This study examines the tensions between the western concept of professional independence and accountants’ commitment to significant others under the care perspective of guanxi. The principle of professional independence is founded on arm’s-length transactions to avoid undue influence on...

The increasing significance of ethics in the accounting profession is evidenced by the seminal events that witnessed the collapse of major corporations (e.g. Enron and WorldCom); regulatory interventions (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the USA and the CLERP 9 Act in Australia); and calls for...

The National Australia Bank (NAB), one of Australia's largest banks, announced losses in 2004 of AUD$360 million due to unauthorised foreign currency trading activities by four employees who incurred and deceptively concealed the losses. The NAB had in place risk limits and supervision to...

The Defining Issues Test (DIT), developed by Rest (1986), measures a person's level of moral development using hypothetical social dilemmas. Although the DIT is useful for measuring moral development in social settings, it might not adequately capture an individual's moral judgement abilities in...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate the internationalisation of Australian auditing standards by analysing the submissions to the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board's (AUASB) strategic directions paper (SDP) and comparing the proposed and approved strategic...

PPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of senior accounting officers on governance, performance and accountability issues in the charity sector. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical data presented in this paper were collected via a mail-out survey to Chief...