Ética e moral no processo de tomada de decisão: o caso dos alunos de Ciências Contábeis

Abstract

The large number of scandals involving the area of accounting does think the ethics of professionals in this area since its formation. Within corporations, the accounting professional is quite important as it gives information to a large number of people about the equity and accounting situation of the company. For this fact, it is important that this professional self-respecting the attitudes and making ethical and moral decisions. In this context, the science that today's students will be tomorrow's professionals, this study questioned the students of the Accounting course on ethics and moral decision-making process. For data collection, the sample was randomly divided into three rooms and all were subjected to application of an experiment and a questionnaire. The experiment consists of a sheet containing 20 matrices, where each student should find in each of the arrays, two numbers added together result in ten and each hit the student would receive a reward. The reward and control of right answers between the rooms were different, aiming to identify whether this lack of control and the increase in reward characterized a possible cheating students. In the questionnaire, besides the characterization of the respondents were presented four scenarios that involve situations that can happen in the life of a professional accountant, as a report of doubtful expenditure, manipulation of books of accounts, approval of expenses without board approval and risky lending a new company. After each scenario, we were presented nine assertions where the respondent should indicate their level of agreement through a Likert scale adapted from ten points. Were obtained 91 valid responses and data analysis was performed using statistical techniques, which indicated that there is no statistically significant difference between the responses to academic scenarios of different ages, gender, year are enrolled in undergraduate and occupation. It was possible to identify that all scenarios were considered ethical dilemmas, but the case with dubious expense report was the most intense ethical dilemma. Also among the scenarios presented statistically significant differences were found between responses to three questions and be put respondents in a situation that allowed the cheating (experiment), these apparently acted ethically. So it is concluded that the academic Accounting have a propensity to be able to identify, judge and analyze situations that involve ethical dilemmas, as well as ascertain the consequences that certain actions may cause to those involved.