Abstract:
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the effects of personal attributes (greed and desire for personal gains,
behaviour of peers and superiors, personal values, family influences and pressures, religious background, ego
strength, etc.), organisational attributes (company policies, codes of conduct and visionary leadership, etc). and
themoderating role of ethical codes of conduct on the ethical attitudes of professional accountants.
Design/methodology/approach – The study uses data from a survey of 340 professional accountants
in Ghana, using the ordinary least square regression analysis to test hypothesized relationships.
Findings – The results suggest that personal attributes collectively have positive and significant influence
on ethical attitudes. Similarly, organisational attributes collectively have positive and significant influence on
ethical attitudes. Moreover, ethical codes of conduct moderate the positive relationship between personal and
organisational attributes and ethical attitudes of accountants.
Originality/value – In the light of the social contingent theory, the findings imply that personal and
organisational attributes, when interacted with professional code of conduct strengthens ethical attitudes of
accountants. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first paper to have examined the moderating effect of
professional code of conduct on ethical attitudes of accountants from a developing country context.
