The ethical views of students studying accounting at regional and metropolitan universities

Abstract

Recent corporate collapses like Enron, HIH and One.Tel have served to ensure that business ethics remains an important focus within the corporate world. The unethical behaviour of managers within corporate structures must begin somewhere and this paper serves to more specifically identify the ethical values of students who will eventually be part of these corporate structures. A total population of 278 students from the University of Canberra (a metropolitan university) and Central Queensland University (a regional university) were surveyed to ascertain their ethical views on a range of ethical questions and in specific situations. T-tests were used and ther esults showed no significant impact in students’ ethical positions in academic and business situations. However, gender and age differences were detected.