to the special characteristics of emerging economies.

Keywords: Ethics, Ethical Judgments, Ethics in accounting, Ethics in finance, Turkey

JEL Classification: G10, M49