Investigating the Effect of Constructing Social Accounts on Accountants' Unethical Behavior: With Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement and Guilt

According to importance of the issue of ethic in Islam, the purpose of this research is to investigate the negative dimensions of social accounting and how it affects the ethical behavior of accountants. This is an applied research and uses structural equation modeling. Due to the wide scope of the study population, using a Cochran formula, a sample of 384 students and accounting professionals with different levels of knowledge and experience has been identified. The sampling method was applied randomly and a questionnaire was used to survey the cities of Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz and Kish through available sampling.The target year is 2018. Feedback from social accounts is considered as a controlling variable for indirect effects of justification and excuse for accountants' unethical behaviors. The results of this research show that social accounts that rejected by subordinates due to inconsistency with reality, it strengthens moral disengagement and undermines the guilt of accountants and, instead, increases their unethical behavior. Also, with regard to the types of social accounts constructed, the results ultimately show that the justification of social accounts by accountants, in comparison with excuses, leads to higher moral disengagement, less guilt, and more unethical behavior, compared with constructing excuses. Account feedback was hypothesized as a control variable for indirect effects of justifications and excuses on unethical behaviors such that account rejection would strengthen moral disengagement and weaken guilt, and in turn, increase unethical behavior.