Research has shown that rankings of personal values significantly differ between accounting professionals and accounting students in the United States and other countries. This difference implies a lack of Person-Organization (P-O) fit between students and the accounting profession. This study presents an educational pedagogy, using both a Curriculum Modification (CM) Intervention and a Value Self-Confrontation (VSC) Intervention, that highlights professional values and can lead to value change in accounting students. Experimental results indicate that this pedagogy can have a significant impact on converging student values with those of the profession (AICPA ethics code). This finding suggests that a Curriculum Modification Intervention combined with a VSC Intervention could be used by educators globally to converge values of accounting students with those of professional accountants, thereby improving ethical decision-making by individuals, as well as having positive impacts on accounting firms' hiring, socialization, and retention of employees.

Human trafficking continues to be a profitable multi-billion dollar business. People are either callous toward human rights or they are unaware of the crime occurring. Many businesses may unknowingly facilitate human trafficking by providing services, such as transportation, hotels, or haircuts, or purchasing products from unfamiliar sources that secretly use forced labor. To be socially responsible, a business must establish effective enterprise governance policies that help prevent and detect trafficking. A business can incur legal fines, damage to its reputation, incur lost business, and be subject to litigation, all as a result of human trafficking. Worldwide, estimates are that 50 million people are being trafficked. Human trafficking is especially harmful to females, both adult women and girls, who comprise about 70 percent of all trafficking victims. Gender theory helps explain this disproportionate impact on women. This study provides an overview of human trafficking, an empirical analysis of the relationship of gender inequality to trafficking, and specific steps that a business can take to help prevent this crime, protect its reputation, and avoid fines and lost business.

Prior research has examined the relationship of religiosity to aspects of business risks, notably, the ethical environment in which business firms operate. Religiosity is connected to economic factors and societal factors. This study examines the relationship of religion-based ethics, specifically Judeo-Christian ethicality, in a country (measured by Judeo-Christian presence as a proportion of the population) to economic freedom, economic activity, gender equality, social progress, and corruption. Modern business firms, in efforts to embrace diversity, accommodate cultural factors such as religiosity, particularly so in multinational operations where diverse religions will be encountered. Findings show that Judeo-Christian ethicality has a positive relationship to factors connected to a society’s sustainable business culture—that is, more economic freedom, higher economic activity, improved gender equality, better social progress, and lower corruption.

Crypto assets have upset the pillars of regulatory and centralized monetary policy, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been slow in developing a position on how to account for cryptocurrencies. Currently, there are many accounting, finance, and tax meanings of cryptocurrencies. The purpose of this study is to show the path FASB has taken to develop accounting standards for more than 20,000 crypto assets, outline the positions other authorities and agencies have taken, and discuss Central Bank Digital Currencies since the United States and other countries are considering replacing their fiat currency with a digital currency. Furthermore, the study presents insights from an exploratory survey of accounting faculty opinions on cryptocurrencies. The discussion of virtual currency regulatory and accounting treatments informs the development of a regulatory framework.

In this essay, we propose that the prevalence of cheating by accounting students and serial cheating by accounting practitioners at Big-4 accounting firms are related. Our model of this problem suggests that students who cheat in school become practitioners who cheat in practice, and practitioners, in turn, model dishonest behavior for students. We propose that this vicious cycle of dishonesty poses a threat to the public’s trust in the accounting profession, and this crisis calls for drastic measures, both in academia and in practice, akin to measures like the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. As an honorable profession, dishonesty cannot be tolerated. Brief overviews of the prevalence of cheating, both by students and by Big-4 accounting practitioners are presented. Suggestions are included for a three-prong approach by accounting stakeholders to reduce this egregious ethical problem—a problem that, we suggest, is causing a new crisis in confidence for the accounting profession.