Jason MacGregor

Whistle While You Work: Whistleblowing in the Presence of Competing Incentives and Pressures

This instructional case connects whistleblowing incentives and ethical issues in different reporting environments. It provides three different whistleblowing scenarios that allow students to identify and grapple with multiple whistleblowing incentives, issues and resultant ethical dilemmas present in both the academic and financial reporting environments. The purpose of the case is threefold. First, the case makes students aware of the whistleblowing incentives and ethical issues present in different environments. Second, by linking academic and financial whistleblowing issues across scenarios, students see the relevance of whistleblowing ethics in their current lives and are motivated to develop ethical habits now. Third, the case forces students to practice making decisions in situations with conflicting incentives, uncertainty and ambiguous guidance. Strong conflicting incentives can cloud and challenge whistleblowing intentions.

The Effect of Economic Patriotism on Tax Morale and Attitudes Toward Tax Compliance

In the past decade several high-profile public figures have equated patriotic duty with paying taxes. We examine how patriotism influences taxpayer attitudes toward taxation. Using taxpayer subjects who participated in a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, we find that patriotic individuals are significantly more positive about paying taxes to support their country and are more likely to believe in the progressivity of the tax system than nonpatriotic individuals. We find no evidence that patriotic taxpayers find paying more tax overall to be patriotic. However we find strong evidence that patriotic taxpayers perceive tax evasion (tax cheating) to be unpatriotic.

The Academic Accounting Profession and the Pathways Commission: Two Helpful Analogs from the National Football League

Abstract The accounting academy is facing two critical challenges: an increasing disconnect between academia and practice and a growing shortage of faculty. Recently, the Pathways Commission proposed that accounting programs more fully embrace professionally oriented faculty. This proposal is attractive because it would increase faculty numbers and bring a stronger practice orientation to the academy. Although there may be benefits associated with this proposal, there may also be significant unintended consequences. In this paper, we use two analogs from the NFL to highlight the risks in relying on practice-oriented faculty to solve our problems. We offer a series of reflection questions to promote further conversations on the Pathways Commission’s proposal.