[...]... only in the last few years Theories of the ethics of the accounting profession and even an adequate understanding of the issues are at an early stage of development A primary reason for this is that, although the accounting profession is closely linked with the administration of organ izations and the conduct of business activity, few attempts have been made to link it explicitly to the older and better... field of business ethics For example, many of the ethical issues that arise in public accounting are not profes sional problems per se; rather, they result from the way public accounting firms are organized and managed, and are thus instances of generic business ethics issues Nor has much of the conceptual framework of business ethics entered the accounting literature to date (For an exam ination of the. .. when they are also acting in the interest of their client in other areas Financial accountants regularly face the problem of being expected to act in the interest of their employers by control ling the content of financial statements (and thereby perpetuating an information asym metry), and also to provide information to the readers of these statements In managerial ac counting, the content and flow of. .. values, the presence of foreign ideologies of what is right and wrong, as well as the absence of national values and true patriotism The Way Forward Theorists attribute most of Africa’s economic development problems to the lack of an African business ethics Thus, the ‘‘history of economic activities in Africa is that they have been pursued without ethics Some of the Western economic values, such as the. .. remain at the forefront of the accounting profes sion It is not clear whether the profession as we know it today can withstand another Enron Bibliography Arthur Andersen, Coopers and Lybrand, Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, KPMG Peat Marwick, Price Waterhouse (1992) The Liability Crisis in the United States: Impact on the Accounting Profession Position Paper Epstein, M and Spalding, A (1993) The Accountants... Gichure, 2000: 236–47) The study gave encour agement to people of different academic and professional backgrounds to get involved in the expansion and dissemination of business ethics Corruption and business ethics are two terms people tend to place together, one being 16 Africa, business ethics in conceived as the negation of the other In inde pendent Africa, corruption has become perhaps the greatest challenge... point of view, there is a clear public interest in auditing, in view of its role in capital markets and the fact that the right to perform audits is a legally recognized monopoly In this regard, a quid pro quo exists between members of the profession and the rest of society The role of auditors is quite different from that of other professionals According to virtu ally all statements of professional ethics, ... jurisdiction over the adver tising of food and drug products For example, the recent regulatory changes requiring im proved nutritional labeling and disclosure were the result of cooperation between the FDA and the FTC Still another government agency im portant in the oversight of advertising is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), a division of the US Department of Treasury It regulates... topping the list No less than seven centers were dealing with business ethics in Africa, even though none of them were exclu sively focused on business ethics as such These centers were located in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda All these efforts to promote business ethics tended to occur in isolation from one another, as academics were often unaware of the existence of colleagues interested in business. .. significant impact of this system of communication for African business ethics has been the creation of a Business Ethics Network of Africa (BEN Africa) in 1999 at the Uganda Martyrs University at Nkozi, Uganda This forum was established to bring together Africans who share an interest in business ethics and who are willing to expand it on the African continent It was formed in the belief that through . Business ethics / edited by Patricia H. Werhane and R. Edward Freeman. p. cm. (The Blackwell encyclopedia of management; v. 8) Rev. ed. of: The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of business ethics. and former editor in chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the leading journal of business ethics. She was a founding member and past president of the Society for Business Ethics. R. Edward Freeman,. Professor of Business Administration, heads Darden’s Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, one of the world’s leading academic centers for the study of ethics, and is also Academic Director of the