Determinants of ethical behaviour among public sector auditors in Malaysia

Abstract

Ethics is crucial to all professions, including accounting of both private and public sectors. This research sought to determine the determinants of ethical behaviour among public sector auditors in Malaysia. There are four research objectives for this study: (1) to investigate the influence of ethical climate professional commitment; (2) to examine the effect of professional commitment on ethical behaviour of public sector auditors; (3) to investigate the effect of corporate ethical values on ethical behaviour of public sector auditors; and (4) to examine the effect of ethical ideology on ethical behaviour of public sector auditors. The respondents of the study were public sector auditors from both federal and state levels of National Audit Department in Malaysia. Using a survey questionnaire comprising instruments about the ethical climate, corporate ethical values, professional commitment, ethical ideology and organizational misbehaviour, a total of 382 were received and usable. In order to achieve the research objectives, multiple regressions were performed. In terms of factors influencing the extent of ethical behaviour among public sector auditors in Malaysia, the results of multiple regression analysis reveal that seven variables have influence on ethical behaviour. These variables are law and independence climate, professional commitment, corporate ethical values, idealism, relativism, with one control variable, gender.The findings indicated that a significant positive influence of law ethical climate, professional commitment, corporate ethical values and idealism ethical ideology on ethical behaviour. In contrary, the study discovered that the independence ethical climate and relativism ethical ideology type has a significant negative influence on ethical behaviour. This study contributes to filling the research gap as research on public sector auditors is very few and scarce. In addition, it is expected that this will initiate future research on the ethics of public sector auditors as well as provide better understanding of the factors that can contribute to more ethical behaviour among Malaysian public sector auditors. More importantly, the findings of this current study may contribute to the government’s understanding of how to foster an environment that can encourage ethical behaviour among public auditors in order to increase their credibility as public servants and thus enhance public trust in the government.