Cultural Factors Affecting Tendency of Ethical Decision-Making by Accounting Students: An Empirical Study in Vietnam

The purpose of this study is to look at the precise direction and magnitude of cultural elements such as education, gender, power distance, and risk-taking proclivity on ethical decision-making. Data was collected from 194 interviewees in three groups: general business students, accounting major students, and professional auditors in Vietnam. The path analysis is used to test the impact of cultural factors on ethical awareness, ethical judgment, and ethical intention in different dubious scenarios at the personal level as independent variables, intermediate variables, and moderating variables. The metric is the percentage of respondents who believe a particular behavior is unethical based on a set of ethical principles. The researchers used SPSS AMOS software to conduct a confirmatory factor survey to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validity of latent variables. The results show differences between the two groups of students and professionals on these measures, suggesting that all of the four factors have an effect on ethical decision-making. Based on research results, some recommendations are proposed related to the four factors to improve the ethics of future generations of auditors in Vietnam. This study also contributes to the theory of culture in particular and cultural interference in general in the field of accounting-auditing in Vietnam in the process of international integration.