会计英文翻译

Accounting and business ethics: An introduction

Ken McPhail, Diane Walters

There has been something or a mushrooming of texts in various aspects of business ethics in recent years as the subject has been included on more programmes in management departments and business schools. The professional accounting bodies have also included ethical content in their curricula and accrediting bodies such as AACSB include ethical outcomes in their criteria. Given that the broader themes of business ethics are covered in a range of established textbooks, perhaps the time is right for a text specifically focussed on ethical issues in accounting. The title of McPhail and Walters’ book conveys this important notion – that this is a book with a particular emphasis on accounting ethics and in this regard, it is offers a uniqueness and contribution not present in the more general CSR and business ethics books.

There is an emerging and emerged corpus of philosophical theory now associated with the various strands of business ethics and any book must now, it seems, include this corpus in order to fit in with the various modules on which ethics is taught. This book includes most of this corpus (including Kohlberg, Kant, Mill, Rawls, Rousseau, Habermas, etc.) and also introduces Levinas and other thinkers whose work has more recently been applied in the business ethics academy. There is a balance to be struck between rigour in covering these philosophies and maintaining a pace capable of retaining students’ interest and I suspect this book has that balance about right. In reading the text, I was able to understand the philosophical contributions whilst at the same time seeing how each one fitted into the larger narrative of the book and to that extent, then, the pace and depth seem about right: it covers material to an adequate depth whilst not getting bogged down in detail.

In terms of structure, the book is divided into two parts: how to think ethically about accounting and the ethics of accounting practice. Accordingly, the book is split between the broad areas of theory and practice. Part 1 contains 5 chapters and part 2, 4 chapters. The main ‘headings’ in part 1 are descriptive theories, normative theories, political moral philosophy, and post and new modern theories. The chapter sub-headings are expressed as questions: ‘what factors influence the way accountants respond to ethical dilemmas?’, ‘how should accountants behave? ’ , etc. Part 2, the ethics of accounting practice, is based around themes of the morality of markets, the ethics of professionalism, international/ harmonisation issues and reporting/ knowledge management issues. Despite this range of content, it is a thinnish book, running to a total of 225 pages.

The books aims to address the specific issues of accounting ethics but these are naturally placed in the context of some of the major themes in organisational and business ethics also. But accounting ethics includes a number of context specific issues and the book seeks to draw those out where appropriate and consider them in a more detailed way than would be the case in a general business ethics text. So the roles of accountants in managing information, reporting, complying and acting professionally are featured strongly throughout.

In terms of content, each chapter is self-contained, beginning with learning objectives and ending with the references used in that chapter and a series of