Charles E. Jordan

The Empirical Performance of Cognitive Moral Development in Predicting Behavioral Intent

The substantial work on cognitive moral development (CMD) by Lawrence Kohlberg and James Rest popularized the use of this construct in the literature on business ethics. This construct has been prominently used in models attempting to explain ethical/unethical behavior in management, marketing, and accounting, even though Kohlberg did not intend for the construct to be used in that manner. As a predictor of behavior, CMD has been attacked on the theoretical level, and its empirical performance has been weak. This article uses another established construct, which seems to satisfy the central criticisms of CMD, as a means of testing those complaints. The comparative multidimensional ethics scale (MES) substantially outperforms CMD, operationalized using Rests Defining Issues Test, in every test. These results seem to suggest that other options perform better than CMD when the purpose is to model ethical/unethical behavior or even ethical judgment.

Gender Imbalance in Accounting Academia: Past and Present

Studies conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s reflected a gender imbalance in the accounting academy as the proportion of female professors fell far below the percentage of women accountants in practice. For a sample of doctoral-granting and nondoctoral-granting Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) institutions, the authors in this study examined changes in gender ratios in accounting academia during the period 1994 to 2004. Important findings revealed that, relative to nondoctoral granting programs, terminally qualified female accounting educators were no longer under-represented at doctoral-granting institutions. In addition, although far from reflecting an appropriate gender balance, the proportion of women in senior faculty and administrative positions had improved dramatically.

Should Earnings Per Share (EPS) Be Taught as a Means of Comparing Intercompany Performance

Accounting standards state that the purpose of presenting earnings per share (EPS) is to provide financial statement users with information on the performance of a single entity. Yet, several textbook authors go further to state that EPS can be used to make comparisons among firms. In this article, the authors show that although EPS comparisons among large publicly traded companies may be appropriate, such comparisons should not be made among small publicly traded firms because the number of common shares outstanding represents a poor scaling measure for entity size. As such, accounting professors should refrain from teaching EPS as a tool for making intercompany performance comparisons or at the very least should warn students of the pitfalls of making such comparisons.

Two-Year College Accounting Faculty: Their Opinions about the First Course in Accounting

Abstract The Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) is calling for significant changes in the content and teaching style of the accounting principles courses. This article presents the results of a national survey of 2-year college accounting faculty and indicates that significant disagreement exists within this group on the need for reform of accounting principles. Several implementation concerns were identified (e.g., increased articulation problems resulting from different teaching approaches). Finally, most 2-year college faculty feel that they are ignored by 4-year college faculty in matters of curriculum design; thus, a major source of input appears largely untapped.