Can Anticipating Time Pressure Reduce the Likelihood of Unethical Behaviour Occurring?

  • Hwee Ping Koh
  • Glennda Scully
  • David R. Woodliff
Original Paper
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Abstract

Time pressure has been shown to have a negative impact on ethical decision-making. This paper uses an experimental approach to examine the impact of an antecedent of time pressure, whether it is anticipated or not, on participants’ perceptions of unethical behaviour. Utilising 60 business school students at an Australian university, we examine the differential impact of anticipated and unanticipated time deadline pressure on participants’ perceptions of the likelihood of unethical behaviour (i.e. plagiarism) occurring. We find the perception of the likelihood of unethical behaviour occurring to be significantly reduced when time pressure is anticipated rather than unanticipated. The implications of this finding for both professional service organisations and tertiary institutions are considered.

Keywords

Antecedents Time pressure Ethics Moral intensity Plagiarism 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Academic staff and PhD students of the Accounting and Finance Discipline Group at The University of Western Australia Business School and the facilitators and participants at the 2013 University of Western Australia Albany Writers Retreat for their assistance, the anonymous reviewer and participants at the 2010 and 2013 Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conferences, 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity, 20th Annual Symposium on Ethics Research in Accounting, 2015 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting UWA Business School Accounting and Finance seminar series for feedback on earlier versions of this research. Human research ethics approval for this study has been granted by the participating university. We would also like to thank Markus Milne (editor) and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and insightful feedback on this manuscript.

Compliance with ethical standards

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the participating university and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Hwee Ping Koh
    • 1
  • Glennda Scully
    • 2
  • David R. Woodliff
    • 1
  1. 1.Accounting and Finance Discipline, UWA Business SchoolThe University of Western AustraliaPerthAustralia
  2. 2.School of AccountingCurtin University of TechnologyBentleyAustralia

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