Ethics of Relationships between Accounting Academics and External Sponsors

They challenge and shape the accounting world, and support the standard-setters and regulators. For leading academic accountants, research informs not only accounting and the financial world in general, but also their work with aspiring accountants. The very best in academe are those scholars who challenge their students as well as established thought while shaping novel and inventive ways of looking at the accounting world. The need for rigorous research to support the decisions that have to be made by standard-setters and regulators is only going to increase (see the article “Inquiring minds” by Robert Colapinto in the April 2013 edition of CAmagazine online).

 A variety of relationships can develop between accounting academics and external sponsors that raise issues of ethical propriety. External donors may seek to influence academic decisions by applying pressure on recipients to gain favored treatment. These types of situations are on the rise because of increased commercialization of universities. A recently-completed study examined relationships between accounting academics and external sponsors that challenge academic independence because of conflicts of interest when donors seek to impose conditions on financial support.

 

The authors solicit the opinions of academic accountants about how likely they are to go along with the conditions. They link these activities to the following ethical issues: fair-mindedness, objectivity and integrity. They conclude that the more experienced accounting academics (i.e., full professors, current chairs, holders of endowed chairs and designated faculty fellows) are less likely to engage in ethically questionable relationships with external sponsors than academics who are less experienced.

 

The results are driven primarily by two cases: allowing a Big Four CPA firm to interview students before other firms as a condition of continued recruiting and allowing a firm to decide on the recipient of a named faculty fellowship. Read more in the forthcoming research article “Ethics of Relationships between Accounting Academics and External Sponsors,” by Steven M. Mintz, Li Dang and Arline Savage in Issues in Accounting Education (2013) published by the American Accounting Association.