The effect of gender and academic discipline diversity on the ethical evaluations, ethical intentions and ethical orientation of potential public accounting recruits

The increased diversity arising from hiring women and nonaccounting majors by public accounting firms presents challenges for the professional development and training of new recruits. If the ethical judgment of women and students from nonaccounting disciplines differs from the traditional male-dominated accounting professionals and these differences are not addressed in early professional training programs, this could represent possible challenges to the training and socialization of new recruits entering the profession. This study tests for gender and discipline-based differences in ethical evaluations, ethical intention and ethical orientation among subjects from the disciplines of accounting, other business and liberal arts. Results indicate that women had consistently different ethical evaluations, intentions and orientation than men and there is some evidence that subjects from the accounting discipline viewed some actions from a different ethical perspective than subjects from other disciplines. Implications for accounting ethics, early-career professional training and ethics research are discussed.