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This study explores the relationship between CFO qualifications and a firm’s internal control weakness (ICWs). We use three measures for CFO competence: financial/accounting background, seniority, and education. Using a sample of Taiwanese listed firms from 2012 to 2015, the results of this study show a negative relationship between CFO financial/accounting background and seniority with internal control weakness, indicating firms with higher quality CFOs experience a lower number of ICWs. CFO education level, however, is not related with a firm’s internal control weakness. The results imply that capable CFOs can effectively implement a good internal system. The result of this study provides practical and policy implications.

The article is an attempt to assess whether Stock Ownership moderates the relationship between corporate diversification and CEO compensation. Based on agency theory, we develop the hypothesis of whether when CEOs hold a large fraction of their firms’ outstanding stock, the CEOs are acting more as owners or shareholders than employees. This reduces the principal and agency relationship of agency theory, since CEOs are acting as owners rather than employees; thus the demand for further stock-based compensation is likely to be reduced because the interests of CEOs and shareholders are relatively aligned. For the purposes of this study, a sample of 2,448 CEO compensations across 1,622 firms from 1997 to 2002 was used to test several hypotheses. Corporate diversification was divided into two categories; international diversification and industry diversification. To test the hypotheses, multiple regression analysis was employed to examine stock ownership as a moderator variable on the relationship between international diversification and industry diversification and CEO total compensation with tenure, age, duality, and gender as control variables. The results indicate that stock ownership negatively and significantly influences the relationship between International diversification and CEO compensation. Additionally, the findings also confirm that stock ownership negatively and significantly influences the relationship between industrial diversification and CEO compensation. Our results are consistent with our hypotheses and indicate that firms with lower Stock Ownership produce larger interaction effects to increase international diversification and total compensation pay to CEOs, and firms with lower Stock Ownership, produce larger interaction effects to increase industry diversification and total compensation pay to CEOs.

This study examines the level and structure of CEO compensation of 2,448 CEO’s from 1,622 firms spanning a range extending from 1997 through 2002. Based on agency and expectancy theories, this study tests the hypotheses that corporate diversification is associated with CEO compensation. The results found that the higher degree of international diversification, higher accounting earning performance, higher investment opportunities, and larger firm size, resulted in CEO’s receiving higher levels of compensation. In contrast, the higher the degree of industrial diversification, the fewer levels of total compensation, long-term compensation, and stock options corporate CEO’s received. In addition, this study finds that both international and industrial diversification is associated with a greater use of current compensation, as well as a greater reliance on accounting-based, rather than stock return earning (market-based measures) of firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to determine and compare the ethical reasoning levels of accounting students in the U.S. and Taiwan based on gender. This research found that female accounting students possess higher levels of ethical reasoning than male students. The means of the DIT P and N2 scores for females are higher than males by 20% and 18.5% respectively. The results show that there is no significant difference of the ethical reasoning abilities of male accounting students between the U.S. and Taiwan. The results also show that there is no significant difference between the ethical reasoning levels of female accounting students in Taiwan and the ethical reasoning levels of female accounting students in the U.S.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a significant difference exists in the ethical behavior between public and private sector accountants. Current research has either focused on one sector or the other, leaving scant data for comparative studies. The public sector’s focus on the intricacies of bureaucracy, emphasis on serving the public and sworn oaths to constitutions is bound and constrained by rules and law. The private sector, on the other, hand emphasizes entrepreneurship and risk-taking, encouraging creative approaches that challenge the parameters of the law, as well as answering to stake-holders. These differences toward decision-making influence their respective ethical choices. The 36-item revised version of Ethical Climate Questionnaire, developed by Bart Victor, John B. Cullen, (1987-1988), and James W. Bronson (1993), was the instrument used to evaluate the ethical perceptions of the accountants. Factor analysis results extracted seven dimensions and all of them originally identified from the based theory of Ethical Work Climate of Cullen, Victor, and Bronson (1993). They are Rules/Codes, Caring, Self-Interest, Social Responsibility, Efficiency, Instrumentalism, and Personal Morality. The results reflected the differences between the public and private sectors, emphasizing what is considered to be of optimum to each. The public sector showed a higher perception in rules/codes, caring, self-interests, social responsibility, and instrumentalism, while efficiency and personal morality were perceived higher in the private sector.

The emergence of China as an economic power has prompted the question, what impact if any has globalization and market liberalization had on the ethical climate of organizations within China and its neighbor Taiwan? Cross-strait tensions have eased over the past few years due to closer economic integration. Although both countries differ in political, as well as organizational design, they share core cultural values embedded within civilization; Confucianism. This study attempts to understand how the correlation established between ethical climates and National culture by Parboteeah, Cullen, Victor, and Sakano are played out against the backdrop of a shared civilization. Will the ethical climates retain or deviate from the core civilization cultural values theorized by Samuel P. Huntington? To answer that question, we collected data from C.P.A. firms in China and Taiwan using the 36-item revised version of the Ethical Climate Questionnaire developed by John B. Cullen, Bart Victor (1988), and James W. Bronson (1993). The results indicated a significant difference in four areas: 1) principal-individual, 2) principle-cosmopolitan, 3) benevolence-individual, and 4) egoism-individual. When correlated with national culture and their core civilizational cultural value of Confucianism, deviations showed that Taiwan moved away from Confucian values by scoring higher in Egoism while retaining Confucianism with a more particularistic culture. China demonstrated a shift away from Confucian values by scoring higher in principle while retaining Confucian values through its score in benevolence.

Ethical development, cognizance, and maturity, as well as ethical behavior, are a primary concern of all managers, government officials, and educators. These moral values are even more important in Asian economies where some aspects of the economy seem to go underground without any due taxation afforded to the government or proper credit accorded to the property owners or copyright or other intellectual property holders. This article examines morality and ethics from a cross-cultural perspective. The article examines works using Kohlbergs Cognitive Moral Development theory and the Defining Issues Test (DIT), in order to ascertain the moral cognizance of workers and students, with particular attention to the variables of age, education, ethics education, and gender. United States samples are compared with studies of Taiwanese managers and Taiwanese students. The purpose was to see if there is relationship between any of these variables and moral maturity and cognizance, as well as whether any of these relationships were culturally influenced.