Ethics and Corporate Governance in Modern Accounting

Abstract

This research examines the relationship between ethics and governance in the accounting discipline, specifically how certain ethical principles are incorporated into governance and its associated practices. Utilizing the structured literature review method, this paper reviews previous studies in academia and the professional sector that focus on the intersections of ethics, corporate governance, and accounting supervision. The work examines both seminal and contemporary literature to identify patterns, theories, and empirical contributions regarding the place of ethics in governance. The examination reveals that the governance of systems can be enhanced through the incorporation of specific ethics, including the enhancement of reporting quality, the reduction of opportunistic behavior, and the improvement of stakeholder confidence. Prior studies show that ethical breaches are central to failures in governance, yet strong ethical standards correlate with positive governance in monitoring, decision making, and control (Rezaee, 2008; Agrawal and Chadha, 2005). It is also evident that ethics is not only a compliance issue but also a regulative framework that influences the governance and its sustainability positively (Bebbington and Unerman, 2018). This implies that ethics in accounting governance is not only auxiliary or reactionary, and this should inform policies, practices, and research agendas. This is the response to the research question for this study.