Ethics matters: the integration of ethical considerations in management accounting textbooks

Berend van der Kolk

Accounting Education, 2019, vol. 28, issue 4, 426-443

Abstract: This paper examines the integration of ethical considerations in management accounting (MA) education. Drawing on the work of Alisdair MacIntyre, it is argued that MA instruments such as performance measurement are not morally neutral, but instead bear moral implications. Therefore, this paper contends that MA students should be trained to take these moral implications into consideration alongside MA's technical aspects. A content analysis is carried out to examine the integration of ethical considerations in top-ranked MA textbooks. The findings indicate that these textbooks, particularly the introductory textbooks, marginally integrate ethical considerations. Furthermore, the findings point to the risk of detaching ethical considerations from the discussion of MA's technical aspects, which may weaken the potential of the ethical considerations and turn them into ‘afterthoughts’. Finally, this paper offers practical suggestions for the improvement of the integration of ethical considerations in MA education and concludes with directions for future research.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09639284.2018.1543602 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:accted:v:28:y:2019:i:4:p:426-443

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAED20

DOI: 10.1080/09639284.2018.1543602

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting Education is currently edited by Richard Wilson

More articles in Accounting Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().