This study aims to determine the moderating influence of Machiavellianism and achievement motives on the ethical intentions of accounting professionals.
Self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain survey data from 430 certified accounting professionals using the non-random quota and snowball sampling methods. The proposed research hypotheses were tested in IBM SPSS Statistics using a moderated moderation approach in the PROCESS macro.
The results indicate that achievement motives significantly moderate the conditional influence of Machiavellianism in the associations among theory of planned behavior (TPB) predictors (perceived behavioral control, attitude and subjective norms) and accounting professionals’ ethical intentions. This intriguing finding shows that when achievement motives and Machiavellianism vary (at high and low levels) among TPB predictors and accounting professionals’ ethical intentions. These moderated moderation outcomes significantly impact accounting professionals’ ethical intentions.
The findings assist statutory accounting bodies in developing appropriate ethical guidelines and crafting new courses for accounting professionals by considering individual perspectives on achievement motives and Machiavellian personality traits. Furthermore, the empirical findings may help managers identify, recruit and train potential accounting professionals likely to have higher ethical intentions for practicing ethically.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the pioneer study to determine the moderating influence of Machiavellianism and achievement motives on accounting professionals’ ethical intentions. Additionally, this study adds to the existing literature by broadening the application of the TPB framework for assessing accounting professionals’ ethical intentions.
