David F. Bean

Signaling Gender Diversity Through Annual Report Pictures: A Research Note on Image Management

This research examines the differences in presentation of boards of directors in annual reports. Our sample consists of 472 corporations from the Fortune 500; 130 (342) of these corporations included (did not include) pictures of their boards of directors. The proportion of female directors was 11.0 percent for firms that did not include pictures of their boards and 14.5 percent for firms that included pictures of their boards in their annual reports. The difference in the gender mix of these two groups is significant (p = 0.0002). This indicates that firms with a higher percentage of women on their boards signal this fact to stockholders, investors, and other constituents by including pictures of their boards in their annual reports.

Preparer versus user introductory sequence: the impact on performance in Intermediate Accounting I

The normal subject matter in the first semester of a traditional introductory accounting course closely parallels the content in Intermediate Accounting I. Because research shows that student performance in college accounting courses is influenced by prerequisite courses, one would expect that those who take a user-approach introductory sequence will not perform as well in later courses. The research reported in this paper compares the performance of students in a traditional Intermediate Accounting I course who took either a preparer-or-user approach introductory sequence. Of the 150 accounting majors in the sample, 53 (97) took a user-approach (preparer-approach) introductory sequence. Of the 97 preparer-approach students, 47 (50) were four-year (transfer) students. The results are consistent with prior research and indicate that SAT scores and student effort are significant for each of the individual tests and for the overall average in course examinations. Gender is not a consistent a factor in performance, which also supports prior research. The data indicate that students who took a preparer-approach sequence did not score higher in Intermediate Accounting I and that entry status is not a factor in this performance. This finding leads to the question of whether or not a user-approach would better service those students in our introductory accounting courses who are not accounting majors.

Accounting Students as Surrogates for Accounting Professionals When Studying Ethical Dilemmas: A Cautionary Note

A challenge in performing empirical research isdetermining appropriate research subjects.Laboratory experiments are noted for their useof student subjects. The issue of interest inthis research is whether student subjectsrespond to a contextual ethical dilemma in thesame manner as working professionals.An experiment was conducted with 110 studentsand 169 experienced accounting practitioners,who are CPAs, utilizing six different financialreporting dilemmas. Students were assigned tothree different organizational categories interms of tone at the top – ethical, not ethicaland neutral. Experienced accountingpractitioners provided information about theperceived tone at the top in their ownorganizations using a questionnaire. The t-tests disclose significant differencesbetween CPAs and students for each of the sixdilemmas at the p < 0.001 level.

Institutions of Higher Education: Cornerstones in Building Ethical Organizations

Ethical organizations have a competitiveadvantage in the marketplace. The merepresence of a statement of ethics isinadequate. Deeds and actions are alsonecessary. A critical component in building anethical culture in organizations is therecruitment and retention of ethical employees. The best and most readily available sources ofsuch personnel are higher educationinstitutions that have strong ethical culturesand skilled graduates. This paper addresses indicators of highereducation institutions having strong ethicalcultures. The paper discusses the concepts ofpraxis and contrast experience and their role in education. The importance of andopportunities for service learning areconsidered to be a central theme in developingethical graduates. We conclude thatinstitutions of higher education that live theethics and values contained in their missionstatements produce graduates who are highlyvalued and sought by ethical organizations.

Ranking North American accounting scholars publishing ethics research: 1986 through 2008

This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardis (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accountings top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accountings top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accountings ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accountings top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.

ESTIMATING THE RATINGS OF JOURNALS OMITTED IN PRIOR QUALITY RATINGS

Many articles rate the journal publication quality of individuals, departments, PhD programs, and universities. A concern common to most recent surveys and studies of accounting journals is that only about one-third of the accounting journals in Cabell appear in the resultant journal quality ratings. We address this void by developing an objective model that generates a quality rating for journals that are not present in prior surveys. We examine nine articles that report journal quality ratings during the 30-year period between 1974 and 2003 and represent the perceptions of 3,228 colleagues concerning the quality of accounting journals. Our parsimonious model proposes that a journal’s quality rating is a function of the age, acceptance rate, and classification of the journal as academic or professional. The model is particularly useful in approximating the quality of journal publications for accounting faculty seeking tenure/promotion and/ or for institutions working toward The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation. Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations, Volume 7, 109–127 Copyright r 2005 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1085-4622/doi:10.1016/S1085-4622(05)07005-7

The Place of Ethics Scholarship in the U.S. Accounting Academy: Accounting Doctorates' Research Productivity in Ethics Journals

While there has been research that assesses the research productivity of doctoral programs, the existing research uses journals that do not include ethics as a principal area of interest for manuscripts. In an era that witnessed the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal, among other publicized ethical lapses, the resultant expectation would be for an increased focus/emphasis on ethics in mainstream accounting research. Given the hue and cry about ethics and the acknowledged/conferred responsibility of academia for the development of ethical graduates, perhaps ethics should be one of the primary research themes and paradigms in accounting scholarship. To the extent that this is an acknowledged and accepted destination, it is essential to know where we currently stand on this important journey.This research provides data on the level of productivity in accounting ethics research for the graduates of doctoral programs in accounting from 1969 through 1998. We rate this productivity using the research published in 21 ethics journals, which were analyzed for the 35-year period (1968-2002). The study identifies the doctoral programs graduating the largest number of scholars publishing ethics research.

DO ACCOUNTING ACADEMICS HAVE THE EXPERTISE TO TEACH A DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC ETHICS COURSE?

Ethics is of increasing concern to many important stakeholders in accounting education. While the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) encourages institutions to demonstrate their commitment to ethics through research agendas, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy proposed a three-course ethics sequence – one of which was a discipline-specific accounting ethics course. The unanswered question is whether or not the accounting academy has the embedded expertise in ethics to teach a discipline-specific accounting ethics course. While there are numerous ways to establish an expertise in the area of ethics, this study documents the level of ethics research by accounting faculty who teach at institutions in North America in 26 business ethics journals, accounting’s Top-40 journals. Our data indicate that 683 (545) schools or 75.9 (60.6) percent of the 900 schools in the United States and Canada do not have an ethics scholar if one uses a five-year (20-year) research window. The study establishes a baseline that allows stakeholders to assess the level of past, present and future accounting ethics research, and the capabilities of accounting faculty to address alternative ethics education pedagogies.